Autumn…..we love it. Conkers…..great old fashioned childhood fun!
The other week we went conker hunting , the children loved it. I promised them we could do some conker crafts and that I would show them how to play conkers.
Today, we have come to their Nana and Grandads for a few days, so I thought it was a good opportunity to introduce some conker fun. Here’s what we did:
Conker Caterpillars
We drilled holes in the conkers, then threaded them onto a pipe cleaner (great hand eye coordination exercise). We tied a knot each end of the pipe cleaner, wound another pipe cleaner round one end for the antenna and stuck stickers on for the eyes.
The children enjoyed this so much, they wanted to make something else…….
Conker people
We then went on to make conker people. We twisted two pipe cleaners together to make a body and legs, threaded the conkers onto them. We added another pipe cleaner for the arms and threaded more conkers before adding a head. We stuck googly eyes on and tied some string to make it a bit puppet like.
The children had loads of fun making these, I then thought it was time to introduce the game of conkers……
Game of conkers
I grew up playing conkers every autumn. Even though my children are perhaps a little young for conker games, I wanted to show them how you can take something from nature and make it into a game.
We threaded our conkers onto string and tied a knot at the end. I showed them and explained how you need to hit the other persons conker, til it breaks.
I then proceeded to have fun playing a game against my mum. The children watched excitedly. They thought it was hilarious how we kept missing each others conkers, then when we did finally manage to hit them, the children fell about laughing! We weren’t very good at the game, but it was great fun and brought back a lot of happy memories.
The children wanted to have a go, so we helped them. BB loved it. They didn’t manage to break any conkers, but had a lot of fun trying.
I love conkers and I think you can see from the photos, my children now love conkers too. I find it fantastic, the way you can enjoy getting out in the fresh air, collecting nature, then bring it back home and create lots of great crafts and have loads of fun playing games with lots of laughter and giggles.