Talking Pictures for Children 

Talking Pictures is an online resource for children and their adults based on artwork from the Crawford Art Gallery Collection. We will share creative prompts for happy talk and play every Wednesday.

You can download an Irish language version of this page in PDF format here.

About the artwork

Kathy Prendergast is an Irish artist who creates sculptures, paintings and drawings. Here she has created a very detailed drawing of a leaf - if you look closely you can see all the little veins (lines) that Kathy has managed to capture with a chalk pastel.

Can you find out…?

Why do leaves have veins?

Where else can you see shapes like these veins in nature?

What happens to the leaves in Autumn?

Why does this happen?

Has this started already?

Leaf Quiz

How well do you know the leaves that are common in Ireland?

Can you match the names to all the leaves below?

Have you seen all of these leaves in the wild?

Leaf Rubbings

Gather some leaves of different shapes and sizes in your garden or a park. Take your (dry) leaf and place it face down on some paper so that the veins are pointing up. Cover your leaf with another piece of paper and rub the crayon over the leaf, tilting the crayon down so you aren’t using the tip of the crayon. Repeat this with more leaves and change colours for each leaf for a colourful creation.

Leaf fairies

Let’s gather leaves and other natural bits and pieces (feathers, twigs, nuts, flowers, herbs) from the garden or park and create fairy people:

• You can draw out some people like the ones below or you can print off the PDF and use it as a template.
• Cut out the character and place them on another sheet of paper. Place or stick down (using glue or sticky tape) the natural materials to make clothes, shoes, wings and headpieces for your fairy people.
• You can then colour in the parts of them that aren’t covered and make up a story about the fairies and what they get up to! Have fun!

Leaf Quiz Answers

Did you get them all?

Activities and illustrations by Hazel Hurley.

We would love to hear your stories and artworks inspired by Talking Pictures! Share them with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter using the #crawfordartgalleryhomelife.

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