Autumn Sensory Table - The Imagination Tree

Create an Autumn sensory table using natural materials for kids to explore the colours, textures of the season up close.

We, like I’m sure you have too, have been collecting leaves and conkers (buckeyes) by the armful as we go out on numerous Autumn walks to the park and woods recently. What to do with all of these treasures is sometimes less obvious, especially once we have already done lots of leaf painting and crafts!

Last year we set up an Autumn Nature Discovery Table which was gorgeous and really allowed them to examine the materials up close and to sketch them in little drawing books.

This year I brought our Step 2 water table in from the garden, lined it with some autumnal coloured material and tipped all of our growing collection into it. [This water table has been absolutely brilliant for water play, sand toys and various sensory tables and small world play scenes over the years! If you don’t have one I genuinely recommend getting one!]

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With the pine cones we placed a magnifying glass and some sticks and twigs of differing sizes.

Near the conkers (buckeyes) we placed some small gardening pots and a tea strainer, for moving and counting them into and out of. They always love to have containers and some means of transporting small items in all sensory tables.

Then onto a pipe cleaner I threaded some fabulous paint chip cards I picked up at the hardware store which already have little “windows” cut into them, making them great for trying to match colours to! These went in the section with all of the multi-coloured leaves, and they used it to try and find the closest resembling colours amongst them.

This table suited Miss 2 and 4 to play at together and Miss 6 loved looking through it too as an after school activity.

You could extend this by adding in some Autumn themed nature books or stories, some sketch pads and pencils or some paper and crayons for making rubbings.