Colorful autumn leaves make perfect preschool craft materials – you can paint or color them, make leaf prints, laminate a special selection for a placemat (or use contact paper), decorate the house with them, make leaf crowns, create leaf mobiles, make leaf rubbings – the list goes on and on!

For this month’s nature activity we chose to make butterflies with some autumn leaves. First, I cut out a body of a butterfly out of cardboard (you could use construction paper too) and the children decorated them.

Next, we colored a “background scene” on a piece of construction paper (clouds, trees, flowers….wherever a butterfly might be likely to be found).

Then we found two matching leaves per butterfly, taped them to the back of the body, and cut off the stems and taped them to the top of the head for the antennae.