It's the half-term school holidays this week here in the UK and today I have 10 activity ideas that are either free or affordable for you to do with children either during the half-term holiday or at the weekends during autumn or fall as it's also known. Not everyone has the budget for pumpkin picking, it has become very popular and I had no idea how much it was until someone I know took their children, it was really expensive, and it made me glad it wasn't a thing when my girls were small.
When our girls were young, we were on a tight budget, and I soon learned how to amuse them for little money, I have lots of different ideas that we used to do for all seasons, but today I'm sharing the autumn activities my girls loved to do, and I hope the children in your life enjoy them too.
10 Free Fun Autumn Activities 🍁🍂🍄
1. Go for an autumnal walk.
When our girls were small, they used to love getting wrapped up and going for a walk, we'd pop their wellies on and off we went. We would do some leaf kicking, play Pooh Sticks at the local stream and sometimes find a park we hadn't visited for a while. We always made sure we went in different directions each time to mix it up a bit, and something the girls loved to do was choose which direction we went in, so one of them would say for example "go straight ahead for 10 minutes" then we'd time ourselves and then after 10 minutes the other would choose another way to go for a certain time frame, and then I'd choose and so on, but we never chose more than 15 minutes otherwise you end up miles away from home haha.
2. Cooking or Baking.
Cooking or baking is a great way to spend time with children and something our girls always loved doing. Now I am no Mary Berry but you don't need to be, children enjoy spending time with you and basically making a mess. You can pick up the ingredients for basic fairy buns or biscuits fairly affordably or B&M and Home Bargains have some great value mixes too that has all you need apart from an egg or some water usually.
Also making sandwiches and using cookie cutters to make them into shapes is fun or making animals or other items out of fruits and vegetables is fun too, and making pizzas always went down well with our girls, you can use wraps for the base too so it makes it easier.
I have a couple of boards on my Pinterest account sharing ideas for snacks and lunch ideas for children of all ages if you'd like to take a look at those for some inspiration too. I always found that when children help to make lunch or dinner, they tend to be more likely to eat it, so getting them involved is a good way of amusing them and getting them to eat their lunch or dinner, win win.
3. Movie Day.
Grab blankets, duvets, and pillows and snuggle down to watch DVDs, a film on the TV or one you've previously recorded. If you have done some baking or made snacks, you could have those, or you can also have a carpet picnic and put everything on the floor (or a coffee table) and have a picnic. It makes what is essentially watching a film into something more special and exciting for the children.
After the film or films depending on how many you watch, chat about the film, it's a good idea to print off some questions about the film, such as favourite character, favourite part, least favourite part, and score the film out of 10 and so on.
4. An Autumn Scavenger Hunt.
One of the things we used to do with our girls was to go on a scavenger hunt, we did this at different times of the year. Autumn is great for scavenger hunts, there are lots of things around to look for, I have made an example of something I used to make for our girls, I will pop it below and if you would like to use it, feel free to print it off. You don't have to print anything off though, you can write a list on a piece of paper and either leave it plain or decorate it, or ask the children if they'd like to decorate it.
5. Collecting Items & Making A Collage.
Whilst on a walk, collect things, maybe the things you find on your scavenger hunt, obviously not the squirrel! Leaves, sycamore seeds, berries, there are so many things you can collect to make a collage in autumn. I don't know about the children in your life, but my girls loved making a mess so glueing was always a favourite. When the collage is dry, display them around the house of gift them to family and friends.
6. Make Leaf Ghosts.
When finding things for the collage, there will be lots of sycamore leaves around, collect a few of those for the collage but don't use them all. Paint the leaves with PVA glue using a paintbrush (don't worry it will wash off with soapy water) and whilst it's still wet, cut eyes, nose and mouth out of black paper, or colour some paper black and cut them out of that, and stick them onto the leaf where it would have a face. When the glue is dry, peel it off and you will have a ghost type window sticker, it will stick to the window easily due to it being made of glue and peel off again just as easily, these look really cute and are an affordable Halloween decoration to make.
7. Collecting & Painting Pine Cones.
Collecting pine cones is a nice thing to do during autumn, and then letting them dry out and decorating them is fun. You can decorate them and use them as autumn decorations or even Christmas decorations, I used to pop a few in a bowl on the sideboard, they look great and the girls always loved to see their creations displayed.
8. Visit The Library.
Visiting the library is a great thing to do, at this time of year search for spooky stories to tell at Halloween, or autumnal themed stories, you can pick up audio books at the library now too if that's preferable for your little ones. You can spend an hour or so easily in the library and sometimes they will have free activities to do during the school holidays.
If you have a local area Facebook page, it should have a list of activities that are available for children throughout the holidays, if not, google your local area followed by something like "free autumn half term activities" there should be something available.
9. Bird Watching.
Go online and find birds you are likely to find in your garden or the park where you live at this time of year. Then make a list of however many you like and try and find them, you don't have to feed the birds, but if you want to feed them at home, there is a fabulous bird feeder with suction cups that stick to an outside window in
Home Bargains for
£2.99, it's really good and brilliant for bird watching. You can find it
HERE. You don't have to feed the birds though, we don't feed them but we get so many different species of birds in our garden, it's nice to see the children excited when they spot one of the birds on the list too.
10. Scrapbooking & Story Writing.
This is something to do at the end of the school holidays, whilst you are out on your walks and scavenger hunts, pick up things to put in your scrapbook, and if you do go to the library, pick up some leaflets you can pop in too. Take photos on your phone and print them out and ask the children to draw a timeline of your activities and the things they enjoyed doing the most and include those too. It doesn't have to be a regular scrapbook, it can be a scrapbook box made from a shoe box or any box you have, filled with things you collected and any pictures drawn. If you do visit the library, pick up some leaflets to include too.
If scrapbooking isn't something the children want to do, maybe try a story writing afternoon, write a storybook of the activities you've enjoyed doing, write about their favourite thing to do, what they would like to do again, what they learned that they didn't know, and what score they give each activity. You can also suggest taking it to school to share with their class teacher and classmates if they wish.
🍁🍄🎃
I hope you enjoyed reading my post, please let me know if you do any of the activities I have mentioned. It can be an expensive time of year, especially with Christmas not too far away and then the cost of living crisis on top, there is a lot of pressure on us all, I hope these ideas are helpful and the children enjoy them.
Zoë x
