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Creating Autumn Memories with Your Grandchild

Here are a few creative ideas you can use to create autumn memories with your grandchild:

Drama
Be falling leaves. 
“Oops! We’re falling, floating, down, down, down. Here comes the wind to blow us farther and faster. Now let’s be leaves blown along the ground….”

Places to Go

• hazelnut farm
• apple farm (pick apples)
• salmon spawning ground
• pumpkin patch
• turkey farm
• corn maze
• spot to fly kites

Crafts

• Make bark rubbings by holding up a white piece of paper against a tree trunk and rubbing against it with a crayon.
  
  
• Collect leaves, press and make placemats.
  
  
• Create cards with leaves placed in the shape of fish. Use a simple leaf as the main body, cut a small v-shape at one end for a mouth, and place a lobed leaf like a maple behind the main body for the fins and tails. Add a bead for an eye.
  
  
• Make seed mosaics. Draw a simple figure like a bird on a tree branch and fill in with various seeds.
  
  
• Take stalks of oats and cover each kernel with various colored aluminum paper. Wrappers around toffee candies make ideal sizes to work with. Place a number of decorated stalks in a vase.
  
  
• Make bird feeders out of gourds.
  
  
• Make pine sachets by breaking needles into pieces and then sewing them into sachets.
  
  
• Make corn cob pipes like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
  
  
• Create small baskets by sticking burrs together and filling with dried flowers.
  
  
• Make corn husk doll.

Special Activities

• Apple Party
  Make candied or caramel apples; bake or cook anything involving apples like cookies, pie, cobblers, apple butter; make apple cider; dry apples.
  
  
• Pumpkin Party
  Make pumpkin cookies, pie, muffins, bread. Roast pumpkin seeds. Play “Pin the Nose on the Pumpkin” and go for a pumpkin seed hunt (seeds should be hidden earlier). For party activities wear orange, decorate pumpkin cookies, carve pumpkins or draw faces on pumpkins with felt pens. Turn out the lights and watch the pumpkins glow in the dark.
  
  
• Hallelujah Party (instead of a Halloween party)
  Have guests come dressed as Bible characters, play Bible trivia games, etc. If you like, eat foods people in Bible times would have eaten.
  
  
• Apple Roast
  Place the apple on a stick and roast over an open fire until hot and juicy.

Long Distance Grandparenting

• Send dried autumn leaves in the mail to your grandchild.

Related Reading:
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Anne Feentsra has been married for 20 years and has home schooled all four of her children. She has lead several bible study programs in her church and enjoys Creative Memories scrap booking, cooking, entertaining and using their home for hospitality. Anne is responsible for the Effective Grandparenting articles on this website.