Welcome to Autumn – there is a chill in the air and the leaves are turning colour. It’s a great time of year to get out and explore all that nature has to offer. It’s also a great time of year for crafts!
With the evenings drawing in, however, there is definitely more indoor time and there is the temptation to have longer time on screens. There are lots of different Autumn Crafts for your children to do – no matter what their age – so take a look at some of the ideas below to help balance out the screen time!
Benefits of Autumn Crafts
- Fine Motor Skills- Picking up the leaves, sticking them down in the correct place, painting and colouring- all requires the use of the tiny muscles in the hands and fingers that develop fine motor control. Fine motor skills are vital for learning to write, use a knife and fork etc.
- Hand Eye Coordination– Putting the leaves and glue in the correct places involved the children to use hand eye coordination.
- Understanding of Plants- So many questions about plants can be answered in this activity. Why do leaves fall of the trees? What is Autumn? What’s the weather like in Autumn? What are conkers and where do they come from? Why do conkers have a spiky shell? Why do leaves change colour? What colours are the leaves?
- Speech and Language skills- This activity not only elicits questions from children which helps build their speech and language skills. But key words such as Autumn, Leaf and even deciduous can be introduced!
- Boost your mood – The colour yellow is often thought to convey energy, enthusiasm, fun, cheerfulness and a positive emotional state. Red may help improve your attention span and boost your confidence. And it’s possible that fall foliage and cool temps may bring about happy memories.
Tips to get them outdoors
- If your children are not keen on the cold and wet, make sure they are layered up with warm, waterproof clothing.
- Then try a Scavenger Hunt list whilst on the walk home from school or on a family walk to collect some autumnal nature to use for their Autumn Crafts.
- Check out the free download of ideas to make your family walk more fun!
#1 Window Art
Try this simple but fun art work at home and the best bit is that no messy glue is required!
- Head outside and collect lots of different coloured leaves, flowers, grass and winged seeds
- Use some masking tape to stick your sticky back plastic to the window
- Make your own artwork putting your collection onto the sticky backed plastic
- Put another layer of sticky back plastic on top to preserve the image for longer!
#2 Make your conkers unconquerable
‘Tis the season for playing conkers. Not just for children either! Great old-fashioned family fun.
- Bake them on a baking tray on 140C for two hours to get them extra hard
- Paint them with a few layers of clear nail varnish for super shiny and strong conkers
- Leave some in a dry place for next year to become really tough
#3 Memory game
Autumn version of the memory game. Great game for teaching them about the season and gets their memories working! We like to get the children to take turns in removing items to test our memories too!
- Collect autumn based items (see our scavenger hunt)
- Place them on a tray
- Let the children have a look at the tray
- Take the tray away and remove an item
- Can they work out which item you took?
#4 Autumn tree
One of our favourite autumn crafts – let them make their own autumnal tree! Paint their hand and arm brown to make the trunk and then let them use their fingertips to create the colourful leaves. Have you got a budding Georges Seurat in the making? For extra depth, stick on some of the colourful leaves or winged seeds they’ve collected.
#5 Apple bobbing
An old party favourite! Go to a local orchard and collect some apples and then put in a bucket of water. Have fun trying to pick as many out with your teeth – no hands allowed!
#6 Pine cone bird feeder
Fun to make with kids of all ages. Try identifying the birds or counting them and you’ve got an art and science lesson at the same time!
- Have fun collecting some pine cones.
- Tie the string, twine or wire to the pine cone. Leave a long enough piece at the top so that you can hang the bird feeder later.
- Cover the pine cone in peanut butter.
- Coat the peanut butter in bird seed by rolling the pine cone in a dish filled with bird seed and pat down.
- Hang your pine cone bird feeder outside high enough so that the local cats don’t get to them!
#7 Acorn wreath
Have fun collecting lots of acorns and then make this beautiful wreath to decorate your house or front door this Autumn!
- Cut out two wreath shapes from thick cardboard and stick together.
- Add a generous amount of strong glue to the wreath and attach the acorns. Let it dry overnight.
- Cover with Mod Podge or something similar to help stick the acorns together and give it a shine.
- Once dried, add a ribbon and hanging ribbon
#8 Painted acorns
We love the bright, unique colour of these painted acorns and it’s a fun activity for you all to sit and enjoy! Put them in bowls or jars to brighten up your home this autumn.
- Wash and dry the acorns and place on a towel to dry for around an hour
- Place on a tray and bake on a low setting for up to 2 hours. Remove and let cool
- Paint using acrylic paint and let dry on a sheet of newspaper or baking sheet.
#9 Stone painting
This is a great activity around us and am sure you can find a local rock group! Have fun finding the decorated stones whilst out and about and then re-hide for others to find. Here’s how to have fun creating your own….
- Use acrylic paint or pens to draw a picture or message onto the rock.
- Cover with varnish to ensure that the paint does not leak off into the environment.
#10 Autumn leaf garland
We love this craft of bringing is some of the beautiful coloured leaves and making a decorative garland to brighten the home!
- Press some colourful leaves
- Use sharpie metallic markers to write things that you are grateful for (e.g. family, love, food, chocolate!) on some of the leaves and decorate the rest.
- Use a hot glue gun to glue the stems of the leaves to some ribbon and hang up!
Thank you for reading and hope these indoor autumn crafts and activities provide you with some fun to bring the autumn indoors and balance out the screen time!
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