5 Ideas Using Autumn Leaves

Now that the leaves are changing colour and falling from the trees, if you want some inspiration for alternative craft activities to do with your little ones, autumn leaves are ideal. Young babies will enjoy simply exploring a tray of autumn leaves, but with toddlers and beyond there are various directions you can go with autumn leaf crafts. Here are five craft ideas using leaves to get you started.

Image by Hotblack via Morguefile

Tree collage

Draw around your lower arm and palm, or that of your tots, on a sheet of paper to represent a tree trunk and branches. Colour or paint your tree base and then use glue to stick leaves to the branches as foliage

Leaf rubbing

Use tape to stick a few leaves to a hard surface – whether a table, worktop or kitchen floor – and cover with a piece of white paper. Secure the paper with tape at the corners so that it doesn’t slip and rub a crayon over the leaves. If your crayons are wrapped in paper, you’ll need to take this off before you begin.

Leaf printing

Paint your leaves – it’s up to your little ones whether they choose traditional autumn colours or alternative colours, and whether they paint the leaves one colour or multicolour – then put them paint-side face down on your paper. You can get your kids to just press down, but they might have more fun using a rolling pin.

Leaf ring

Take a paper plate and cut out the inner circle. You can then let your youngsters stick leaves around the rim to make an autumn wreath.

Autumn leaf confetti

Place your autumn leaves in a shallow container and get your children to help you scrunch up your collection of leaves into tiny bits. Spread glue on some paper and scatter your leaf confetti over so that it sticks. Alternatively, cut out cardboard leaf shapes to cover.

Outdoor Play for Kids - Keep It Simple!

This month’s messy play group in St Bees had a gardening theme. Our little gardeners had fun potting up vegetables, squelching in a mud bath, pouring sand through funnels, painting with fruit and vegetable pigments and sticking petals and herbs. So while there aren’t any recipes to share for homemade sensory materials but wanting to keep with a similar topic, I thought it would be interesting to think about outdoor garden play.

Own image

What do your tots play with when they’re outside? My little boy was given a slide and toy lawnmower, and I haven’t felt the need to add to his outdoor toys, other than buying him a set of kids’ garden tools. He likes nothing more than playing with a watering can, plant pots and generally exploring our garden. Fair enough, he’s only 20 months, but long may his enjoyment of the simple things that the garden has to offer last. If he’s anything like the kids in a survey by Randy White, a playground designer, he may well continue to enjoy the items that are naturally present there. When children were asked what they’d like to see best in an outdoor play area, elements like water, greenery and sand were top of their list, rather than swings, slides and other playground equipment. Why might this be? Although play equipment is good fun, it’s easy to tire of activities that aren’t open-ended, whereas things like a sandpit, tub of water or trees can be used more creatively and played with in numerous ways.

A list of items to include in a natural play environment compiled by the playground designer include:

• Water: You don’t need a water table or a paddling pool, simply fill up a bucket, large pan or a plastic storage box. Then supply items from your kitchen for play such as cups, scoops, funnel, colander, ladle, balloon whisk, or anything else that your little ones can use for filling, pouring or stirring.
• Sand: Again, a sandbox isn’t necessary, just fill any large container you have with play sand and supply some utensils for scooping, pouring and sifting.
• Vegetation: Even if you don’t have any trees or borders for shrubs and flowers already, you can always use pots to grow flowers, herbs, veg or fruit. If you have a patch of spare ground and you’re looking for something low maintenance to try, get a packet of wild flower seeds and enjoy the butterflies, bees and other insects they attract.
• Natural structures: Trees can potentially give youngsters somewhere to sit on or under, lean against or climb, as well as offering shade and shelter. Alternatively, you could try your hand at willow weaving to create a den. However, you can keep things simple with some logs for seating or clambering over, or some stepping stones. If you’re struggling for a shelter though, you can’t go wrong with a sheet draped over the washing line and secured to the ground for a makeshift tent.
• Sensory opportunities: While these are all around your children in the garden, you can always set up a sensory station by filling up containers with natural materials from sand and bark chippings to stones and shells to let your little ones explore a range of textures and colours.
• Opportunities to appreciate the seasons and weather: You can pick up items like a thermometer and wind chimes cheaply, and have a go at making your own garden sundial and water butt.
• Items that can be used in many ways: Kids are well-known for their love of household items, so let them have fun with pots, pans, safe utensils, brooms and anything else you think they can play happily with.

Something not mentioned by White, but is becoming more popular, is to put aside an area of your outdoor space for a play garden. Although you’ll see some impressive examples of play gardens online, it doesn’t have to be flashy; simply use natural materials to fence off a patch, plant some greenery, add stones and pots, give your tots some little tools and a watering can, and away they go. Even if you don’t have time to make your kids their own garden space, let them have fun in an area of the garden you’re not bothered about. Turn the hose on the soil to make a natural mud bath and it’ll keep them entertained!

Let Your Kids Play in the Soil!

If you’re happy to let your little ones get messy with water, food items, paints, play dough and sand, what about soil? Although letting babies and toddlers play in the dirt may seem a step too far for some parents, letting your kids get dirty is a good idea. You might worry that playing in the earth means your tots are more likely to get poorly, but children who spend more time playing in the garden, woods and other natural spaces are healthier than their peers that who don’t get this exposure.

