Discoveries: Nature Rubbings

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Nature Rubbings

Brooklyn Children’s Museum

Brooklyn, NY

Explore more at

http://www.brooklynkids.org

 
Materials


 Bucket
 Paper
 Crayons
 Anything that you collect in nature – leaves, bark, grass, rocks

Instructions

  1. Walk through a park or your backyard. Collect a few different leaves and other things in nature that look interesting to you.
  2. Bring the items back to a table and spread them out.
  3. Pick out two different items – two different shaped leaves for example.
  4. Place both leaves on table and cover them each with a piece of paper.
  5. Take a crayon and rub over the leaf.
  6. Examine the two pictures – how are they different?
  7. Try it again with other things that you found. What kind of patterns do you see?

Why It’s So

When it rains or we water a plant, the water goes to the roots of plants. How does the water get up to the leaves? Tree roots are like straws, pulling water up from the ground and sending it through the bark, through the branches and all the way to the leaves, in tubes called veins. Can you feel the veins in your leaf? Can you see the lines the veins make in your leaf rubbing? How many veins do you count? Trace your finger around the edges of your leaves - what shapes do you see and feel? Leaves have special parts named lobes and sinuses. The lobes are the pointed or rounded parts of the leaves. The sinuses are the spaces between two lobes. How many lobes does your leaf have? How many sinuses?

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