Fall Into Fun: Ten Activities For The Season

The leaves are changing, the air is crisp and cool, and all things pumpkin are beginning to appear! Fall is here and it’s time to celebrate the season with fun and engaging activities. Here are ten you can do with your class or the entire family.

1. Visit a Pumpkin Patch

Let your little ones explore a farm surrounded by pumpkins. In addition to taking a pumpkin home, learn about agriculture and the animals on the farm, go on a hayride, and get lost in a corn maze. Once your family and pumpkins make it home, conduct fun science experiments like this one by Preschool Powol Packets. Find a farm near you using 365 Atlanta Family’s list of top rated pumpkin patches in the Atlanta area. 

2. Write for the Weather

Writing improves communication skills, encourages creativity and exploration, and helps kids review recently learned material. Take a look at this list of fall writing prompts that will inspire children to write stories from an apple’s point of view or about being teleported to another universe via a corn maze.

 3. Apples and Activities

The harvest season for delicious apples usually begins in September and ends around early October. Visit one of the state’s orchards to pick and learn about harvesting apples. Carry some of these delicious fruits home for some fun apple-themed projects. For a list of Georgia apple orchards, click here.

4. Sensing Fall

Capture the season in a container by constructing fall sensory bottles. Ask kids what kinds of things they think about when they hear the word 'fall' and write them down. Some things that may be mentioned are pumpkins, leaves, or candy. Then, head to the store and buy small representations of their selections to place in bottles filled with water. Add fall colored glitter for a bit more sparkle.

5. Don’t “Leaf” Me Behind

Take students on a nature walk around the school with bags and have them collect different types of leaves. Once you return to the classroom, place them in small groups and encourage them to categorize the leaves using their own criteria. Lastly, have them take a large sheet of divided grid paper, glue their categories on the paper vertically, and explain how they sorted them. 

6. Autumn Content Collection

Discovery Education has an Autumn Content Collection filled with videos, writing prompts, and songs about the seasons for students of all ages. One informative video describes how the earth’s tilt creates seasons and changes the length of days throughout the year. The featured lesson starters and instructional strategies also bolster what students learn with the selected materials. Make sure you sign up for your free account if you are a Georgia educator! Email us at education@gpb.org for more information.

7. Sugary Science

The end of October yields a bevy of candy that will have children bouncing off of the walls. To reduce the amount of sugar consumption, design captivating science experiments with leftover Halloween treats that require critical thinking and problem solving. Kids Activity Blog has an awesome candy chromatography experiment that helps children discover the colors that make up the appearance of different types of candies.  

8. Finding Foliage

This math and science lesson from Education World assists students with inputting data, making determinations based on that data, and graphing changes over time. In it, students track foliage transformation in five locations and infer the best time to visit those places to observe peak color brilliance. 

9. Little Measurements

Cooking is a great way to teach kids about measurements and temperature. Gather a combination of recipes that incorporate seasonal foods and begin baking them with your children. You can make fresh apple cider using the apples you picked from the local apple orchard or delicious pumpkin pies from the gigantic pumpkin you acquired at the pumpkin patch.

10. Fall Sing-A-Longs 

Sing songs that celebrate and teach about fall characteristics. Once your students have learned one or two songs, make fun musical instruments using apple seeds, beans, cups, and paper plates. Play them while you belt out the songs learned about fall.