I am such a lover of Autumn! I love the nights drawing in, but most of all, I love watching the beautiful Maple tree outside our home turn all of the beautiful Autumnal colours.
It’s a sure sign winter is coming, cosy nights in and candles burning!
It’s not just the grown ups who love the Autumn. Children just adore donning their wellies and kicking about the crisp leaves on the ground. Here’s one of the beautiful leaves we found just outside our home. The children love looking at the colours and shapes of all the different leaves.
There’s no better craft activity than those that are predominantly free and those that get the children exploring the great outdoors. Here are some very simple but effective craft ideas that your children will love this Autumn and should keep them busy during the half term too!
Step one: Get your wellies on and go exploring 🙂 Take a carrier bag on an Autumn walk, down the road or to the park, you don’t really need to head too far afield to discover some beautiful finds. If you’re expecting rain it’s a great idea to do this in advance so that you’ll have dry leaves, conkers acorns etc or at least time to let them dry.
Step two: Grab some PVA glue and either a paintbrush or some glue sticks
Step Three: get some paper and get messy!
Make a leaf lantern:
My daughter and I made this gorgeous project yesterday, we picked some leaves outside our home and bought a pack of coloured tissue paper from The Works.
What you will need:
- Some pretty leaves (the best are the ones that aren’t too dry and crunchy)
- Glass Jar (we used a large Douwe Egberts coffee jar)
- Some Autumn coloured tissue paper – we chose red, yellow and two shades of green
- PVA Glue
- Paint brush
- Tea Light
Firstly make sure your leaves are nice and dry and bug free, then tear some small squares of the coloured tissue paper ready to collage on to your jar.
Spread your glue over one side of your jar using a paint brush
Stick the leaves on first, position them evenly around your jar.
Stick your tissue paper around the leaves, you can over lap some too if you wish
When you have stuck everything where you would like it paint a thin layer of PVA glue over the top of it all to seal it all in.
Leave to dry
Once dry we popped a tea light inside our jar and hey presto! 🙂
If your little ones are slightly older you could create slightly more structured activities, like this leaf owl!
All you will need is
- A paper plate
- Some glue
- Some leaves
- Coloured paper (or paper coloured in by your children)
- Googly eyes if desired, though circles will still look great and the children can draw on the eyes.
Or How about a leaf hedgehog?
Cut out a hedgehog shape and let your little ones stick leaves to the back to form the spikes.
Clay Hedgehogs
What you will need:
- I bought some air drying clay from ELC, you can get some from Amazon if easier here
- Pasta shapes or craft sticks
- buttons for eyes and nose if you wish
- You could use twigs too if you wanted to use some things from an autumn walk, or even leaves.
Shape your clay into a ball and encourage your little one to flatten it slightly
Pinch the front into a point for your hedgehog’s nose
Stick your spikes into the hedgehogs back (pasta, matchsticks, leaves twigs etc)
Push your buttons in for eyes
Leave to dry
Cork painting Autumn Tree
Chose some Autumnal paint colours and some corks, draw out your tree or get your child to draw it and get stamping.
This activity is also nice for a group of children too!
The main thing to remember is that the possibilities are endless! Children will love to simply explore the different textures. To extend your crafty activities you can talk through colours and shapes and you can incorporate numeracy by counting leaves, spikes, conkers anything you have found.
Take It From Mummy would love to see any of your Autumn crafts and will be creating a photo gallery of any pictures sent through :0) We would love to hear from you! You can send your craftivities to us here nikki@takeitfrommummy.com
Happy Adventures xxx
