Montessori-inspired free autumn activities for toddlers in Fulham

By the team at Dawmouse Montessori — a Fulham Montessori nursery that has cared for local families since 1975.
Last updated 15 Oct 2026

The best autumn activities for toddlers are free and start on your next walk to the park: collect leaves, conkers and sycamore seeds, then bring them home for a few simple Montessori-inspired activities that build hand control, early maths and a love of nature. Here are four of our favourites, all things we do with the children at Dawmouse.

Transferring autumn leaves with tweezers

Transferring autumn leaves from one container to another with tweezers builds the fine motor control children later need for holding a pencil, and it only needs a few leaves from the park and two small bowls.

Invite your child to collect some leaves in the park and place them in a ramekin. On a small tray, place the leaf-filled ramekin, a second empty ramekin and a pair of tweezers. Invite your child to explore the activity, transferring the leaves from one ramekin to the other, from left to right, and then back again.

For younger children, larger tongs might be easier, so the child uses their full hand grip rather than the more refined pincer grip needed for tweezers, or use larger objects such as acorns or conkers and transfer them with a spoon. You can extend the activity by using the language of colours and the names of different leaves and seeds, and by talking about the seasonal changes and the textures of the leaves.

Cards and conkers: an autumn counting activity

Cards and conkers is a simple counting activity that teaches one-to-one correspondence, the idea that each number matches exactly one object, using the numbers 1 to 10 from a pack of playing cards and 55 conkers.

Lay the cards out in order and invite your child to place the matching number of conkers under each card, working from left (1) to right (10). The activity helps your child to visualise the quantity increasing, and it has a built-in control of error: if they run out of conkers at the end, they need to go back, count through their work, find the mistake and correct it themselves.

To extend the activity for older children, ask them to sort the conkers under each card into pairs, which introduces the idea of odd and even numbers.

Why do sycamore seeds spin like helicopters?

Sycamore seeds spin like helicopters because their two wings act like rotor blades: as a seed drops, the air rushing past its wings makes it spin, which slows its fall and lets the wind carry it further from the parent tree. Children love throwing them into the air to watch.

People often call these winged seeds “leaves”, though the flat green leaves of a sycamore don’t spin as they fall.

How to do the activity

• Collect the seeds: look on the ground or on low branches under sycamore trees in autumn to find the paired, V-shaped winged seeds.
• Make a prediction: ask your child to guess what the seed will do when it’s dropped. Will it fall straight down like a stone, or move differently?
• Throw and watch: toss the seeds gently into the air, or drop them from an outstretched arm, and watch them catch the breeze and spin.
• Test and compare: drop a seed from somewhere higher, like a low wall or the top step, to see if it travels further; compare a large seed with a smaller one to see which stays in the air longer; and try it on a calm day indoors and a breezy day outside.

Simple autumn art with leaves and sticks

Autumn art can be as simple as cutting collected leaves to make a collage, or arranging sticks into stick figures, which links beautifully to the book Stick Man.

Check out our social media accounts for reels of these activities and more ideas you can try at home, and if you’d like to see how we bring the Montessori approach to life every day, book a visit to Dawmouse.