How to make a herbarium at home. What and how do we collect for a home herbarium? Drying raw materials with glycerin

Autumn is in full swing, which means there are a lot of fallen leaves in the parks. This is the best time to collect herbariums. Today we will tell you about this educational and exciting process and we will prove that collecting plants is not only a way to learn something new, but also a creative process. Dried leaves, flowers and herbs make incredibly beautiful compositions. We'll give you some useful tips and we'll show you illustrative examples this technique.

The concept of herbarium traditionally includes two concepts. The first and most popular is collecting plants for subsequent drying and cataloging. The second is the creation of compositions based on selected dried flowers (without educational implications). Let's talk about them separately.

Herbarium as cataloging

Probably all children of the USSR and the 90s remember what a homemade plant catalog is. As a rule, natural history or botany teachers assigned it to be compiled for the summer. The students obediently searched for plants from the list, dried them in the sun and in books, and then pasted them into their notebooks.

The notebook page was folded in half, like an envelope. The plant was placed inside, and a note was made on the pocket: name / what species it belongs to / date of collection. To some, such catalogs seemed like a real punishment, but mostly the children excitedly went in search of oak leaves, blades of sedge grass and dandelion inflorescences. Drying them was quite a task.

In general, this is a very useful practice. Looking at pictures in a textbook is not as effective. It is much better to collect plants with your own hands, find all the information about them yourself and arrange everything in a herbarium. In short, this is a very important experience.

Nowadays, collecting herbariums is still relevant. Teachers still guide children in such hands-on activities. True, almost no one glues notebooks anymore. In any art department you can find a stand (or even several) dedicated to the collection of herbariums. There is everything here: special paper, special albums and even tools for the correct preparation of samples. By the way, modern herbarium albums even provide space for photography. That is, you can even capture the place where the sample was taken. In a word, now collecting herbarium has turned into an exciting game, which is actually not bad either.

Herbarium as a composition

In fact, these are not exactly herbariums. Paintings made from dried petals, leaves and herbs are more correctly called compositions. However, people call them herbariums. The name has taken root so well that it will probably not be possible to remove it from use.

Creating herbariums in the idea of paintings is a wonderful creative process. There are even entire courses dedicated to this art.
Pictures from dried plants – great way decorate your home. These compositions make the house very cozy. They fill it with some special warmth.

Herbarium postcards are also very popular. In this case, drawings are applied to a cardboard base, supplemented with various dried flowers, which are fixed with glue. Others can also be placed here. natural materials. These cards look very cool.

But the most important thing is that the herbarium is an excellent activity for children's creativity. If you have a child, teach him the art of herbarium collection. Take him on a short trip through the park, select beautiful leaves, dry them, and then create a picture together. At the same time, you don’t have to know the names of all the plants (although this will be useful for the child, of course), the main thing here is beauty and inspiration. Moments like these are never forgotten!

If you decide to master the art of collecting herbariums, you will need some useful tips.

Collection:

never harvest plants after rain because this will make drying more difficult
never break off branches, leaves and flowers - be sure to cut them with a knife or scissors
never collect leaves and flowers damaged by diseases or blackened by rot
to design albums, take several samples

Drying:

spread the collected plants on newspaper and leave for a day (indoors or outdoors if the sun is shining)
place the plants between two sheets of paper and place under a press
zigzag the plant if it is too large

Decor:

use a glue stick to fix the petals and leaves
use superglue and tweezers to secure small items
avoid liquid adhesives, do not use paste
For panels, choose special paper for herbariums or thick cardboard
The finished painting can be placed in a frame under glass - this way it will live for a very long time

Don't be afraid to try to collect flower arrangement on one's own! Autumn is the right time for this creativity. Collect colored leaves, decorate them, create. Complete the compositions with bright drawings made using paints.

Try to assemble a flower in a vase using petals, blades of grass and leaves. Try making different animals from stems, branches and fancy leaves. Try to create an abstraction. The main thing is to start and you will see how great it is.

Making herbariums is a great way to decorate your home. Great idea– make a lot of pictures and place them in wooden frames, hang on the walls.

This decor will become the highlight of the interior and will always please the eye!

September is just around the corner, and it's very... good time in order to introduce your child to what a plant herbarium is. In dry scientific language, a herbarium is tutorial, in which plant samples with roots, leaves and fruits are collected. We invite you and your children to look at this activity from a different, creative angle. In this article, we will teach you how to make a herbarium yourself, and also give recommendations on collecting, drying and decorating the herbarium, so that the results of this work will delight your family for a long time!

DIY herbarium

So, how to make a herbarium with your own hands? The whole process can be divided into 3 stages:

collection of plants;
preparation for drying and the actual drying of plants;
design of the herbarium in the required form.

