The past few weeks the kids have been spending a lot of time helping out in the garden and no big surprise with all the help comes lots of questions. Questions on the plant life cycle, the impact that the insects and birds have on the plants and what the plants in the garden are called. And I have to confess when it comes to identifying trees I am clueless – except for the Willow tree at the bottom of our garden – that one I know.
So to help the kids (and me), my daughter and I made a leaf identification folder. Nothing fancy, very simple and made using the FREE leaf identification cards from Twinkl.
I started off by printing the leaf identification cards 6 to a page (the size was based on what fitted best into the folder that we had).
Then my daughter and I cut them all out. For each leaf we also cut the names out separately.
I got my daughter to work out how to arrange the cards on the folder before we started sticking everything down (for the purpose of planning her layout she had the leaf names on top of the pictures but the end result has the leaf names underneath the pictures.)
Then for each leaf we just folded the top of the leaf card slightly and glued this bit and left the rest without glue. We stuck the name of each leaf under it’s picture.
The result being that when you lift the picture of each leaf up you can then read its name.
Once we had finished we just needed to do something for the cover. My daughters choose one of the FREE tree outline pages (again Twinkl) and we coloured it together – I am trying to help her create a bit of depth in her colouring so we did this together. Then she cut it and stuck it on our cover.
Very Simple and we have already used it to figure out what two of the mystery trees in our garden are called.
If you like this be sure to check out our other Folder / learning aids here – Folder/ Lapbook Ideas
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ofamily learning together 
Hello
Love the folder, I must try it as we are also trying to learn our trees. You could also include cards to match on the whole tree and the bark. Have you taken it outside and see how many real leaves you can find to match, you might have to wait a few weeks until the leaves really come on the trees.
Twinkl have some new three part cards, a set on plants and growth and some on spring.
Also have a look at the nature detectives website from the woodland trust they have a huge range of spotting sheets which you can use as is or cut up in one of your many creative ways. The wildlife watch website is also very good with lots of nature ideas and spotting sheets with photos too.
Best wishes
Jenny
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We have actually already used the 3 part cards from Twinkl (I love 3 part cards). We have taken the folder out into our garden but have not yet used it on one our walks. Will give it a try next week when we got to a National Trust site
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Great, please let us know how you get on.
National trust sites often have discovery packs you can borrow for extra excitement.
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Really good ! Ill have to look into some of these
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Hi! Such great ideas, thank you! I will have to check out the Twinkl cards too! 🙂
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This is such a great idea! I bet you learnt a lot from it too! Thanks for sharing, great post #PicknMix
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How lovely, what a great activity. Will have to remember this for when my daughter is a bit older (currently 5 months). Thanks for the recent follow – love your blog 🙂
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What a clever fun idea! Thanks for linking up to #PicknMix
Stevie x
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I think I need one of these, Im get some trees muddled up. Thanks for linking to #PickNMix
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Thanks for stopping by
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