What You Will Need: World Atlas World Map leaves indigenous to the area cardboard squares paper towel squares clear contact paper squares white paper squares scissors rubber bands rulers

Share Your Herbarium Sheets With Other Kids! Scan your herbarium cards, like we did, and them to your school's web site. Identify each one. Find on the Internet a school in a different biome, e-mail them and ask if they would like to do the same. Or you can exchange your herbarium sheets by snail mail. You can have lots of fun and make new friends while learning about different biomes.

A Sample Herbarium Sheet

1. Locate and identify leaves common to the area in which you live.

2. Next, press the leaves and make your own herbarium cards. To press leaves, place a cardboard square down on the table, followed by a paper towel square, a leaf, and another piece of paper towel, and finally another cardboard square.

3. Continue making a stack in the same way until all leaves are used.

4. Place a rubber band around the entire stack or place a heavy object on top of the pile. The leaves should dry out in about a week or so.

5. Carefully remove the dried leaves from the stack. Place a leaf on top of the white paper square. Carefully peel the back off the clear contact paper and place on top of the leave. Trim the edges of the contact paper and carefully fold over the cardboard.

6. Just like real botanists, you must make careful observations of leaves, group the leaves in various ways and record your observations.

7. Look at leaves in the temperate deciduous forest biome. Do you have any of the same leaves? Are any of the leaves surprising? Do some further research. What comparisons can you make to leaves in your own collection?