Feelin' Crafty: Kid-Made Thanksgiving "leaf" placemats.

Continuing our crafts that we'll use for our Thanksgiving dinner (or, since our plans are now up in the air for Thanksgiving dinner, maybe for a Thanksgiving breakfast or brunch), the kids made placemats decorated with leaves.  

We used white cardstock (we used regular letter-sized, because that was big enough for kid-sized placemats), fake leaves, school glue (just a bit to hold the leaves in place) and self-sealing laminating pouches.  (I had actually grabbed a regular laminating pouch to do this, then when I heated up the laminator, realized that putting fake leaves and school glue through the laminator was probably a fire hazard, so we changed to the self-sealing at the last moment.

The kids glued the leaves onto the cardstock, just enough to hold the leaves in place for the laminating process.

Then we laminated the sheets, being sure to press the leaves down flat all around (right after I took this picture, I realized that I should use a self-sealing laminator pouch instead, so we switched).  The self-sealing laminator pouches can be a touch tricky, so little kids (and even bigger kids) might need some help to get them flat.  Make sure to get the corners of the leaves straight and flat onto the paper before pressing down the sticky side of the laminating pouch.  

One of them (the one in the back of the picture) got a bit bumpy from the laminating, but it still looks cute.  These would be nice with another colored background, too.  

Super-cute!