There’s something about the first cool morning in September that makes me want to clear off the kitchen table and pull out the construction paper. If you’ve got kids, fall is basically the best excuse of the year to get messy with glue, paint, and whatever leaves you can scoop off the sidewalk. Below are twelve fall crafts for kids that have actually survived being made by real kids in my house, not just the version that looks perfect in a photo.
Most of these use supplies you probably already have in a junk drawer somewhere, and the few that don’t are linked below so you don’t have to drive to three different stores on a Saturday morning.
Fall Crafts for Kids Ideas:
Below are the 12 easiest and most fun fall crafts for kids that actually turn out cute.
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1. Pressed Leaf Suncatchers
This is one of the fall crafts for kids every elementary school does for a reason — it works every time. On your next nature walk, gather some leaves in a variety of colors, place them between pieces of wax paper, and iron them (done by an adult only). To make them last beyond November, a laminating pouch is more effective than wax paper.
Picture Sourced Through: Hearth and Vine
2. Paper Plate Owls
Color your paper plate brown or orange and then fold the top corners into ears. Add googly eyes and a triangle nose. Kids can go wild with feather details using construction paper scraps. A big bag of googly eyes in assorted sizes will get used up fast, so buy more than you think you need.
Picture Sourced Through: Crafts by Amanda
3. Acorn Painted Rocks
Smooth stones, brown and tan acrylic paint, and a tiny brown pom-pom for the cap. These end up scattered all over your yard by spring, which is somehow part of the charm. A starter acrylic paint set covers this project and several others on this list.
4. Handprint Turkey
It’s a cliché fall craft for kids because it works. Trace your hand on some colored paper, cut out the hand, and allow the fingers to be tail feathers. Add a googly eye and a little red wattle, and you’ve got a Thanksgiving table decoration a grandparent will actually keep.
Picture Sourced Through: A Little Pinch of Perfect
5. Pinecone Bird Feeders
Peanut butter, birdseed, a pinecone, and string. Roll, coat, hang from a tree branch, and watch the birds show up within a day. If you don’t already have birdseed on hand, a bag of wild bird seed mix is worth having around all season anyway.
6. Salt Dough Leaf Ornaments
Combine flour, salt, and water, roll out the dough, and embed actual leaves within it to achieve the vented look before slicing out the shapes using a knife. Then bake at low temperatures until hard, and paint. And they turn out to be nice keepsakes when you write the date on the back before baking.
Picture Sourced Through: The Imagnation Tree
7. Toilet Paper Roll Scarecrows
Collect cardboard tubes and wrap them in burlap or brown paper. You can add the head to the scarecrow by making a face on the hat made of felt. This is much nicer looking than the items you are using, thanks to the burlap craft ribbon.
8. Apple Stamp Prints
Slice an apple into halves. Dab the sliced side of the apple in red, yellow, or orange paint and start stamping on paper, tote bags, or even t-shirts! The star pattern in the core is what makes this one fun for kids — it feels like a little surprise every time. A pack of fabric paint turns this into a wearable craft instead of just a paper one.
9. Paper Bag Pumpkin Baskets
Pack a lunch-sized brown paper bag with crumpled newspapers, tie it together, and paint it orange. Attach a green pipe cleaner to be the stem. These can be lined up in a row on the front porch, or used as trick-or-treat bags. A bundle of green pipe cleaners is cheap enough to buy in bulk for this one.
10. Fall Sensory Bin
Place some dried corn, tiny pine cones, silk leaves, and pumpkins into a large bin to sort and scoop. It is not one craft but rather a whole afternoon of playing, which is very valuable on a rainy fall day. A bag of silk fall leaves refreshes this bin every year without wilting like the real thing.
11. Leaf Rubbing Art
Put an actual leaf beneath a piece of paper with the veins facing upward and run the flat surface of a peeling crayon over it to create a rubbing that shows the form and texture of the leaf. Children may also overlap various leaves and colors on one piece of paper. A box of chunky crayons works better for this than thin ones since they cover more surface area per rub.
12. Egg Carton Pumpkin Patch
Separate each cup from the rest of the cardboard egg carton, paint them orange, then add a little bit of green pipe cleaner to act as the stem. You can create a whole “patch” of these on a windowsill or as part of your Thanksgiving table decorations. This one’s essentially free if you’re already going through eggs at home, and it’s a good project for using up that box of paint from earlier on the list.
Picture Sourced Through: A Few Small Adventures
Making Craft Day Actually Happen
The trick to getting through even half this list of fall crafts for kids is setting up before anyone sits down — newspaper on the table, paint already squeezed onto paper plates, snacks within reach so nobody wanders off mid-project. None of them has to be perfect like on Pinterest for it to be considered a success. The turkey made using a handprint and glued on the fridge is still going to receive more compliments than those you can buy in the stores.
Choose one or two from the list of fall craft ideas and try them this weekend; keep the remaining ones for another time when it is raining.
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