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...

How does your garden grow? #KidsGrowWild

Both my children love spending time outside and adore helping with the gardening so when I saw the chance to take part in the #kidsgowild challenge with Britmums I couldn't say no!

Growing what we eat

Although we don't currently have our own garden as such, we make up for it with plenty of pots and tubs in our back yard, helping out with the incredible edible community vegetable beds in the park at the end of our road and spending lots of time in the grandparent's garden which is just round the corner.

I love growing edibles as it helps to show my children where their food comes from and understand the world around them, it's also a great way of saving money by growing organic fruit and veg ourselves!

Little Green Fingers

We were sent a lovely box full of children's gardening products including a green watering can that was just the right size for little hands, a small trowel and fork, gloves to keeps little hands clean and some lovely seeds to grow.

We were lucky enough to have some 'gardening weather' the weekend that the package arrived so off we went round to Gran's to have some fun in the garden....

As I mentioned my two green fingered little monsters are not new to gardening so I pretty much let them get on with it! The liked the picture of the sunflowers so chose a pot and planted a couple each.

Sensory Play

Gardening is Sensory play at its best, there are so many different textures to feel and discover, shapes and colours to explore and scents to experience. My two year old loved sitting barefoot on the grass digging her hand's deep into the compost! (the gloves didn't stay on long!) The water spilt and soaked her dress but she giggled and splashed with it, then started to purposely water her feet, while Ben chortled away and asked it if would make her grow big like the seeds.

It wasn't long before we were all dripping wet in the sunny garden, but we were still smiling, what fun!

Despite the distractions they both really enjoyed planting their seeds, and have been watching them grow over the last few weeks, I wonder if we will have prize winning sunflowers in time for the local shows? I have the tape measure at the ready!

We will update you soon!


This post is an entry for BritMums’ #KidsGrowWild Challenge. We were sent a box of gardening products worth £25 to enable us to take part.

97/365 Sensory Play with Beads...

Today we played with coloured wooden beads. Ben who is 5 struggles with his fine motor skills as he is hyper-mobile so as well as having fun, practicing threading is really good for for his development. Playing with the brightly coloured and different shaped beads was also great sensory play for Elizabeth who is two, she was really good at identifying the colours and making patterns with them.