Our adventure begins with a preparatory moment - we recommend that you purchase a beautiful and entertaining encyclopedia about plants, in which your child will look for information about the plants and shrubs, the leaves and flowers of which he will collect.

Now let's start collecting. It is best to go for your finds to a forest or park on a fine sunny day at 11 am, when the dew has already dried, since wet leaves are much more difficult to dry, they are more fragile and difficult to further manipulate. Let your child collect everything he likes: leaves, flowers, buds, seeds, spikelets, inflorescences and petals, even roots! We are not creating a strict school herbarium, but an entertaining and exciting one! So prepare more bags for your plant “treasures”. Try to find several copies of the same plant materials in case of breakage or unsuccessful drying, as well as in order to decorate a beautiful panel from paired decorative elements.

Having collected the material, you need to think about how to make a herbarium. The next stage is drying collected material. Regardless of which method you use, all found flower leaves need to be cleared of soil, damaged leaves should be removed, and the resulting elements should be thoroughly straightened so that they take the desired shape for drying.

There are as many as 5 ways to dry plants for a herbarium! The simplest is to purchase a clever special press for a herbarium at an art store or something like that. All subsequent methods are purely home methods. So, you can make a herbarium, armed with tablets, tracing paper, newspapers, parchment and a stack of books. To do this, you need to cover the table with newspaper, lay the plants on it, cover them with tracing paper or parchment paper on top, put planks on top of all this and pile stacks of heavy books on top of this structure. The entire drying process will take 1 - 2 weeks, but to speed it up, change the paper that covers the plants every 2-3 days. Be very careful not to damage your exhibits!

Second home method– the fastest and most dangerous is drying plants with an iron. However, this method is good if you don't need to save natural color plants. Take a lukewarm iron and iron the leaves 3-4 times at intervals of several hours to prevent them from drying out.

The third method is similar to the second - microwave drying. The good thing is that everything happens quickly. The disadvantage is that the leaves almost always curl up, making them difficult to glue.

The fourth method is to dry the plants in glycerin, but be prepared for the fact that your plants will turn greenish-brown in color, but they will retain their shape perfectly. Buy glycerin at the pharmacy, dilute it in hot water in a ratio of 1:3, fill a container 6-10 cm deep with this solution, lower the plants strictly vertically and leave for several days until the plants darken, then air dry them.

There are a couple of tricks in making a herbarium:

To make the leaves denser, dip them in a 20% PVA glue solution before drying.
Flower buds are dried in sand poured into a box.
To preserve the leaves of dove-blue or of blue color, dip them in denatured alcohol for 1 minute.

How to design a herbarium

After the plants have dried, it's time to think about the creative question of how to design a herbarium? The answer to this depends on your goals. If you are making a herbarium for school, then most likely you have already been given strict rules on how to properly make a herbarium, what should be in it and how all this should be decorated. We will talk to you about the design of your homemade products together with your child.

The traditional way of design is a herbarium album. In this form you will submit the herbarium for inspection at school. However, you can liven it up, for example, by making not an ordinary folder, but by decorating the herbarium in a photo album, making funny inscriptions with interesting facts O collected plants, which your baby will find in a pre-purchased encyclopedia. A photo album will not require any effort from you at all: you just need to put not photographs under the film, but dried plants and labels with signatures. Or you can combine the herbarium with a thematic photo album, you will get a real family heirloom!

If you want to do something traditional, but still unusual, we suggest you a folding book. In this case, the herbarium sheet is drawn up in accordance with standard requirements: the exhibit is located in the middle of the sheet, and the name of the plant and the family to which it belongs, information about the place and time of collection of the plant is written in the lower right corner. For a change, write down the ones you know. medicinal properties plants.

It will be very beautiful if you do it yourself decorative panel or bookmarks using your dried plants. Take cardboard, fabric, or canvas glued to cardboard. And give free rein to your imagination! To make such a panel you will need regular PVA glue, paints, brushes, etc. After you have pasted your application, it should be left for 24 hours under a press of boards and books, and then you can insert the masterpiece into a frame.

You can also use dried plants to decorate Greeting Cards, covers of notebooks, notepads, books, and photo albums. And remember that in a herbarium the main thing is the process! So arm yourself good mood, scoop, bags - and forward to nature. A good day with your children is guaranteed!

Making a herbarium of bright autumn leaves is one of the most exciting and memorable homework assignments in junior classes. However, you can collect a herbarium just for fun, involving the whole family in the activity. This is a great way to have fun and exercise your imagination to create beautiful compositions.

We collect

The first stage of creating a herbarium is the search for working material. The beauty of this activity is that it can easily be integrated into your usual walks with your baby. Just adjust your walking routes so that along the way you can look into squares or parks where they grow various trees and shrubs.

