Five Fun Things to do with Conkers...

So it's officially Autumn! The leaves are beautiful shades of brown and the horse chestnuts are falling from the trees...

Nothing feels more autumnal to me than wrapping up warm and going on a hunt for conkers! My children were very excited to discover the huge horse chestnut tree (or Aesculus hippocastanum if you want to get all latin...) at the end of their grandparent's road. They set about filling their arms with a collection of shiny conkers from the same tree that their Daddy would have twenty odd years earlier. Hey who am I kidding? Daddy and I joined in too of course! I'm a big kid at a heart and I couldn't resist routing through the crisp amber leaves that covered the pavement to join the search...

A 'butterfly' shaped conker shell we found!

Collecting the conkers is great fun and a good excuse to get your children outside for some fresh air in the colder weather but it doesn't stop there! There are lots of different things that you can do with your conker collections from crafts to educational games. I've brought together my five favourite conker activities...

1. Play Conkers! 

Be traditional, choose your strongest looking conkers, make a hole, thread through some string or an old shoelace and challenge your bestie (or Daddy!) to a good old game of conkers! Red Ted Art has a great video to show you how to play

2. Science experiments!

Did you know that conkers contain a build up of steam? If you pierce them you can see this steam release or if you throw a conker on to  camp fire (adult supervision required, obviously!) then the build up will cause it to explode? There are lots of other was to experiment with conkers too, Science Sparks has a great experiment to find out how to make the strongest conker.

3. Sensory and Maths Play!

This is a great one for younger children who love to help collect up the conkers but are a little too young to play with them in the traditional way. Being so solid, shiny and of varying shapes they are ideal for sensory play. Thread them on strings to make 'worms' increasing in size by one and use them to help your children with counting. My Little 3 and Me have some great Baby and Toddler conker play ideas.

4. Make Halloween or Christmas Decorations!

It's always fun to get crafty with something you've found outside and conkers make an ideal base for a simple hanging decoration. Add some googly eyes and black or silver pipe cleaners to make a spider ideal for getting in the Halloween theme. Or why not get glittery and make a sparkly conker bauble and maybe get your child to paint their initial on it? Or add some felt and cotton wool to make a Santa head?

5. Painting with Conkers

  Conkers are so shiny, they are ideal for getting messy with paint! This is a fun messy play activity for children of all ages! There are a few great ways to paint with conkers and I love how The Imagination Tree uses Rolling Conker Art to make gorgeous swirling patterns on paper that would be ideal for wrapping up gifts!

Finally, this isn't an activity but something I have just learnt... Did you know that Conkers contain a chemical that spiders hate? Pop a few bowls of conkers in the corners of your rooms and you may prevent those creepy crawlies coming in to your house! You could evening string them up and hang them from your windows, pretty and practical!

If you are looking for even more ideas using conkers check out this post at From Little Things and don't forget Pinterest, I love this Autumn Activities board from This Day I love.


What do you do with conkers? I'd love to hear your ideas...

Christmas Crafts and Crackers!

As a family we love crafting, and Christmas is the perfect time to get Crafty! Over the years we have added to our collection of Christmas decorations with quite a few homemade items, from salt dough Santas to paper lanterns and much more but this year I was a bit slow off the mark and hadn't planned anything until the lovely folks at Cartridge Save contacted me to tell me about their great Free Christmas Printables!

They sent us us a lovely box of crafty bits along with copies of the six downloadable guides, which made my children's day and inspired us to get creative!

Christmas Paper Wreath

At the weekend my three year old daughter and I decided to make the Christmas Paper Wreath...

• We started by getting together a selection of Red and Green card and some festive wrapping paper and using the provided templates to trace out lots of leaves which I then cut out. Elizabeth thought this was great fun and enjoyed grabbing handfuls of paper leaves and throwing them over her head!! 

• While it was raining paper leaves, I cut a large ring shape out of a cardboard box and got out the glue stick...

• Then came the messy bit! We picked up the fallen leaves and started sticking them around the cardboard, carefully layering them around the ring

• As a finishing touch we added a bow made from lovely festive ribbon and hung it up on the wall!

• Tada, a lovely decoration that will brighten up the doorway and will be treasured for Christmas's to come.

This was a fun activity that was really simple and ideal for getting creative with younger children.

Homemade Christmas Crackers

Yesterday after school we got the craft box out again and decided to make some crackers!

We have been saving our toilet rolls ready to have some 'cracking' crafty fun!

We started by cutting the card down to size (20cm x 30cm)

I then played the 'Adult' and created a tear line by scoring with scissors 10 cm into each side of the card, I found this quite tricky and really dependent on the type of card, I had to be careful not to  rip the card all the way through.

I added in one of the cracker snaps that we had been sent (you can buy these in craft shops)  and secured with some glue.

It was time to get out the toilet rolls (I have to say that I was impressed with how excited the children were that they got to play wit 'rubbish!')

We cut one of the rolls in half and placed them along the paper ready to glue into place and roll up 

( Top Tip! - After our first attempt I cut an extra couple of inches off each piece of toilet roll, I found this makes it easier later on when twisting the ends )

After rolling up and twisting one end we popped a special treat in each cracker, (I used a snowman chocolate and a joke that Ben helped me write!) then twisted the other end,

Finally came the really fun part... Decorating!!

Ben went for pretty wooden stars and a Christmas pudding sticker that he arranged into a smiley face but Elizabeth had seen the mini white pom poms and insisted on making a Snowman! We cut a snowman shape from card which she covered in glue and covered in the pom poms we then made a hat and scarf by cutting up bits of wool. It's very basic but Elizabeth was so proud of it and I think he's rather cute! The finished touch was added by wrapping some ribbon round each end of the cracker...

These beautiful crackers now have pride of place on our tree and my two little monsters are looking forward to pulling them on Christmas day! 

Have you been crafty this Christmas? Don't forget you can download FREE printable guides for both these crafts and four more including Angels, Tree decorations, cards and an advent calender here.....http://www.cartridgesave.co.uk/christmas

We were sent some crafty bits and have entered this post into the cartridgesave.co.uk challenge to win £500-worth of vouchers before Christmas