Autumn is an exciting time of year — full of change as we head from the warmth of summer into the frosty winter months.
But sometimes it can be hard to come up with activities to keep kids entertained and engaged — especially when you can’t fall back on good weather and spend lots of time outside.
The good news is, even as it gets colder and darker in autumn, there are still plenty of fun things to do indoors and outdoors with your kids. We’ve put together a few of our favourite autumn activities to keep kids entertained.
Create an autumn leaf mobile
Use recycled cardboard, paint, and string to create an autumn leaf mobile that you can decorate your kitchen with, or pop in the kids’ bedroom.
Start by setting your kids up with some cardboard and orange, red, and yellow paints. Try to use cardboard that’s plain on both sides so you can easily paint them — fruit and veg trays from the supermarket work really well.
You can either draw outlines of leaves on the card or just let them paint it a mix of autumn colours all over the card. Once the paint is dried, you can then add some glitter glue, and you can either just cut the shapes out or let your kids draw their own leaf patterns and cut them out (depending on their age).
Based on how thick the cardboard is, you can either use a sewing needle and thread to make them into a garland or use a hole punch and string. You could even look for a fallen branch and hang the leaves from that for a really authentic autumnal feel.
This is a great autumn activity for kids of all ages — it’ll keep them entertained for hours, lets them express their creativity, and (hopefully), you’ll have some pretty decorations at the end.
Make an autumn collage
Want an autumn activity that will get your littles ones out in the fresh air and blowing off some steam?
Head out on a walk to a park or woods nearby, and gather up some of the beautiful orange and red fallen leaves, twigs, and any other bits that catch your kids’ eyes (just make sure they’re dry first).
Take your finds home, and get set up with a large piece of cardboard, some glue, and a pot of glitter glue. Let them stick down the leaves wherever they want and then paint over the whole thing with the glitter glue to make it sparkle and set so the leaves are preserved.
This is a really great autumn activity for preschool-age kids, but it can be made adapted for older children as well. You can get them to create a picture collage by cutting up and using the different coloured leaves and sticks that they’ve collected. It could be something simple like trees and a pathway, or something a bit more complicated like an animal. Pick your theme and set them the challenge!
Pumpkin decorating
Obviously, pumpkin carving is a popular autumn activity, but if your kids are a bit too young to be cutting things up you can have just as much fun decorating your pumpkins.
Image: Pexels
Acrylic paint is going to work best for painting the outside of a pumpkin. You can let your kids decorate them however they want with bright colours, glitter glue, and you could even glue some eyes on to it. Alternatively, you could get them to squeeze the paint on to the top in various different colours, letting the paint drip down the pumpkin and creating a marble effect.
This is a fun activity, but it can get pretty messy — so put down some newspaper or sheets first and make sure your kids are wearing old clothes or aprons.
Apple stamping
This is a really simple autumn activity that lets your kids have fun and be really creative with what they make. All you need is some apples, paper, and paint, and you can let their imagination run wild. Again, it’s a bit messy so set up sheets to stop paint getting everywhere!
You just need to cut the apples in half and pour a few different colour paints out into separate trays. Then let your kids dip the apple halves into the paint and stamp them onto the paper. They can create pictures from the apple stamps or just have fun making different patterns — it’s completely up to them.
Make animals out of pine cones
Another great thing to collect on autumnal family walks is pine cones. There are lots of ways to get creative with pine cones but one of the best autumn activities to keep kids entertained is turning them into pine cone animals.
For really simple animals, you could just paint the pine cones and add some eyes. Or for something a bit more advanced, get some felt and cut out shapes to make up some animals. For example, you could cut out head shapes and eyes for foxes, bears, and use the pine cone as the body, or add some wings to make an owl.
Image: Pexels
You could even make pine cone penguins — add some yellow felt feet at the bottom, black wings, a small decorated polystyrene ball for the head and then paint the tips of the pine cone white.
These are just a few of our favourite autumn activities to keep kids entertained for hours, especially when you’re trying to work from home as well. All you really need to do is get outside, enjoy the autumn scenery and let your kids get creative with collages, paint, crafty projects.
