United StatesFlower and Leaf Press
Grade Levels: Pre-K - 5
Objectives
- Students will collect and identify plants and flowers in environment.
- Students will create art with ordinary objects.
Materials
- Old phone books
- Collection of colorful leaves, grasses, flowers, herbs
- Craft glue
- Plain note cards/postcards/watercolor paper
Procedure
- Collect plants, leaves, and flowers.
- Separate each stalk or blossom, and place them between the pages of the phone books.
- Have students use different pages for each specimen, spacing them well apart from each other.
- Place the phone books in a cool, dry place for a week to ten days. The phone book/leaf press can be used over and over again. Flowers may be stored in the phone book for several months.
- Students should carefully apply craft glue to the back of the dried leaves or flowers.
- Center them on note cards for a single design or place several as a collage on a sheet of watercolor paper, which can later be framed.
Did You Know?
In Victorian times people planted decorative gardens, often preserving their herbs and flowers in a leaf press. Certain flowers were thought to have specific qualities: rosemary for remembrance; roses for undying love; lavender for devotion; oak leaves for strength. A note card that used the fragrant language of flowers conveyed more than words.
