I Could Use Some Time To Sleep

I adore books.  I loooovvvveee picture books, I love reading to children.  Denise Fleming's Time To Sleep is a book I've been reading to my own kids for over 20 years (this isn't unusual when your children are 18 years apart).  I made up a project to go with this book years ago but it took forever.  This year I'm trying to get all/most of my classes done and ready for our March Artome' show by January at the latest, so this project came back at half size.  
To begin, we collected leaves that hadn't turned yet (read: are still green and not crunchy).  Next, we used papier mache' paste to glue them to paper.  Each student got one 9 x 12 piece of paper, and one 6 x 9 piece of paper.  I stacked the entire class together and put a book on top so they'd dry flat.  Confession--I didn't try it before hand, so I had no real idea if this would work or not, but it did, with only minimal sticking.

Papers after they'd been stacked.

The next time second graders came to art, they painted their papers, so their leaves acted as a resist.  One page was painted blue, the other green or violet.  Then the leaves were peeled off.  This was super-duper messy, and the kids L. O. V. E. D. it!

These were allowed to dry, and after they came off the drying rack, I put them under books again.

Fresh off the drying rack, pre book squishing.

At some point, we read the book.  If they were super fast cleaners and had extra minutes at the end of the class, or if they needed calming down.  I also had a little/short video about why animals hibernate that I found (I think it was on TeacherTube).  Students used 6 x 9 white paper to draw an animal who hibernates with pencil (they would later color their animal with oil pastel).

This worked well to keep everyone somewhat together, because they had something to work on as I was passing out papers for them to collage for their backgrounds.  Their 9 x 12 painted paper was their base, and each student got a violet and green strip to add a hill with shadow, grass, rocks or similar items.  They then cut the 6 x 9 paper, leaving a "halo" of paint around their leaves:

Finally, they cut their by-now-fully-colored animals and added them to their papers.  Only one class is done so far, but so many of them are GREAT:

I think teachers should also hibernate, I know I could use a very long nap!