Simple craft ideas for young children in autumn using leaves

Collect, glue, color - Simple craft ideas for young children in autumn with leaves

It's autumn, the leaves are turning the most beautiful colors, the air is crisp and clear, and the air is filled with the wonderful scent of fallen leaves. Autumn is the perfect time of year to wander through the woods and parks with children, observe animals, and collect natural materials for crafting. Rain is sure to come, so to keep boredom at bay at home, we've put together a few simple games and craft ideas for young children in this post.

In our shop you'll find sustainably produced gardening items for children, such as flower marbles, garden play sets, and seed bombs. For rainy days, we have ABC learning cards about the forest and exciting memory games made from sustainably sourced materials . Our backpacks are made from recycled PET bottles, and our muslin scarves and hats are made from organic cotton and alpaca wool.

Decorating hedgehogs - collecting, crafting, coloring

This cute hedgehog is quick to make. You can either decorate it at home with pre-dried leaves or take it to the forest and decorate it with pretty leaves and small twigs along the way.

Afterwards, the hedgehog is a real eye-catcher as decoration on the door, in the window or on the garden shed.

Here's how:

Draw a hedgehog's snout and a round, angular body on sturdy cardboard. Give the hedgehog a black nose, eye, and mouth. If you like, your children can paint the hedgehog. Once the hedgehog is dry, you'll need some string (we used yarn) to wrap around the spikes. Now the hedgehog can be decorated with colorful autumn leaves, flowers, or small twigs.

Sorting game with leaves - crafting and playing

This game is perfect for young children aged two and up. My daughter loved matching the pretty leaves to the corresponding shapes.

Here's how:

Go out into nature and collect leaves from as many different trees as possible with your children. Along the way, the little ones can learn which tree each leaf belongs to. Let the leaves dry overnight between sheets of baking paper in a book. This will make them perfectly smooth, so you can trace their shape onto a large sheet of paper the next day. The sorting game is complete!

Create a collage of leaves

For those short on time, I recommend our leaf collage as a PDF . The template consists of four pages: a coloring page with leaves from current trees and three pictures that can be completed using leaves. The squirrel gets a bushy tail, the hedgehog spines, and the tree trees. Here, little ones can decide for themselves which leaves to glue, how, and where. A wonderful leaf picture will emerge in no time. Children as young as 2.5 or 3 years old can create these leaf pictures.