Harvest dash

Get kids moving and having fun with a harvest dash competition. Spilt your group into two teams and set them off filling a seasonal bucket with leaves and conkers. Once their buckets are full, they can be placed at your chosen ‘start’ position. You can then place two empty buckets at a distance opposite.

When you shout ‘go!’ the teams have to take it in turns to scoop out their bounty and race it over to the empty bucket. Treat it as a relay race, and only one person from each team is allowed to touch their objects or be moving at any one time. First team to fill the opposite bucket wins.

Scarecrow tag

This is a really fun game of tag to play. One person is ‘it’ and runs around tagging other players. Once tagged, they have to freeze in a fun scarecrow position. They can only move again when another player tags them. The game can go on indefinitely, swapping out who is ‘it’. If the tagger manages to freeze everyone as a scarecrow, they’re the ultimate winner!

Leaf, leaf, conker

A twist on the classic duck, duck, goose game! Get the family involved with a few rounds of leaf, leaf, conker by sitting in a circle with one person being ‘it’. We’re sure you know the rules, but if you don’t, here’s a quick summary…

Whoever is ‘it’ goes round touching each person’s head, saying ‘leaf’ until they choose the ‘conker’. That player then has to get up and race round the circle trying to tag ‘it’. ‘It’ must try and take ‘conker’s place in the circle. If tagged, they remain ‘it’ but if they manage to sit down, ‘conker’ then takes over as ‘it’ for the next round.

Stick limbo

Head into the trees and find a nice, long fallen stick. Someone can then be in charge of holding the stick out steady while other players limbo under it. Each successful round, the stick can be held a little lower to see who is the most flexible player!

The squirrel game

Spend time as a family gathering conkers on your autumnal walks. These can then come with you to the playground so you can play the squirrel game. You can go around and hide the conkers around the play area. Give each child a bag and set a timer. Whoever has gathered the most conkers at the end of your time is the winner.

Leaf score

Working together, gather up as many crispy fallen leaves as you can. Then, you can write numbers on the leaves to give them a score. Once they’re all numbered, one person can take them up to the top of the climbing frame and start throwing handfuls down. Players must catch as many as they can – no picking them up off the floor! After all the leaves have been thrown, players can add up the points on the leaves they’ve caught, highest number wins.