Homeschool Ideas: Make a Leaf Book

As a homeschool Mom I am always looking for ways to help my children better understand their world. Both of my children love nature, and we wanted to incorporate their education into learning about the natural world around them. We knew that several of the plants and trees around us were useful to identify for various reasons: plants that could be eaten, poisonous plants, and plants that could be used for other household purposes. To do this, we decided to use a leaf book to help them identify the plants they came across near our home, and to understand any information about these plants.

We took a large piece of cardboard and cut it to 13" by 24". We then folded the cardboard in half, making a cover for the book that is just slightly bigger than the 8 and 1/2" by 11" paper we wanted to use. We set this aside, got out our scissors, our digital camera, rubber gloves, and our adventurous spirits.

We went outside and took pictures of the plants we wanted to put in our book. We paid special attention to photograph berries, stalks, bark, roots (if we could get at them), flowers, and even bugs we found on the plants. Anything we could use to help identify the plant, we would photograph.

We took samples of leaves from each plant, and put them in a ziplock bag. When we downloaded the pictures to our computer and began looking up the plants. We did Google searches with key words that we knew applied to that plant, words like "red berry" or "veriegated leaves." We also used a book called Field Guide to the Southeastern States by The National Autobon Society. They publish books that cover native plants and animals in all parts of the United States and other countries.

This took some time, but we had fun discovering the names of the plants and the usefulness of them too. There is so much information out there that we found a lot more than we had bargained for. We took the most useful information and put it together in a Word document and printed it out, a page for each leaf.

We then got out our cardboard again and covered it with material we had picked out just for the book. We used Elmer's glue to glue the material down with, making sure to cover every square inch of the cardboard. We then got a hole punch and punched holes in the typed out pages, and used an ice pick to poke holes through the cardboard in the same places that the holes in the paper were.

We put the leaves between two sheets of wax paper along with a small piece of paper that identified them and put them inside of a book. We stacked books one on top of each other so that the pressure would flatten the leaves. We left the leaves like this for one week.

When the week was over, we then took our leaves out and laid each one on a piece of clear shelf paper. We added another piece of clear shelf paper on top and sealed the leaf up making sure to smooth out any bubbles or wrinkles. We then cut shelf paper with the leaves encased inside to fit on the typing paper with that leaf's description. There were a couple that we had to make a new page for because there was so much information.

Last, we put the pages in our book and used ribbon to run through the holes to hold it in. You will want to make sure that the ribbon is loose enough so that you can turn the pages without them tearing. Tie a knot to hold it in place, and then a nice bow, or even a double knot and then cut the ribbon about an inch from the knot so that it won't come unraveled.

We have had our book now for several years and my family and I still take it out to look through it and find information we have forgotten. It proved to be a fun project and has turned out to be very useful as well.