Conker crafts and activities

It’s conker season! September and October is when they ripen and fall from the trees, so it’s the perfect time to find them.  Head out to your local horse chestnut tree and get collecting for our top conker crafts and activities.

Conker worm

1. Use a hammer and nail to carefully make holes in some conkers.
2. Thread some string through the holes and tie it off at both ends.
3. Paint a pair of eyes and a smiley face on the first conker and voila! You have a conker worm.

Make a conker necklace

This is similar to the conker worm craft, except you tie the string together at the end. Make sure you choose the shiniest conkers, or you could even paint them lots of bright colours.

Do a conker painting

This is a lovely, tactile activity to do with youngsters.

1. Place a piece of paper at the bottom of a cardboard box.
2. Squeeze a few blobs of brightly-coloured paint on the paper. Red, yellow and orange makes a vibrant autumnal painting.
3. Add your conkers and encourage youngsters to roll them around the box to make a swirly pattern.
4. Experiment with different colours, or try other natural items like pine cones.

Conker models

Collect some conkers of all shapes and sizes. Be sure to pick up a few of the spiky conker cases as well, but be careful – they are very prickly.

To make a person, choose a big conker for the body, a medium one for the head and two small ones for the feet. Connect them using cocktail sticks which will double up as arms, legs and a neck. To finish, top it off with a handsome conker-case hat. You could even paint on a face.

A well as people, try making animals or make-believe creatures. The only limit is your imagination!

Conker maths

Make homework fun with handful of conkers! Shiny, round conkers are a brilliant tool for practising counting and numeracy and you can use them in all sorts of ways.

• Encourage your children to sort their conkers from smallest to largest.
• Guess the heaviest and lightest conkers, then weigh them to see if your predictions are correct. Older kids could even work out the average weight.
• Help youngsters learn about shapes by making circles, squares and triangles with conkers. Count up how many conkers you used for each shape.
• Predict how many conkers you can fit in a jam jar, then fill it up to see who was closest.