Fun Fall Crafts for Kids

While the weather gets colder, stay warm and cozy with these fantastic indoor crafts in fabulous fall colors. Try these with your class or with your kids at home over Thanksgiving break!

Fall Luminaries

Use these warm and inviting luminaries to decorate your classroom or let your students take them home as gifts! This craft will help younger children work on their fine motor skills, while older children will have fun using creativity to make their luminaries more elaborate.

What You Need:

Mason Jars

Mod Podge

Colored Tissue Paper

Brown Construction Paper

Paintbrush

Candles (tea candles are the perfect size!)

Wet Wipes (or wet paper towels)

1.Tear your colored tissue paper into small strips. 

2.Cut a tree shape out of brown construction paper. (You can make your tree as simple as the photo above or add more branches, etc.)

3.Using your paintbrush, coat the outside of your mason jar with mod podge. Then quickly adhere the tissue paper and the tree to the mod podge before it dries. You might want to do this part in sections since mod podge dries pretty quickly. You may want to keep wet wipes or a wet paper towel handy since the mod podge will also make your hands pretty sticky!

4.After you have attached all of your tissue paper, put a final coat of mod podge over everything.

5. Stick your candle inside the jar, light it, and turn off the lights for a fantastic fall display. You may want to use battery operated candles with young children, or you can simply forgo the candles and display your colorful mason jars without. 

Pumpkin Moon Sand

Tactile activities are great for young children, and this one smells just like pumpkin pie! Using play sand and a few ingredients from your kitchen, you can make this engaging sensory tool for hours of play!

What You Need:

Play Sand (4 Cups)

Corn Starch (2 Cups)

Water (1-3 Cups)

Pumpkin Pie Spice (1 Tsp)

Orange Food Coloring or Powdered Paint (optional)

1.Mix play sand, pumpkin pie spice, and corn starch together in a large container.

2.Add desired amount of coloring or paint.

3.Slowly mix in water until the mixture reaches your desired consistency. More water = slimier consistency. Less water = play dough consistency. 

4.Use scoopers, buckets, or hands only to play in the sand. When finished, leave your moon sand in an uncovered container to dry. (Do not seal it until it is completely dry, or there will be mold!) Once it is dry, you can seal it in a closed container or plastic bags. Just add water the next time you want to play!

Terrific Turkey Craft

What are YOU thankful for? Inspire gratitude and get your students in the Thanksgiving spirit with this cute, colorful, and easy-to-make craft!

What You Need:

Brown Paper Bags

Googly Eyes (or White and Black Construction Paper to make your own)

Multi-Colored Feathers

Glue

Markers

Colored Construction Paper

Scissors

1.Turn your brown paper bag upside down so that the opening is facing you, and write what you are thankful on the body of your bag.  

2.Glue a pair of eyes to the top of your bag. 

3.Cut an oblong, tear-shaped beak for your turkey and a bright red snood (term for the red fleshy bit that hangs over the turkey's beak). Glue those just below the eyes.

4. Deck out your turkey with festive feathers on the backside of the bag behind the turkey's face.

Fall Into Fun Craft Ideas

For the young and the young at heart, fall is the time for jumping into piles of leaves, carving pumpkins, and meandering through corn mazes. Now you can bring the colors of fall inside your classroom with these fun activities celebrating the season. Perfect for a preschool classroom, the crafts listed below teach crucial motor skills and are designed with simplicity in mind. Yet they also make great decorations to display in a classroom or to take home to mom and dad!

Fall Leaf Prints

What You Need:

Blank White Paper 

Plates

Leaves

Washable Paint

Glitter Glue (optional)

1.Pour out a little bit of each paint color onto your plates. Combining several paint colors on each plate will create a dazzling mosaic for your prints. Make your prints sparkle by adding glitter glue at this step.

2.Dip your leaves into the desired paint/glitter colors.

3.Press your leaves onto the white paper. Use your fingers to press firmly along the lines of the leaf to make the leaf structure stand out more. If you want to create a huge collage for your class, you might consider doing everyone's prints on the same long roll of paper. On a smaller scale, you can also do individualized collages on regular 8 1/2" x 11" paper.

A variation of this craft is leaf rubbing, in which a leaf is placed under a piece of paper, which is then colored over with crayons or colored pencils to reveal the leaf's structure.

Fall Coffee Filter Trees

What You Need:
Coffee Filters
Cardboard Tubes (toilet paper or paper towel rolls, etc.)
Washable Markers (assorted colors)
Spray Bottle
Water

1.Color your coffee filters with fall colors--typically red, yellow, and orange. Scribbles will do. This doesn't have to be neat since the colors will run together anyway.

2.Lay your colored filters on a flat surface or, preferably, a drying rack (like one you might use for cookies), and mist them with the spray bottle. Don't soak them. They should be lightly damp in order for the colors to spread over the filter but not run off of the filter.

3.Cut slits in the top of your cardboard tubes, and gently bend the slits to make tree branches.

4.Once the filters are dry, simply stuff them into the top of the tube. Now your beautiful fall tree is done!

Pro-Crafter Tip: Ask all your classroom teachers to save the toilet paper & paper towel rolls at the end of each week and store them for future craft projects!

 

 3D Card Stock Pumpkins

What You Need:

Orange and Green Card Stock

Scissors (child-safe with rounded edges for young children)

Ruler

Dark Orange Fine Tip Marker

Black Medium Tip Marker

Two Split Pins

1.Divide your orange card evenly into 8 sections using the orange marker, marking the sections off with neat hash marks. A ruler will be handy for this step to keep the lines straight and the spaces even. The orange marker will blend into the paper so that it won't show very much once the pumpkin is formed.

2.Cut out 8 strips of orange card along your hash marks. 

3.Punch a hole in one end of each strip large enough for the split pin to go through. (This step may be done by the teacher/parent for young children.)

4.Thread your pieces of card onto the split pin and lock the pin in place. 

5.Repeat steps 3 and 4 with a second split pin on the opposite end of your strips to create the 3D pumpkin. You will want to cut a small strip of green card and attach it to the second split pin to form the stalk. Make sure you thread the green strip onto the pin first so that it will be on the outside of your pumpkin.

6.Decorate the outside of your pumpkin with a black marker to create the face. Voila! Your pumpkin friend is done! Just don't use him to trick or treat, or your candy might disappear!