🍂 EASY Fall Leaf Printing Activity with Markers

My kids love collecting pretty red, orange, and yellow leaves in the fall! We end up with lots of beautiful leaves from our daily walks. I was trying to find something different to do with the leaves, you know other than just crayon leaf rubbing or preserving leaves. So we made Fall Leaf Prints with markers. This leaf printing activity is such a fun leaf activity that preserves the intricate detail of leaves with cute leaf printing ideas. This leaf craft for kids is lots of fun and such an easy fall craft for toddlers, preschoolers, kindergarten, first grade, and 2nd grade students.

Leaf Printing Activity

Do your kids love collecting leaves as much as mine do. They love observing, exploring, and saving nature! This fun leaf activity is also a leaf art for kids. In this fall leaf crafts children from preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, toddler, grade 1, grade 2, and grade 3 students will make a rubbing of the leaf. But instead of using a crayon as you did when you were a kid, children will use markers for this colorful leaf printing activity. The result of this leaf printing idea is such a fun fall leaf project that produces a stunning leaf art project! So whether is is spring, summer, or fall, give this creative leaf printing a try!

Leaf printing ideas

Kids will love this fun, clever leaf activity. This technique is so simple, but it produces such beautiful results.

You will need some nice, not dried up, leaves. When the leaves are dried out they will absorb all the liquid from the marker and they won’t make prints.
Crayola Markers in a variety of colors – red, orange, yellow, green, purple, blue, teal, etc.
White Paper (plain printer paper works or cardstock if you prefer)
Rolling pin, book, or object to press the leaves down on the paper
optional Construction paper in color of choice to “frame” your fall art project

Creative leaf printing

Use markers to color the underside of a leaf. Put is on as thick as you can and go as quickly as you can – you don’t want the leaves to absorb the color of the marker. You want to use the leaves as a stamp so to speak. If you don’t use the bottom it wont’ have as clear, dramatic, or cool veins that make the leaf look so cool.

Leaf printing for kids

Now turn the leaf over on a piece of white paper and put a piece of paper on top to hold the leaf in place. Use a rolling pin or hard book to press down on the leaf to transfer the marker ink onto the paper. You are making a leaf print on the paper.

Leaf Art for Kids

When you pull back the paper and carefully pull up the leaf here is what you are left with. Isn’t it beautiful!

Leaf craft for kids

My kids did lots of them. Each time they came out slightly different depending on the colors they used, how moist the leaf still was, and how quickly they went. It made such pretty prints.

Fall leaf crafts

We put our leaf print project on top of a piece of colored construction paper to make the project really pop. My child also wrote the word “fall” on the paper. This Fall Leaf Print Art for Kids is such a fun autumn leaf print to make during September, October, and November.

You can get the two-tone color by using two markers that are shades of the same color – light orange and a dark orange =)

Leaf activity

We also made leaf prints where we colored the leaf with various markers quickly together to create this stunning, multi-colored leaf print1 It was such a fun way to capture the beauty of fall in a creative kids craft.