Elise’s fall bucket list
I. Love. Summer. It’s been amazing! But ohhhhhh, my gosh, my absolute favorite season is AUTUMN. I adore fall cooking and baking, I love all the fall activities! So many of my favorite read alouds are fall books! I can wear my babies without drowning us both in my sweat…so many reasons to love fall!
Autumn has always been my favorite season to teach, no matter what age I’m educating. Even though I teach this herd of tiny humans year-round now, fall still seems like a fresh start. I’m always super motivated to get organized, to plan all the things, and to completely immerse myself and my students in AUTUMN. For whatever reason (I guess it’s teacher-brain? Old habits die hard?), I always have renewed energy in the fall and am hyper-focused on my teaching.
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There are a million and one fall-themed things you can do with your kiddos, but these are the ones we love repeating year after year. They’re also the ones that fit the research base I have assembled for you the best - I can vouch that each and every one of these ideas will benefit your kids in multiple ways.
Don’t feel the need to be *too* busy though. Even though I’m presenting you with this big, long, shiny list of Fall Activities…don’t buy into it *too* much. Pick the ones that seem easy and fun for your family or your students. Then you can allow for plenty of time to hang out outside and take walks and soak up the change of season. Talk with your children about the signs of the season that you see; let them see you enjoying it.
I’ll be posting on social media individually about most of these ideas as we do them in real time. When I do, I’ll also share bits and pieces of the developmental benefits and underlying research that supports my choices of activities.
Apples and toothpicks: Cut up some apples, give them some toothpicks, and let them go to town building! This is an awesome engineering project, provides some multisensory play, and gives them such a creative outlet! You can also squeeze in some geometry by making 2D and 3D shapes. There’s also the added element of risk assessment as they learn to manage those sharp toothpick ends!
Apple sink and float: I filled up a big empty storage bin with water, had them make predictions about whether apples sink or float…and then experiment away! I gave them apples, spoons, ladles, and tongs. They were engaged with this exploration for an entire morning. Pick a warm day (obvi!) and do it outside!
Apple prints - This can be done so many ways, and it can be geared toward a variety or combination of objectives. It’s as simple as cutting apples in half, dipping them in paint, and using them as stamps. It can be purely process art. You might make a number line, or you could combine it with a book like Ten Apples Up On Top. With this story, one year I printed pictures of each child and they made their ten apples up on top. (That last one is the very opposite of process art, but they loved it and it involved SO many important skills - cutting, patterning, writing numerals, ordering…!)
Apple sensory exploration - Compare and contrast apple color, size, taste, shape… apples come in such a great variety and it’s so fun to celebrate and explore that! I like to get a Granny Smith apple, a Golden Delicious, a Gala, a Honeycrisp…they’re all really different. With older children you can practice taking some written observations and charting and graphing, but with toddlers and preschoolers you can just enjoy the experience and conversation.
Make applesauce - We do this every year as a family and with whatever littles I happen to be teaching that year. We use this awesome peeler/slicer/corer tool, and it creates the coolest, big, long strings of apple skin and also these nifty spirals of apple flesh. The act of turning the tool’s handle is a big part of the experience, as well. We make it in a crockpot so we can go about our day and just enjoy the yummy smell!
Go apple picking - Obviously it’s faster and easier to order apples in your grocery order and have them neatly delivered to your trunk. (Am I the only one who basically refuses to go into the grocery store with young children…?) But then you miss the whole experience, as well as the teachable moments of learning where our food comes from and how it grows. There’s nothing quite like picking your own apples (and then making them into so many yummy treats!). Also, you can usually con a spouse, a grandparent or a friend into going along, which makes the field trip less of a challenge.
Go to the pumpkin patch - Also check your local pumpkin patches to see when they are having festivals with lots going on! It’s so worth it to plan your trip for a day like that; you get so much more out of it! Climb on those hay bales and get lost in that corn maze and pet those cows! Wander out in that pumpkin patch and try and lug back the biggest pumpkins you can find. If you live in the south like we used to, try not to sweat to death or get heatstroke.