Explain to your child a few rules for collecting leaves:

It is better to collect fallen leaves rather than tear them from trees;
you need to choose dried and clean leaves, because wet ones take longer to dry out, and dirty ones don’t look very nice;
You can collect not only leaves, but also inflorescences, spikelets, grass, small cones and even acorns.

To make the lesson not only fun, but also educational, tell your child about each plant while collecting material. Just don’t turn your walk into a boring lecture - this way you can discourage your child’s interest in the herbarium.

Drying

Second important stage— drying the collected material. It will be difficult for the baby to do this with his own hands, so he will definitely need the help of his mom or dad. There are several ways to dry leaves:

paper and press;
paper and iron;
glycerin solution;
microwave.

The classic method is paper and press. Usually the leaves are simply placed in thick books for one and a half to two weeks. The only downside is that moisture from the leaves will be absorbed by the pages, and the books may be damaged. It is better to lay the working material with paper, and place a press on top - heavy books, boards, etc. By the way, a child 4-6 years old can also master this method.

An alternative option for drying leaves is paper and an iron. The material for the herbarium is placed between sheets of paper and ironed on minimum temperature. The effect is quick, but the color and structure of the leaves may deteriorate.

To save time, you can prepare a glycerin solution. The composition is simple - glycerin and hot water mixed in a ratio of 1:3. The leaves are dipped into the solution, and when they turn brown (usually after a few days), they are pulled out and dried. There is one minus - the natural color of the leaves and inflorescences will be lost.

Finally, the most resourceful parents suggest using modern technology and dry the collected leaves in the microwave. The method is effective, but has one unpleasant nuance - the leaves lose their shape and it becomes difficult to work with them.

Making a herbarium

Finally, the most creative stage is composing compositions. Not all parents remember how to make a herbarium from leaves, but in the process of working with their child, they usually get carried away themselves. The following types of herbarium can be made from dried leaves:

collection in an album;
decorative panel;
bookmarks;
creative compositions.

The herbarium in the album is more than creativity. Such collections are also educational, especially if you additionally make small notes for each piece of paper. An ordinary sketchbook will be suitable for the collection, but always with thick sheets so that they hold the twigs and leaves well. It is better to choose liquid glue, because... a glue stick can damage the structure of fragile dried leaves.

The decorative panel looks very nice and can even be hung on the wall. Of course, it’s difficult for a 3-6 year old child to do something unusual on his own, so parents should also get involved. The panel can be made on thick cardboard, canvas or even fabric. The leaves can not only be glued, but also sewn.

A child will not make bookmarks for books on his own - the main work will still have to be done by adults. But the baby will be able to choose the flowers he likes and make a composition for bookmarks.

In general, when making a herbarium, there is no need to strive to create a beautiful composition that claims to be a masterpiece. The main thing is that the child is fascinated by the process of searching for leaves and making a composition. Let the little artist show his imagination - glue the collected leaves to the album sheets, give him pencils, pens and felt-tip pens and let him draw a little. The child will be able to add various details to the leaves, creating full-fledged pictures - butterflies, people, a luxurious peacock tail. This method of drawing, by the way, promotes the development of thinking and creativity preschooler.

Have you already made a herbarium with your child this fall? Share ideas interesting compositions in comments.

A herbarium is usually made for one of two purposes. One of them is scientific and educational. She is haunted by botanists and schoolchildren doing homework on the relevant subject. The second is decorative, because dried leaves and flowers can be used to make beautiful panels, postcards, bookmarks and other items. You can also dry a plant “as a keepsake,” although this desire is less likely to become the reason for creating a herbarium. How to make a herbarium primarily depends on the purpose for which it is collected and designed, although the basic recommendations will be the same, regardless of the reason.

How to collect plants for a herbarium

Herbarium of leaves

It is important collection time flowers and leaves for herbarium. This is usually done in the afternoon, no earlier than 11 o’clock. By this time, there is no dew left on the plants. Dew increases the humidity of plants, which causes them to dry out longer and may even rot. For the same reason, it is not recommended to collect plants for a herbarium after rain. In other words, it should be at least 12 hours after the rain, or better yet, even more. Weather on the day of plant collection, it is optimal to be warm and sunny, when the temperature is between 20-25 degrees.

Which plants to choose for a herbarium, depends on the purpose of its creation. If it is scientific and educational, then it is best to choose the most typical samples. That is, it is better to give preference to leaves and flowers of medium size and regular shape. If some of the leaves of the plant have dried out, then you should not tear them off in this case, so as not to disturb appearance. If the herbarium is made with decorative purpose, for example, for children's creativity, then leaves and flowers of bizarre shapes, on the contrary, should attract your attention first of all - you should give preference to these. In any case, leaves and flowers need to be intact. It is necessary to take several samples of them in order to, if necessary, replace a specimen damaged during drying.

