Collagraph Trees with printed leaves

I did this project with Year 1's and 2's. First we used a black wax crayon, some cereal box cardboard and a piece of A4 black paper. Students drew a tree design on their cardboard and then cut it out and stuck it onto their black paper.

 We used black only because it made the tree stand out and this could easily become a second piece of artwork on its own!

We then used our black crayon to make a rubbing onto a piece of A4 drawing paper. We then talked about warm and cool colour and students had to decide if they were going to make a 'summer' or 'winter' tree. Students painted the background of their trees with ink.

To make the leaves of the tree, we drew leaf shapes onto kitchen sponges, cut them out and printed a page of leaves in either warm or cool colours. We then outlined and added detail to the leaves with a permanent marker.

To finish off, we cut out the leaves and glued them around our tree. We had also added patterns into the background of our tree and mounted it onto a coloured piece of paper. This project took a number of sessions to complete but the kids were really proud of their finished artworks!