September is here! We’ve spent the first week diving fully into the autumn spirit with crafts and sensory play. Sharing our favorites from the week to provide some autumn inspiration!
Apple Stamping
This activity is as simple as cutting an apple in half, setting out some red paint, paper, and diving in! For little hands, placing something into the apple like a fork or corn holder, will help them stamp better. I decided to set out some sponges cut into apple shapes which Q loved!
Baby Wipe Tie Dye Leaves
Tye Dyeing wipes are such an easy toddler craft. You simply roll up some baby wipes and tie rubber bands around them, set out some washable markers, and let your little one have at them! Once done, unwrap the wipes, leave them out to dry, and then cut out some fun leaf shapes. Use a hole puncher and string some twine and tie them up to a large stick. We ran around underneath them outside!
Baby’s Breath Tree Stamping
Have some baby’s breath laying around from an old bouquet of flowers, or even a head of broccoli? This is a great toddler activity. Q adores stamping! I set out some red, orange, and yellow tempera paint on a palette, with two tree print outs for Q to have fun with! He loved dipping in the baby’s breath and adding fall “leaves” to the trees.
Dried Autumn Bouquet Silhouette
If your little one is anyone like mine, they’ll love this activity. He LOVES to glue. This activity is all about gluing fun.
How to: Dried Autumn Bouquet Silhouette
1. Take a profile picture of your little one – helps to have someone/ something distracting them to get a clear shot!
2. I uploaded the image to photoshop, used quick select to choose his face only, used brush tool to fill in the selected space all black, and copied to a new document on white then printed two copies. Swipe all the way to the right to see this
3. If you don’t have photoshop, you can print out you photo, cut out the face, tape to black construction paper and cut around the shape!
4. I set out a few bouquets I had sitting in the sun to dry out, along with red/ orange/yellow tissue paper squares, and glue! Q loves to glue ! He started by pasting down some of the tissue paper, and we added layers of glue, using a paint brush, and started layering on the dried flowers.
5. Once complete and dry, I used a craft knife to it around the silhouette and pasted it to a new sheet of white paper.
6. Frame and hang !
Contact Paper Pumpkins
This is a great one for introducing the concept of “coloring in the lines”. We love contact paper around here. It takes just a new moments to set out, and is so much fun! Great for fine motor skills. You use transparent tape to stick the non-sticky side to a window (or wall), and then peel back to reveal the sticky side! I then used a craft knife to cut out some pumpkin shapes from craft paper and then cutting holes within them just to reveal two pumpkin outlines.
Then I set out some orange tissue paper squares and let Q explore! He did so great with place the squares inside the pumpkins and we talked about the color orange! This would be cute to do with jack-o-lanterns too come Cctober !
Fall Marbled Air Dry Clay
This clay seriously takes minutes to make and about 5 minutes till it’s cool enough to handle.
1/2 cup corn starch
1 cup baking soda
3/4 cups water
Medium low heat until consistency of mashed potatoes and pulls completely away from the pan.
Let sit in airtight container till cool enough to handle.
We set out our clay with washable markers and “colored” it, and i set our various autumnal elements for Q to explore pressing into the clay. This is a great process craft activity for toddlers! He loves to roll out the dough, cut shapes into them and press in various elements.
Recycled Apple Tree
Have a piece of cardboard laying around and an egg carton? This is a great activity for little hands and fine motor skills. You can even involve your little one by helping you paint!
I painted a tree onto a piece of cardboard and then cut out some egg carton cups and painted them red and hot glued them to the tree. Then using my air dry clay recipe above, I shaped 20 apples and had Q help me paint them red. Then we played and explored plopping the apples into the cups and counting them together.
Leaf Stickers
Activities can be as simple as tossing out some stickers and a sheet of paper and calling it a day! I love to toss in a fun fall theme by presenting Q with a tree and setting out some felt stickers. Q had more fun throwing the leaves over the paper to watch them fall then even using them as stickers! I love seein the mind at play!
Following along over at IG: @livethescottcottage for more fall inspiration. I can’t wait to see what you and your LOs get up to this autumn season!
The crafts, the artistry, the special memories you create with Q along with the beautiful art pieces are a partnership of your creative mind and Qs love of touching things. How fabulous!
These are fantastic! I can’t wait to try some of them out!