Soil is teeming with microbes, which is a good thing. Young children need contact with a wide range of micro-organisms to enhance the diversity of their gut flora, which is essential for a strong immune system and good health. The link between exposure to microbes and health relates to the fact that when we don’t challenge our immune systems regularly, our white blood cells start reacting to foods and other things in our environment, such as pollen and animal hair, which gives rise to allergies. Studies back this up, with one example being that kids living on farms are less likely to suffer from allergies or asthma, which is thought to be thanks to the diverse microbes they come into contact with.

Image by ronnieb via morguefile

Encourage your tots to play in the soil, make mud pies and don’t worry if they want to sample some! Just wash their hands with water and soap when they’re finished, so there’s no need to use antibacterial products. Interestingly, research shows that young kids living in homes where bleach is used are more vulnerable to infections, so hold the harsh cleaning products for everyday cleaning.

While you can top up your little one’s gut microbes with probiotic supplements, don’t underestimate the benefits that outdoor play can have, which is one more reason to encourage your kids to spend more time outside.

5 Minute Make - Cloud Dough

If you’re looking for an alternative to play dough, what about cloud dough? When you run your fingers through cloud dough, it is silky and a bit like fine sand, which is probably where its alternative name, “moon sand”, comes from. Little ones certainly have fun scooping and pouring it, as I saw at this month's messy play session. However, when you scrunch some together in your hand, you can also mould the dough. With just three ingredients, you can whip up a batch in no time with items from your kitchen, so within five minutes your little ones have a fun sensory material to explore.

Although some recipes for cloud dough suggest using baby oil, for my recent messy play group in St Bees I used vegetable oil to make it safe if eaten. You can use whatever vegetable oil you have in your cupboard, but rapeseed oil, which is used in most generic vegetable oils, worked well.

Own image

To make cloud dough, simply mix two cups of flour with a quarter of a cup of vegetable oil. For colour, you either need to add powdered food dye to your flour or add oil-based food colouring to your oil before mixing, as standard water-based food colour doesn’t work due to the oil content.

As you can imagine, the cloud dough gets everywhere, so you’re best off placing a tub on a wipe clean surface, putting down an old sheet or taking your kids outside for their sensory play!

Looking for a New Goo Recipe? Try This

Little kids love to get their hands stuck in to slime and gooey materials. If you’ve already tried cornflour gloop, what other options are there for homemade goos?

There are lots of recipes for goop online, but if your little one likes to taste new materials, it’s best to avoid slimes that use PVA glue or borax. A simple and safe goo that you might like to try is hydrated basil seeds. It might not sound very inspiring, but when you soak basil seeds, they form a gel casing, which takes up food colouring well. The result is something that resembles frogspawn. At this month’s session of messy play in St Bees, the tray with yellow, blue, orange and green frogspawn went down really well, as little hands set to work exploring the mix.

Own image

The hydrated seeds stick to clothing and towels like mad, so you might like to have your tots play with these just in their nappy or pants for easy cleaning! If this doesn’t put you off, the recipe for frogspawn couldn’t be easier. Simply take one tablespoon of basil seeds – you can buy these on ebay and Amazon - and one and a quarter cups of water coloured with food dye of your choice. It takes just five minutes for the seeds to swell and your kids can play with them straight away. If you’re making the seeds ahead of play, you may need to add some extra water to help the seeds unstuck and flow more easily.

Making Too Much of Messy Play?

For all I’ve set up a messy play group in West Cumbria, I understand where people are coming from when they say that too much is made of structured messy play, sensory play, creative play and related activities.

Play comes naturally to kids and it’s the best way for them to learn when they’re young, so you can just keep it simple. Although you can spend hours in the kitchen whipping up various materials with interesting properties and plan craft activities with an end product in mind, it’s not necessary.

Image by Nevit via Wikimedia Commons

Give a baby, toddler or preschooler a tub filled with water, sand or soil, along with some pots and utensils, and this simple activity can keep them entertained for a good chunk of time – potentially longer than with more elaborate sensory play ideas. Equally, supply some paint, glue, pieces to stick and paper, and away your little one can go. You might need to give a little direction with something unfamiliar, but try to let children use their natural curiosity to explore, as that’s when they learn the most. When it comes to creative activities, try to forget about any ideas you may have about making a particular item, as it’s the creative process that’s important and your tot can’t have free reign if you’re trying to overly guide them.

Whatever your little one plays with or creates, they’ll get something out of it and the most important thing is that they have fun. If you’ve enjoyed an activity together then it’s a success!

Play Dough with a Twist

Shop-bought play dough is handy to have in the cupboard, but you don’t get much in a pot, so it doesn’t stretch far if you have a few kids to entertain or you run a playgroup. Meanwhile, homemade play dough is cheap and easy to make, so you can make it in bulk, and thanks to its salt content will keep for months in an airtight container. If you’ve made your own play dough before, you’ve probably dyed it various shades, but have you considered additions that give your dough an aroma? As sensory play is about stimulating all the senses, making scented play dough is an option to stimulate your little ones’ sense of smell. There are lots of possibilities for how you can add aroma to your play dough using various flavourings, but at this month’s messy play group in St Bees I used lemon, mint and cinnamon.

Own image

Simply add two cups of flour, one cup of salt and two tablespoons of oil to a bowl, along with your chosen flavouring. To this add one and a half cups of boiling water and your preferred food colouring. Then mix everything together and your dough is ready for play!

If your tots still put everything in their mouth, salty play dough recipes like this one aren’t suitable, as it’s easy for babies and toddlers to quickly overdose on salt, which can be toxic. Instead, you can make bread dough for them to play with, which you can still colour and add flavourings to.