Autumn is the season that turns up on your doorstep with the craft materials already gathered. By the middle of October my hallway is a crime scene of wet leaves and conkers, my coat pockets have become a mobile twig collection, and every table smells faintly of leaf mould. I used to fight this. Now I hand everyone a bag and call it an activity.
I'm suspicious of autumn craft lists that open with a shopping trip. If a project needs forty items from Hobbycraft and a hot glue gun, it isn't a nature craft, it's a craft that happens to sit near a leaf. The eight below all start outside, cost close to nothing, and hold together through the attention span of a four-year-old. I know because my kitchen table is currently covered in them.
What to take on the gathering walk
Keep it stupidly simple. A big bag or a bucket each (ownership prevents wars), some crayons with the paper peeled off, a couple of paper plates to carry the best finds, and a roll of masking tape. Masking tape does more work in children's crafts than glue ever has. It sticks instantly, tears by hand, and comes off the table afterwards.
One rule about collecting: only take what's on the ground, and leave most of it. A pile of damp leaves is somebody's winter home. Twenty leaves is plenty. And if your child still puts everything in their mouth, steer the walk away from conkers and acorns. Both are unpleasant to eat and both look exactly like sweets to a three-year-old.
Eight crafts, roughly in order of mess
1. Leaf rubbings
Leaf vein-side up under a sheet of paper, side of a crayon laid flat, rub hard. Sycamore and oak give the crispest veins. Tape the leaf down first unless you enjoy watching it skate across the page. My neighbour's daughter made forty of these in one sitting and we used them as wrapping paper all December, which tells you how far one bag of leaves can actually go.
2. Stick people
One straight stick for the body, one forked stick lashed across for the arms. Wool or long grass wraps the joint, and a scrap of masking tape on the head gives you somewhere to draw a face. The real fun starts when they get names and begin arguing in the back of the car. We made a family of five last October and they lived on the kitchen windowsill until Christmas.
3. A leaf crown
Cut a strip from a cereal box, staple leaves along it all pointing the same way, then staple the ends to fit the head. Point the leaves backwards and slightly up. Pointed forwards it looks like a startled hedgehog. This is the single best craft for a child who has lost it halfway round the park and needs to be a queen immediately.
4. Pinecone owls
Stand a pinecone up as the body, glue a paper wing to each side, and add two big eyes cut from paper. Drawn eyes beat googly eyes here. They don't ping off and live under the sofa, and after three years of finding googly eyes in the carpet I've earned that opinion.
5. Hedgehog leaf collage
Draw a hedgehog body on card: a fat half-oval, a nose, some feet. Then glue leaves point-out along the back as spines, working from the back end forwards so the layers overlap like roof tiles. The leaves dry and curl over the next fortnight and end up looking like proper fur. This is the one that survives on the fridge longest.
6. Leaf suncatchers
Sticky-back plastic is the most underrated thing in the craft cupboard. Peel half the backing, lay the leaves flat in a single layer, press the second sheet down on top, then cut the whole sandwich into a shape. A maple leaf pressed flat and hung in a west-facing window is worth the entire walk on its own. October light through a leaf is very close to free magic.
7. Stick weaving
This one's for the six-and-overs and it's brilliant for a wet afternoon. Wind wool back and forth between two upright sticks to make the threads, then weave long grasses, thin stems and narrow leaves over and under through them. Finish with a wool tassel at the bottom. You get half an hour of quiet out of it and a result that's oddly impressive.
8. Pinecone bird feeders
Roll a big pinecone in vegetable suet, roll it in nut-free bird seed, tie string round the top and hang it where a cat can't reach. Use suet rather than peanut butter if any of these are going near a school, and check the seed packet for nut warnings anyway. Hang it in view of the kitchen window and the craft turns into birdwatching for the rest of the month.
The pile problem, and what we do about it
Every parent knows where this ends: a bin bag of curling, disintegrating art that nobody can throw away. Photograph everything the same afternoon, while it still looks good and the children are still proud. Then let each child pick three things to keep. The rest go on the compost heap.
It sounds brutal. It has never once caused a tantrum here, because choosing is the fun half of it. And the photographs turn out to be more useful than I expected. Last year's best leaf rubbing went into the Creation Kit, where the pattern tool turned it into a costume for a character my son built, which kept his favourite maple leaf alive well past November. The stick family starred in a bedtime story in the Dream Machine, which is free and takes about as long as brushing teeth. Children find it extremely funny to watch their own twig person saving the day.
Things I learned the hard way
PVA glue and impatient children are a bad match. Drying time is an eternity when you're four. Glue dots, masking tape and a stapler (adult-operated) get things finished while anyone still cares.
Wet leaves stain tables, so work on a flattened box. If you want to press leaves properly, put them between two sheets of kitchen paper with a mug of water in the microwave and give them twenty seconds at a time, doing it yourself. Pavement leaves are grittier and dirtier than they look. Wash hands before the post-walk snack, every time.
And don't fuss about the results. The stick person with the face drawn on its knee is still the one my daughter talks about. The craft is mostly the excuse. The walk and the hour after it are the point.
Anyway, it's raining here now and there's a half-finished pinecone owl on my kitchen table with the glue still wet. I'll finish it tomorrow, or I won't. Either way we got the walk and an hour with nothing on.