Twigs for the herbarium are cut with sharp pruners, medicinal and other small plants, herbs are carefully dug out of the ground, trying not to damage the root.

Going for plants, flowers and leaves to make a herbarium from them, need to take with you a large book, sheets of appropriate format and paper clips. The collected copies should be immediately placed between the sheets of a book or album, lined with white paper and fastened. This should be done so as not to damage the plants before they are brought home and subjected to further processing.

Everyone knows from childhood what a herbarium is and why it is needed - to learn the appearance and name of plants. Often at school or kindergarten they give such a homework assignment, but you don’t have to wait for it - you can easily make a herbarium with your own hands without any assignments. Moreover, this is a great occasion for an unforgettable autumn walk!

Be sure to find a nice day every fall to collect beautiful colored leaves. You can go alone with a friend or lover, the whole family or a group of friends. Of course, the most interesting thing is going to the arboretum with the kids. Firstly, the arboretum - perfect place for collection different leaves, secondly, children will love collecting different leaves and then throwing a bunch of them up! Children also love to run through a pile of dry leaves or rummage through them. As a bonus to everything, you will receive beautiful leaves and wonderful photos!

How to collect leaves for a herbarium with your own hands

So you've chosen a sunny day and fun company. What leaves to collect?

If you have already found beautiful leaf from one tree, this does not mean that similar leaves can no longer be collected. At home, you will appreciate that you took several sheets that looked identical at first glance. After all, a herbarium, as a rule, is placed in a notebook or album, and tree leaves are larger in size than album leaves.
You also need to collect as many beautiful leaves as possible so that, in addition to the herbarium, you can make beautiful applications from the leaves.
Take only dry and whole, not torn leaves.
Take as many small leaves as possible small parts always useful for applications.
In addition to leaves, take thin twigs, berries, cones, and acorns. All natural materials are good!
After collecting the leaves, immediately put them in a prepared notebook or folder so that they do not get wrinkled.

How to prepare leaves for a herbarium

Well, the leaves are collected and brought home. What to do next?

Don’t rush to create a herbarium. The leaves must be dry to work with them!
Take an A4 book and place the leaves in it, first covering them with plain paper so as not to spoil the book. No need to do this on every page!
Now that all the leaves are laid out (and this must be done as soon as they are brought home), you need to close the book and weigh it down on top with something heavy.
As a rule, a couple of days is enough for all the moisture from the leaves to transfer to the sheets of paper, and they dry out. The leaf should be dry to the touch! If you don't dry it completely, it will wrinkle on the paper and change color to brown. However, some leaves take up to a week to dry completely - keep that in mind.
If it is not important for you that the leaves be multi-colored, but you urgently need a craft for school (for example), then simply iron the leaves folded between two sheets of white paper with a hot iron.

How to make a herbarium from leaves with your own hands

Your leaves are ready to use. Where to put them next?

Regular album.
Notebook.
Photo album.
Whatman sheet.
Colored paper + A4 photo frame.

In the case of a photo album, it will be easiest - it’s easy to sign and there’s no need to glue it. There is one “but”: the leaves will dangle and may break. True, there are photo albums with a film that seems to stick and fix a photo or leaf.

If the herbarium is needed as a craft for kindergarten or a school, and not as a collection of signed leaves, but as a picture, then everything is limited only by the limits of your imagination! For example, you can draw a vase and arrange the leaves into a bouquet and place them as if they were in the vase. In any case, you will find it useful:

Glue. It would be better, of course, to use transparent stationery, because it will not be noticeable. It is better to work with a glue brush.
Stationery knife. This is for trimming leaf sticks or leaves that are too large and protrude beyond the edges. The knife must be very sharp! Children can only use it in the presence of adults!
Pencils. Once you've mapped out the location of the leaves, it's best to trace the outlines so you don't forget. Yes, and you can draw something if necessary.
Frame. If it is not there, then any colored paper: velvet, corrugated, metallized, etc. You can use it to create something like a frame.
Other natural materials to improve the appearance of the composition: seeds, cereals, dried berries, twigs, cones, acorns, etc.
Ribbons, bows, beads, beads, sequins, rhinestones and more.

Leaf paintings

There is also a wonderful, wonderful option - this is when beautiful autumn leaves. But here, of course, you need to do it skillfully and tastefully.

A herbarium in a notebook or album with signed leaves will be a beautiful homemade tool for children to learn the names of trees. And in the spring you can collect flowers or earrings from the same trees, dry them and place them next to the leaves.

Whatever you do and no matter how you design it, it will be your creativity, with children or not, but what you create with your own hands is always carefully stored and causes a heap pleasant memories. Create!