5 Fun Painting Activities for Autumn by Clare Maher

5th October 2017

We welcome Clare Maher to the Childcare Expo community. Clare is a mum of 2 children aged 2 and 5 and has been an Ofsted registered childminder since 2013. You can find her blog over at Clare’s Little Tots where she shares easy crafts, recipes and activities as well as childminding help.

The kids are back at school, the rain appears every time we set off on a school run and the mornings are getting colder. Autumn is most definitely here. So it must be time to start some autumn themed arts and crafts.

Below I’ve shared 5 simple painting activities that I love to do with my EYFS children to mark the change in seasons.

1. Leaf Print Painting

For this activity, you’ll need to collect lots of lovely big leaves on a nature walk and dry them out back at home first.

Set them out with paints, brushes and paper and encourage the children to paint the leaf itself and then push it onto a piece of paper. They can observe the marks they’ve made and try making different ones with different types and size of leaf.

2. Conker Marbling

Conker marbling is a fun way to get little ones to practice hand-eye coordination and get them interested in the marks they’ve made and colour mixing.

Use a shallow tray with a piece of paper in the bottom and tape it down to secure. Collect some conkers on a nature hunt and add them to the tray with some squirts of paint. Move the tray around to get the conkers to roll through the paint and create a marbling effect.

3. Autumn Handprint Trees

Create an autumnal tree using childrens handprints to make a beautiful joint artwork project.

Start by getting the children to help you paint the tree trunk brown and then add their own handprints in greens, reds, oranges and browns to make the leaves.

4. Fork Painted Hedgehogs

These hedgehogs are fun to make and don’t require you to be an amazing artist!

Draw a basic outline of a hedgehog and squirt some brown paint onto it. Then encourage the children to move the paint around using a fork to create the hedgehog’s spikes.

Finish with a googley eye and a small black pom pom or button for the nose.

5. Painting with Autumn Colours

Take inspiration from the colours around you and set up some simple autumn painting that even babies can join in with (if they can hold a paint brush).

Process art, where the focus isn’t on the actual end product, is perfect for babies and toddlers and lets their inner artist shine through.

Grab some brushes, paint in green, brown, yellow, orange and red and let little hands create some autumn themed masterpieces.

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