Simple, Fun Fall Crafts for Children

Fall is a time of beautiful colors and bountiful harvests, and Mother Nature provides almost everything you need to make some interesting fall crafts.  Take advantage of the crimson colored leaves, bright orange pumpkins, shiny red apples, and golden sunflowers to create variety of fun crafts.

Apples
Make apple-themed note cards.  Cut an apple in half and remove the seed.  Have your child dip it in red paint and press it against a piece of heavy weight paper, folded in half.  Draw leaves with a green marker and glue the apple seeds onto the card.

Create fingerprint apple trees.  Use brown ink for the trunk and stems and green for the leaves.  Press your child’s finger into the ink and let them create.  Paint apple seeds red and glue them to the trees for apples.

Make a fragrant garland by sprinkling apple slices with cinnamon and setting them out to dry for a few days.  Thread them on string and your garland is ready.

Sunflowers
Turn a simple yellow paper plate into a sunflower wall decoration.  Glue unshelled sunflower seeds onto the center of the plate.  Color the outside like a sunflower or use strips of yellow construction paper. Cut stems and leaves from green construction paper and tape or glue to the plate.

Save your plastic peanut butter jars and draw a sunflower on the side of the jar.  Have your child paint the sunflower with yellow, green, and brown paint.  You could also decorate the jar with sunflower stickers.  Use the container to store sunflower seeds for snacking.

Leaves
Press collected leaves between the pages of a book until they have completely dried.  Layer them between two pieces of clear 11 by 17 inch contact paper to make festive autumn place mats.

Make a mobile by stringing leaves from a small branch.

Glue googley eyes and a construction paper mouth on a leaf.  Tape it to a craft stick to make a cute leaf puppet.

Decoupage pretty leaves to the outside of a bowl.  Cover your worktable with a plastic cloth.  (Put aprons on the children because decoupage can be very messy.)  Mix one part white glue to one part water to make your decoupage.  Dip a leaf into the glue mixture and press in on a side of the bowl.  Use your fingers to remove excess glue and air bubbles.  Repeat this until the bowl is covered with leaves.

Have the kids crumple up dried leaves into small pieces.  Use a paint brush to cover a piece of construction paper with a thin layer of glue.  Sprinkle the crushed leaves over the wet glue and then add a bit of orange, red, and gold glitter to create a festive fall picture.

Pumpkins
Decorate pumpkins with yarn hair and construction paper eyes, ears, and noses.  Encourage the children to use their imaginations with feathers, pine cones, acorns, glitter glue, adhesive foam shapes, and pipe cleaners to create the world’s silliest jack-o-lantern.  Use a Styrofoam pumpkin if you want to save the creations.
Don’t throw out the seeds when you carve your pumpkin.  Have your child paint them if orange paint and then they can glue the seeds onto a pumpkin coloring sheet for a fun textured piece of art.

Acorns
Acorns are versatile for fall crafts.  Find plump, unblemished acorns and remove the caps.  Create “mini-pumpkins” by painting them orange and using black makers to draw faces on them.  Create “apples” by painting the acorns red and painting the points on the bottom green.  You can add them to tiny cemetery or apple orchard dioramas or dollhouses. Expand the craft by drilling holes through the acorns and stringing them as jewelry, garlands, or beaded curtains.  Pair them with beads and make earrings and pendants.

Gourds
Make people out of gourds.  Take a hike to find the supplies to make the people.  You can probably find fun and unique gourds at your local farmer’s market or farm stand – and they’re usually very inexpensive.  You will need pine needles or twigs for hair, leaves for clothing, seeds for eyes and buttons, twigs for limbs, and tiny pine cones for spiky hair and collars.  Small decorative pumpkins and gourds of many colors work best for this project.  Wash and dry the gourds and then let the children’s imaginations run wild.  Use basic white glue to glue everything.  Create families or stories with your gourd people.

Corncob Bird Feeders
This is a simple craft that provides a use for the corncobs that are left over from canning or freezing corn.  Make sure that the cobs are dried out before you use them because, otherwise, they may mold and the birds won’t be able to eat from them.  Poke a hole through the top of each cob and tie a string through it.  You can make your own bird seed mix out of peanuts, sunflower seeds, soy nuts, dried cranberries, and raisins or purchase a mix that contains a variety of seeds and fruits.  Stir the mix into peanut butter and spoon onto wax paper.  Roll the cobs through the peanut butter to coat.  Hang the cob feeders from trees and fence posts.

Enjoy the season because Fall never seems to last long enough.