Tutorial Tuesday: Fall Centerpieces using Bag Painting

This week's guest blogger is Tina from Mamas Like Me.  Her blog is packed full of all kinds of activities that she does with her children including crafts, letter and writing activities, math, science, recipes, and much more. Please stop by and get some wonderful ideas!

I saw the idea for finger-painting in a bag over at Open Hands and figured I'd give it a try with this activity. The bags made it easier (and less messy) for us to paint both sides of these Fall leaves - and I love how the colors blended. 

 For this activity, we used:

 Red, Orange, and Yellow paint 

Leaf shapes cut out of card stock 

(I highly recommend the card stock rather than regular construction paper) 

Ziplock bags 

Glitter Glue 

Ribbon 

A branch from outside 

1. To prep for this, I cut leaf shapes out of card stock for each child.

2. Then, I put one leaf into each bag, along with a squirt of red, orange, and yellow paint, and a few drops of water to help it mix. Make sure there is some paint on both sides of the leaf. Try to get as much air out of the bag as possible when sealing it.

3. Next the kids had fun squishing the paint around and covered their leaves.

4. (Now, for the messy part!) I took the leaves out of each bag and replaced them with another leaf so each child got to do more than one.

5. When the kids were done covering their leaves, I offered them the option of just finger-painting with the paint in the bag. Some of them wanted to continue squishing with the paint and some were finished :)

6. Once the leaves dried, we used glitter pens to write each child's first initial on their leaves. (I love getting letters into an activity).

7. After the glitter dried, we hole-punched each leaf and tied it with ribbon.

8. Then, we went outside and found a branch to hang our leaves on and make our own Fall tree inside.

Doesn't it make an adorable centerpiece? You could also use these for garland or hang them in a window.

Tina is a former Elementary School teacher turned SAHM to three active boys (with one more on the way)! She blogs at Mamas Like Me where she shares kids activities, recipes, tips on frugal living, and reflections on life as ‘Mommy’.