Lots of leafy fun is fairly spontaneous – that’s part of it’s beauty…. crunching through golden carpets and running into leaf piles… chaotic and hilarious leaf fights… standing underneath a tree in the wind or a branch shaken by a friend as the leaves drift down… or for us the other day it was having small helpers want to join in my leaf raking activities and finding ways to make the job of clearing the garden into something fun and collaborative.

But, of course, there’s ways you can enjoy being more intentional in leaf play too. A simple start is collecting leaves and spending time looking at them, observing sizes, colours, shapes and patterns. You could find activities in sorting, arranging, grouping your leaves. And then, of course, there is the craft potential…

Animals are always popular and it’s amazing the characters you can create by varying the leaves you use. We’ve created some simple templates to get you started, with sections to colour and/or cut out, and pencil outlines for the areas we’d suggest adding leaves. Below you can see what happened when I did the craft my way, using one type of leaf per animal and going for an even arrangement… but the lovely ones who have trialled this craft for me went for a more eclectic mix of leaves and happily stuck them wherever they wanted to and theirs looked brilliant too! Most importantly, we had fun.

And if animals aren’t your thing (or like us you collected WAY more leaves than you needed) you can find other lovely leafy possibilities on our Autumn Crafts Pinterest Board… including leaf lanterns a lot classier than our plastic bottle version!