Autumn Leaf Spin Art Garland

I have read about making art with the salad spinner a long while ago, but I didn't get the kids to try even after I bought one from Ikea. Somehow, it just didn't happen until I saw an entry on Autumn Leaf Spin Art Garland by The Imagination Tree. The idea was simple and yet the effect was gorgeous. It didn't even matter that we don't have autumn here and I'm not doing it as part of a thematic learning.

As this could be a potentially messy art exercise, I tried it with the kids separately to prevent myself from getting a heart attack. I put Alfee on a highchair at the counter top (black is safe) and let him scribble on the pre-cut leaf shapes with oil pastels. Usually I prefer not to let the kids use oil pastels because they are slightly harder to clean, but today I took a chance. Alfee wasn't really keen on scribbling. I also did a quick research on leaf shapes and found a very interesting chart on leaf morphology. I wanted to teach the kids some terms to describe leaf shapes but they all look a little tough. So, I just chose simple ones like 'egg-shaped', 'heart-shaped', 'oval' and 'palmate'.



Once we got the leaves ready, we tried securing one to the salad spinner with a piece of sticky tape. Then we pour all sorts of paint over it and spinned. The result was disastrous. It got torn where the sticky tape was and we wasted one good leaf. Then we tried without the sticky tape and the leaf 'flew' all around the inside of the salad spinner with the paint intact. The end product looked pretty much the same as before. So I hunted high and low for a piece of Blu-tac to hold it down so that only the paint got to spin around.



Alfee enjoyed the spinning part the most. He was all excited when he saw the paint spin all around. Then he gave me a totally impressed and surprised look when I opened the cover. I thought he could do this forever since each leaf looked different and he could add different paint to see the result.  



When Sophie woke up from her nap, she was eager to try out the spinner as well after a little demo from me. At first, she was diligently colouring the leaf with oil pastels despite my advice against details. However, she soon realised that it was more fun to just pour paint onto the leaf and spin. She was able to do this independently although I had to help her spin a little.









I could see that Sophie was trying to figure out where she ought to put the paint so that her result would be nice. That's really great. Although it was meant to be open-ended, I like to see her think about her work.



The leaves took a while longer than I had expected to dry completely. I had to use a hairdryer on them before I could make them into garlands. I searched everywhere but I could not find my twine or wool so I used pipe cleaners (not very economical) instead. I wanted to just put them on the wall but I doubt Papa would be too thrilled about that. In the end, I hung them on their windows. Very pretty...

 

Drying leaves...

Sophie's garland

Alfee's garland