Craft ideas for 4-year-olds to try in autumn! Enjoy creative activities with seasonal motifs and events.
In autumn, when the heat eases and it becomes more comfortable, children grow even more in mind and body and become more dependable.
Four-year-olds may be starting to develop an awareness that they’ll soon be the oldest class.
Autumn also brings seasonal motifs and various events that children are surely looking forward to.
We’d love to incorporate these into craft ideas.
So this time, we’ve gathered craft ideas perfect for autumn.
We’re introducing ideas well-suited for four-year-olds, so please use them as a reference.
Because the things children make are treated as works, we use the term “seisaku (制作)” in the text.
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Craft ideas for 4-year-olds to try in autumn! Enjoy creative activities with seasonal motifs and events (1–10)
Pop-up Mushroom
This is a project for making unique pop-up mushrooms! Create the mushroom cap with origami and attach it to the stem piece.
Simply folding the cap from origami paper gives it more dimension compared to cutting it from construction paper.
Once you’ve finished the mushroom by adding stickers or drawing a face with crayons, fix a spring piece—made by accordion-folding construction paper—to the back of the mushroom.
Then attach the spring to a backing sheet, and add motifs like fallen leaves or acorns in the empty space.
You’ll have a fall-themed craft that’s fun to shake or pull to make the mushroom pop out.
Cute 3D Squirrel Made from a Toilet Paper Roll Core
This is a cute, three-dimensional squirrel craft made using toilet paper rolls! Cut a roll in half and cover each half with brown origami paper that’s also been cut in half.
Make the large tail and cute ear pieces by cutting colored construction paper; wrap the tail around a thin tube like a glue stick to give it a gentle curve.
Glue the two roll halves together along their sides, attach the tail piece to the back side, and the ear pieces to the top of the front.
Draw eyes and a nose on the front, and your chubby, adorable squirrel is complete!
Thank You Medal
Here’s an idea for making a medal out of a paper cup.
It’s perfect for Respect for the Aged Day in September or Labor Thanksgiving Day in November.
First, cut the cup from the rim down toward the bottom into eight equal sections.
Once cut, press the sections outward to open them up into a flower shape.
Next, fold each of the eight flaps slightly inward at a diagonal and secure them with tape.
This will create a medal shape.
Then decorate it with crayons, stickers, or washi tape, attach a string, and you’re done.
Write a message you want to convey—like “Thank you”—on the bottom part and give it as a gift.
Craft ideas for 4-year-olds to try in autumn! Enjoy craft activities with seasonal motifs and events (11–20)
[Vegetable Stamps] Mushroom
Let’s try drawing mushroom patterns using vegetable stamps, which let you enjoy the unique designs created by cross-sections of vegetables! If you want to make the most of the vegetables themselves, it’s recommended to use ones with distinctive cross-sectional patterns, such as lotus root or okra.
Just dab on some paint and stamp away, and unique patterns that can’t be achieved by hand-drawing will appear.
If you grow vegetables at your school or center, it’s also great to use your harvests for this activity.
While chatting about things like, “Autumn is the season when we can harvest lots of delicious vegetables!”, you can enjoy crafting and perhaps spark interest in vegetables—even among kids who tend to be picky eaters.
hungry squirrel
This is a squirrel-themed trinket box that’s perfect for holding acorns you found outside! On a sheet of colored construction paper folded in half, draw templates for the squirrel’s face, hands, and tail parts.
Have the children cut out the parts along the outlines.
Next, the teacher uses a craft knife to cut an opening in the center of a deep paper plate to serve as the mouth of the container, then places it upside down and tapes it to a flat paper plate to secure it.
Finally, avoiding the opening, attach the squirrel parts and the fallen leaves cut from construction paper.
Your adorable trinket box—clutched by a hungry little squirrel—is complete.
Handmade pampas grass
Let’s try making pampas grass—one of the motifs that evokes autumn—by hand using colored construction paper.
Take a rectangular sheet and make fine cuts with scissors, leaving a margin so it doesn’t fall apart, then roll it to form the feathery head.
For the stem, roll another piece without making any cuts and secure it with cellophane tape.
Attach the head to the stem, then place it into a tube made by wrapping colored paper around a toilet paper core.
Paired with the moon and rice dumplings, you’ll have pampas grass that’s perfect for the Harvest Moon (Jūgoya)!
Hedgehog made of colored paper
This is a hedgehog craft that uses thinly cut colored paper to represent its spines! First, use scissors to cut colored paper into strips of suitable thickness.
Apply double-sided tape to the backing paper that will become the hedgehog’s back, then randomly stick on the pre-cut colored paper strips.
Attach the finished back piece to the body piece, and draw the eyes, nose, and ears with crayons to complete the hedgehog—an animal that often appears in picture books and is loved by many! When using scissors, be sure to provide careful support so that children’s hands holding the paper do not come into contact with the blades.