Exploring Veins Patterns in Leaves - Kids Painting Activity

Fall is upon us! This is the perfect season to teach kids about the nature science or plant science.

It is intimidating to explain kids about the leaf veins and its patterns in a meaningful way. So,

This is a classic activity that gives your children a great time to learn about leaves while having fun.

One evening we went for a walk along with our children. As this is autumn, we see a lot of leaves on the ground.

We collected different types of leaves in different shapes to learn the internal process of how plants work to supply food and nutrients to all the other parts of the plant. Let us see how this craft activity works.

Materials Required

This is such a simple craft activity that asks for easily available supplies I.e.

1) Different Types of Leaves (No matter whether the leaf is old or young because any type of leaf is good enough to show its veins)

2) Water Paints

Here are the instructions to explore veins patterns in leaves

Introduce this activity to your young children and let them explore about leaf veins in different patterns.

Tracing Leaf Veins

Leaf veins are nothing but the thin lines appearing on the surface of the leaf.

These lines are actually the vascular tissue composed of phloem and xylem cells.

The xylem cells help in carrying water content from petiole to lamina. Whereas the phloem cells help in carrying out sugars from leaves to other parts of the plant.

Step 1:

My younger daughter (5 years old) picked a brown colored leaf and started painting it.

She chose to paint green color on it. Firstly, I asked her to observe the leaf veins.

Once she realized the leaf veins, I directed her to paint green color over the veins. Children can use markers to trace the veins of the leaf surface.

Step-2:

Now, it is my elder daughter’s (7 years old) turn to explore veins on the leaf. She picked up a leaf in heart shape.

Then, she traced veins on the leaf using white paint. Then she filled the spaces between the veins with different colors and created a rainbow leaf.

Step-3:

Pick a green colored leaf and ask your children to trace the veins using different colored paints.

My daughters chose orange color paint on the green leaf to trace out the veins.

As a fun part, they even drew some smiley faces on the leaf surface. Children are free to draw shapes of their wish.

Step-4:

Now we decided to explore veins patterns in maple leaf. In this leaf, the veins start at one point i.e. at the base and distribute throughout the leaf. Children can observe this pattern by tracing over the veins using light and dark colors.

Step-5:

Take a Christmas tree leaf, as it is Christmas season we can find these leaves very easily on the market.

And these leaves are pine shaped with needles like structures and flat in shape. The petiole of this leaf has primary and secondary veins which are clearly seen.

My children traced these veins with different colors and make it look so attractive and beautiful.

Step-6:

Last but not least, we picked up a long, thick, and oval shaped leaf. It has a long and thick petiole with good veins which are clearly visible.

Children can explore these veins by tracing along the main veins using different attractive and bright colors.

Make them paste the leaf in a clean white paper and start marking the parts as depicted below.

How to create a leaf skeleton in order to explore its veins?

Creating leaf skeleton helps children to clearly observe its veins and the pattern. We can do this by performing a simple activity. This is also a simple and easy activity to explore veins patterns in leaves. Here we go:

1) Take a bowl with 1 litre of water and different types of leaves. Boil it until you see bubbles.

2) When the water starts boiling, add a little amount of sodium bicarbonate and let it boil until it starts giving fumes out of the bowl.

3) Now switch off the flame and let the leaf soak in the mixture for half an hour.

4) Take a shallow container with cold water. Transfer the leaves from hot water to shallow container.

5) Gently rub over the surface of the leaf and spread it out on a flat surface.

6) Now, carefully rub the green layer of the leaf using soft brush. Make sure you are not disturbing the leaf veins and tissue while rubbing off.

7) Then, slowly transfer the leaf into a dish containing bleach. Let the leaf remain in bleach for about 20 minutes. Remove the leaf from the bleach using forceps and let it dry.

That’s it! You can see the veins patterns of a leaf clearly.