Leaf Hair: A Free Fall Leaf Craft for Kids

Kids Craft

Leaf Hair: A Free Fall Leaf Craft for Kids

💸 Free 🍂 Leaves from a walk ✂️ Cardboard, scissors & a marker

Two cardboard faces with hair made from colorful fall leaves, clover flowers and seed pods

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The idea

This is one of the easiest fall crafts we've done, and it's completely free. All you need is a piece of cardboard, a pair of scissors and a marker. The rest comes from outside: the leaves.

We collected the leaves on a walk, then put the faces together at home to keep our fingers warm on a cool day. Every face ends up with its own colorful head of leaf hair.

Watch the quick version

What you need

Cardboard, from any box you have around
Scissors
A marker
Tape, to hold the leaves on from the back
Fall leaves, collected outside for free (we also added a few clover flowers and seed pods)

Two pieces of cardboard on a wooden table with a black marker and a pair of scissors on top

What we did

Step 1: Draw a face

Cut a piece of cardboard and draw a face on it with the marker: a head, eyes, a nose and a smile, plus the neck and shoulders. Leave the top and sides of the head empty, because that's where the hair goes.

Step 2: Cut the hair slits

Use the scissors to cut little slits where the hair goes. The leaf stems tuck into them.

Cardboard face drawn with a marker, with small slits cut into the top and sides where the hair goes

Cardboard face with long hair outlined in marker and small slits cut along the hair

Step 3: Collect leaves

Head outside and gather leaves in as many colors and shapes as you can find: reds, yellows, oranges and greens. Look for little extras too, like clover flowers and seed pods.

Step 4: Build the hair

Back at home, where it was warm, we tucked the leaves into the slits and layered them up, one color at a time, until each face had a full head of hair. Then we taped the leaves on from the back so they stay put.

Two kids at a table building leaf hair on cardboard faces, with piles of fall leaves in front of them and a pumpkin in the background

Tip: Collect more leaves than you think you'll need, so there's a wide mix of colors and shapes to pick from.

Result

Two very different faces, each with its own wild head of leaf hair, made from cardboard and a pile of leaves. It costs nothing, it only takes three supplies, and it's a great reason to get outside and enjoy the colors of fall.

Finished cardboard face with long hair made from green, red and yellow leaves, a clover flower and seed pods