DLTK's Holiday Crafts for Kids
Colour Changing Tree Craft

My favourite part of autumn is all of the beautiful colours; it is so neat to walk outside every day and see new colours on the leaves! Since fall has finally come I just couldn't help but make a colour changing paper plate craft with a tree. What a great craft to celebrate autumn or just to play with!

If you feel like matching this fun craft with a learning opportunity check out this science section on Kidzone.ws that explains why leaves change during the fall.

Materials:

• a variety of colourful paints and paintbrushes (use your imagination, the colours of leaves, and your favourite colours),
• two paper plates,
• brass paper fastener,
• scissors,
• glue,
• paper,
• printer.

Instructions:

• Paint the top of one paper plate a rainbow of different colours. Feel free to be as creative as you want; younger children may want to use their fingers and get really messy while older children may want to make a colour wheel in the ROY G BIV fashion.
• For an autumn theme, paint the paper plate a bunch of different leaf colours (green, red, orange, yellow).
• While the first paper plate is drying, paint the second paper plate a background colour (I used blue like the sky). Once the background colour is dry you can paint a brown tree trunk down half of the paper plate.
• Next, use the template we have provided to trace a tree shape onto the paper plate or you can draw your own tree.
• ADULTS ONLY: Using scissors or an exacto-knife, cut the leaf part of the tree out of the paper plate. Be very careful as it is a challenging shape to cut.
• Place the tree paper plate on top of the colourful paper plate and secure them together with a brass fastener through the middle.
• To play with the craft you can turn the top paper around and around and watch the leaves of your tree change colour!

Craft Templates:

• Close the template window after printing to return to this screen.
• Set page margins to zero if you have trouble fitting the template on one page (FILE, PAGE SETUP or FILE, PRINTER SETUP in most browsers).

Tree Template    (B&W)

Printable version of these instructions

Autumn Leaf Collection Booklet

How to “Build” a Tree  Blog Post