Creative Crafts with Children – Autumn Creative Activities and DIY Projects

Article author: Iveta Bartošová

With the start of school and kindergarten, the mornings get colder and the sun sets much earlier too. It is a time when most of us start spending more time at home than on playgrounds or in the forest. A great activity for creative children can be autumn DIY (from English “do it yourself,” meaning homemade) projects, which are great for practicing their fine motor skills. What autumn crafts can you try with children?

Supplies for crafting with children

To make the work go smoothly, it is good to prepare all the supplies in advance. It depends on what you want to make, whether you will be painting, cutting, gluing, or doing everything together. You may find these useful:

• colored paper, drawing paper, crayons, markers, watercolors, brushes, tempera paints;
• scissors, glue, toothpicks, string, stick-on googly eyes;
• needles, leaves, moss, chestnuts, acorns, tree bark, twigs, pumpkins, apples, potatoes, etc.

Craft inspiration

• Traditional chestnut animals - just gather a few chestnuts and use toothpicks to connect them and shape animals, such as a giraffe, dog, hedgehog, snake, cat, owl, etc.

• Paper crafts - from drawing paper or colored paper you can cut out leaves, trees, mushrooms, forest animals (fox, bear, hedgehog, squirrel) and use them as window decorations or as plant pot picks. 

• Leaf crafts - just gather colorful leaves and make a picture from them (a hedgehog or an abstract painting), or you can paint the collected leaves with tempera paints with the children and stamp them onto paper, or trace the leaves with blow paints.
• Crafts from cones - you can paint pine cones with colors, glue googly eyes on them, or cut out and glue pieces of paper to make, for example, a hedgehog, owl, or tree.
• Autumn window decorations - from colored paper you can make kites, clouds, hedgehogs, mushrooms, etc., and besides paper crafts you can also decorate your windows with fallen colorful leaves.
• Autumn flower pot decorations - picks on skewers made from paper, acorns, pine cones, anything that comes to mind; for example, you can cut mushrooms, kites, an umbrella, leaves, or pumpkins out of paper.
• Handprints - children really enjoy stamping their fingers or whole hands. Just paint a hand, press it onto paper, and finish the picture (for example, an owl from a whole hand, or using fingers to dot leaves onto a tree).
• Stamping - you can use a cut apple or potato, paint it, and stamp it onto paper, then finish it off, for example as a pumpkin or some animal. 
• Pumpkins - a traditional Halloween activity - painting pumpkins, scooping them out, and carving them.

• Window garlands - cut anything from colored paper or drawing paper, draw it, and hang it on a string (for example leaves, mushrooms, animals).
• Hedgehog from pine needles - collect pine needles outside, cut a hedgehog out of drawing paper or cardboard, and glue the needles on as spines, then draw in the eyes and nose.
• Autumn headband - cut a strip from cardboard, glue the ends together to create a base for a headband. Then just gather decorations outside and glue them onto the headband. These can be pine cones, fallen leaves, various grasses, flowers, and moss. 

Other autumn activities

In addition to crafting, which you will probably do at home, you can also go outside with the children and try:

• Forest bingo - finding items in nature according to a pre-made card - twig, pebble, chestnut, acorn, pine needle, pine cone, etc.
• Chestnut shapes as decoration in front of the house.
• Fly a kite - you can try making your own kite and then go outside to fly it. 
• Lantern parade - if you are planning to take part in a lantern parade, you can make your own DIY lantern. 
• Mushroom picking - then you can cut and dry them with the children.
• Picking rose hips for tea.
• Rolling in leaves - jump into a pile of leaves and have fun in them.

In brief

The autumn months bring colder days and less sun and daylight during the day. It is therefore an opportunity to slow down after summer and craft at home. You can use colored paper, drawing paper, glue, scissors, and anything you find outside, such as pine cones, colorful leaves, tree bark, and start creating. The most popular are animals from chestnuts, stamping painted leaves onto paper, or making window decorations from paper. Outside, you can then romp around in the leaves with the children, pick mushrooms or rose hips, and fly a kite. 

What about you in autumn? Do you craft at home with your children, or do you prefer to go outside in any weather and only craft in winter?