20 ways to play with conkers

We get tagged in some wonderful ways to play with conkers and so we wanted to share these with you in this blog post.

Did you know that Conkers is a traditional children's game in Great Britain and Ireland played using the seeds of horse chestnut trees—the name 'conker' is also applied to the seed and to the tree itself.

The simple activity of collecting conkers is a great outdoor experience for children. Seeing them in the trees above and the ones that have fallen to the ground, peeping out from their spikey shells.

Such beautiful shiny brown natural treasures to collect and play with. String them up to play conkers or use them as loose parts for play and learn activities. Draw faces, numbers and letters on them, count them, sort them and add them to your autumn small world play.

20 ways to play with conkers

Autumn walks to collect conkers

2. String them to play the classic game of conkers

3. Natural loose parts treasures - why not store them in our potions jars?

4. Count them using our branch number line, maths boats and wooden five and ten frames

5. Draw faces on your conkers

6. Write numbers and letters on them

7. Sorting - by size using our ascending sorting tray

8. Small World Play in a tray

9. Roll them down natural bamboo guttering

10. Draw them or roll them in paint in a tray

11. Use conkers as ingredients in your mud kitchen

12. Use them in Tray play

13. Display them on our array tray to discuss nature

14. Add them to autumn potions

15. Make Conker soup

16. Bake a conker mud pie

17, Make a Conker rainbow on our wooden rainbow maker

18. Discovery and investigation - discuss the stages of a conker

19. Use them to talk about seasons

20. Collections - collect them and use them to ward of spiders!

21. Place conkers on our handwriting boards to trace the lines

Fascinating facts you may not know about conkers:

Conkers are the fruit of horse chestnut trees.
Conkers release a chemical that spiders hate and can stop them from entering your home.
Horse chestnut trees originally came from Albania and Greece.
The first-ever recorded game of conkers took place in 1848.

We hope that you have found this blog post useful with lots of ways to play with conkers for Ideas and inspiration. Please let us know if you have a favourite that is not on this list.