Autumn Tree with Falling Leaves

Fall where I live in Canada was VERY brief this year! One windy day comes along and all the leaves are blown off the trees- sigh. But my mixed elective class of Grade 4 - 6 students managed to get these pretty fall landscape finished in time before the snow fell. 

I found this lesson on the website: Art Projects for Kids HERE. It's a great lesson on perspective and the concept of near and far. 

My kids taped down heavy white paper and painted a simple sky and ground. 

While these were drying, they practiced drawing bare branched trees on scrap paper. 

When they were happy with their drawings, they drew the tree on their background paper.

They added in falling leaves of a variety of sizes and painted them using watercolours. 

They painted their tree using brown tempera. Once these were dry, students went in with dark pencil crayons to outline and add details to the leaves. 

detail of the leaves