Passive Program Idea for Fall/Winter: Leaf Rubbing!

I recently did a craft program built around Anthony Browne’s Frida and Bear Play the Shape Game. If you haven’t seen this one, I highly recommend it. Frida and Bear alternate making pictures out of shapes, including shapes they draw and shapes they find in nature. For instance, they start with the shape in red, then draw in the rest to create a dog:

I read the book, then gave the kids shapes to base their art on. I also collected a bunch of leaves and twigs from the neighborhood behind our library so they could use those as a starting point as well.

This was my creation. Kids guesses of what it is: tree, stump, leaf. Clearly I have a future in the fine arts.

A couple of the kids made some cool stuff out of their shapes, but one of them really latched on to the nature theme and just wanted to make rubbings. He was having such a good time that he inspired my passive craft program for the Saturday after the Thanksgiving holiday.

I went for a walk over the holiday and picked up a lot of cool leaves and sticks from around my parents’ neighborhood. (Hooray for free supplies!) Then I picked out all of our naked crayons and put everything artfully on a table outside our kids’ room. I also left out an example.

I made a little sign in picmonkey, letting people know what it was all about:

If I had to change anything it would be to have some sort of direction about how to do a leaf rubbing. I guess I expected at least the caregivers to know how, but I had to show several people how to rub the crayon horizontally. By the end of the day there were leaves strewn about the table and floor, but it was an easy clean. For the minimal effort put in, this was a very satisfying passive program.

What kind of passive programs do you run? I want to hear about them!
- Angela Barratt @ COL