Seed corn sensory play - This is a HUGE hit! A giant bag of seed corn is cheap, and every kid I’ve ever met loves playing in it. Pour it in a bin or plastic swimming pool. The calming and regulating effects of good sensory play are always evident after a session with the corn - it really provides that sensory input many children are seeking. You can hide things in it, give them shovels and measuring cups and scoops…or give them nothing and watch them run their hands through it and scoop it into mountains or climb right into it to get the full effect. My only warning is that they’ll be a bit dusty afterward, but that’s a super minor tradeoff.
Indian corn roller painting - Indian corn is easy to find at this time of year, so we dip it in tempera paint and roll it over paper! This requires basically zero prep and is great process art. They can experiment with using more or less paint, applying more or less pressure as they roll…this has historically been a very engaging activity, which tells me that it’s meeting some need, even if it’s hard to identify.
Pumpkin geoboards - This is one of my favorite things to do with pumpkins! We used this as an opportunity to empty out pumpkin guts because they always love that. It’s the ultimate fall sensory experience. (You wouldn’t have to remove the guts, though. You could do this with whole pumpkins.) Then, your kids get to hammer little nails into their pumpkins. I recommend using wooden hammers (like from this toy workbench by Melissa and Doug which is a HUGE hit at our house) or mallets or something non-thumb-breaking. They LOVE to do this part. When they’ve hammered nails to their hearts’ content, they get to wrap yarn around those nails to create shapes. Any color, any shapes, any number or pattern of nails. These all turned out so uniquely!
Pumpkin fairy house with legos - This will be repeated by popular request at my house this year. This is not as great for toddlers but GREAT for the 4(ish) and up crowd. The kids have to to measure before they cut, and then make little shapes into which they put lego doors and windows. The sky’s the limit here - a fairy house can look like literally anything. Last year, ours had a front porch and steps and window boxes with flowers. If you’re really up for some magic, sprinkle a little glitter in there with a flower blossom for your child to find the next morning. They’ll be thrilled that the fairies used their house!
Pumpkin tunnel for toy cars - This is as simple as it sounds: empty a pumpkin (again with that pumpkin guts sensory play!), cut a tunnel through it, put a length of matchbox car track through there and let your kids race their cars through it! It’s messy but entirely washable when they’re done.
Jump in the leaves - This is a must-do. Pile them up, jump in them, throw them in the air, stomp on them…there’s nothing quite like the crunch of a bunch of fall leaves.
Leaf art - There are so many options here. Use the leaves to paint a paper or a pumpkin, paint ON the leaves, do crayon rubbings, make a collage, graph them (okay fine that’s math, not art)...use your imagination. Better yet, let your kids use theirs.
Build with cranberries and toothpicks - This is similar to building with marshmallows and toothpicks, but I find the cranberries to be sturdier, which is great for building 3D shapes. We’ve even built bridges with cranberries and toothpicks! It’s also definitely worth using this as an opportunity to learn how cranberries grow and are harvested - it’s unique and interesting!
Sunflower seed harvest - If you can get your hands on a great big giant sunflower head in the fall, this is awesome! (And if not, you should totally plant some next spring!) When they are ripe, it’s the greatest, most satisfying job ever to pick all the seeds out of the sunflower head. My babies love handling the sunflower heads, my toddlers and preschoolers (and the older neighbor kids) love to pull the seeds out. You can end up with quite a pile of seeds! Roast them and eat them, plant them, make art with them…just enjoy them!
Just to reiterate, you don’t have to do all of these things. Honestly you probably shouldn’t try. Take time to just exist in nature in autumn. Light that fall candle and watch the way the sunlight falls across the floor. Do the things that sound right for your family and don’t be too busy. It should be fun.
The best part about so many of these is that they can be done OUTSIDE! Take some fall books right out with you and just live your whole autumn outside. You’ll have zero regrets.