Autumn Leaf Crafts and Activities

Last Updated on September 25, 2018 by HodgePodgeDays

I hold my hands up, I’m not by any stretch of the imagination particularly good at crafting with my son. I’ll give it a go because it’s important for him to know that you don’t have to be any good at something to enjoy it. Having fun is the most important lesson, so this week we turned our hands to some autumn leaf crafts and had lots of fun.

One dry afternoon we went to our local park for a picnic, afterwards we had a little walk and collected a bag of leaves, pine cones, pine needles, bark, sycamore seeds and anything else we could find. This was itself a fun and learning activity, we talked about why leaves turn brown, the different colours and shapes, how leaves feel, what seeds and pine cones are and what happens to seeds when you plant them.

We loved our trip to the park and it was the perfect excuse to warm up with a mug of hot chocolate when we got home. We left the leaves to dry for a bit and then got to work.

1. Put a nice veiny leaf under a piece of paper and rub over it with a crayon, this will give a relief of the leaf. Try it with different kinds of leaves.

2. We did some nice sticking and gluing. We glued some leaves to some paper and drew pictures around them. He liked this because he liked painting the glue on the leaves and being quite precise with it. This was great for his fine motor skills.

3. We held a leaf on a piece of paper and dabbed round it with some paint on a sponge. This is quite a pretty effect and it helped him think about the shape of the leaf and its outline.

4. The small boy had his cousin round to play, we decided to make a big tree. We taped a long roll of paper to the side of the kitchen cupboard (which meant it was easy to wipe drips where they’d missed the paper), we painted a large tree and some grass and we stuck a variety of leaves to the branches of the tree and also in the grass. This was a lovely activity, the boys got involved in some team work and alternated jobs.

We’ve had some messy-ish fun and we learnt a lot about autumn. We’ve had a great few days playing with and crafting with the bag of leaves we picked up from the park. It’s been pretty cheap entertainment too, for the small cost of some paper, paint and glue we’ve done a small stack of autumnal activities.