Stuff a lunch size brown paper bag with crumpled paper to make it round. Use a rubber band or twist tie to close the top and then wrap paper tape around the top to make a stem. Sit the kids down on a protected surface with washable poster paints and help them paint the pumpkins orange and the stems green. Let the pumpkins dry. Cut out a leaf from green construction paper and print the child's name on it. Cut out triangle eyes and grinning mouths from felt or black construction paper. Help the kids glue their leaf names to the stem of the pumpkin and the eyes and grins to its "head."
Line up large pictures of zoo animals around the room and give each child a piece of cardboard or stiff paper. Set out big containers of oversize pre-cut geometric shapes. Talk about the animals and then demonstrate how to make a monkey from a triangle body, a circle head and an arc tail. Or make a lion from a big rectangle, a triangle head and some short rectangle legs. Keep the models simple. Let the kids make their own animals by choosing shapes from the bins and gluing them to their oak tag sheets. Label the animal for each child. Allow each artist to explain their creation when they are through and help out by prompting with questions such as where do monkeys live? And what is the longest part of the giraffe? Little ones who aren't big talkers can just hold up the poster while you comment on the artist's choices. Lead the class in making the animal sound at the end of each presentation.
A great gift for grandma is a pottery workshop plate. Let the young genius artist paint the plate with glazes. Supervise this very closely as glaze is not edible and you don't want the mess of major spills. Pour some glaze on a paper plate --- very thin coating -- press the child's hand in the glaze and then press the hand print onto the painted plate. Pick it up a week later with the fab colors and original hand print fired to perfection. Check ahead to be sure the pottery shop welcomes young children accompanied by a parent. Or get together with a few toddler parents and book the shop for an hour during a slow time of day.
Take a woods walk or a garden walk and collect pretty fall leaves. Each child should have a small container or sack to place leaves in --- preferably one that won't smush them. Back at home or in the classroom, glue the leaves to construction paper and "sign" the autumn art. Laminate the artworks to serve as snack time placemats.