The fall season has arrived and with it colder weather and shorter days. It is a big change for summer-loving people (like our family).
To be honest, I only started to fully enjoy and appreciate the fall season as an adult. I love its colors and the coziness of our home when it’s raining outside.
There are so many things you can do with your children and so many things they can learn. So I decided to share some of our favorite:
And we’ve also prepared some free fall-themed printables at the end of the post.
Let’s get started.
Outdoor fall activities
The best thing we can do for our children is to take them outside. It helps them to naturally develop gross motor skills (such as running, walking, jumping, swinging).
It also improves their overall health, immunity, and mood, and teaches them to have an appreciation for the environment while involving all their senses.
We enjoy taking a walk in the neighborhood, sometimes wandering into the close forest and discovering how nature slowly prepares for winter.
Remember, there’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing 🙂
Apple picking, harvesting
Maria Montessori observed that toddlers love helping in the garden. Furthermore, she noticed that quite often, they prefer harvesting to planting or taking care of flowers.
If possible, try involving your children in harvesting: collecting the vegetables, picking apples and other fruits, and putting them in the basket or moving them from one place to another (a perfect tool for this is a Radio Flyer Wagon).
If you don’t have your own garden, you can visit a local farm and participate in a “pick-your-own” harvesting.
Other activities you can do with toddlers in a fall garden include:
- opening dried beans and sorting them into different bowls (according to their color or size)
- garden cleaning and weeding
- raking and picking up leaves (check out this kids leaf rake)
Picking leaves, pines, acorns, …
Children love picking up small things from the ground.
During the fall season, you can move their focus from dirt to something else – leaves, pines, acorns. You can look for the most beautiful ones, for the green ones, or the yellow ones. You can talk about different shapes and colors and learn what tree they belong to.
You can take the most beautiful ones home and use them for different arts and crafts activities, for decoration, or for a sensory bin.
Kite flying
What is the best and most evergreen activity you can do in the fall?
Kite flying!
Whether you make your own kite or buy one, it is always fun. Children love chasing kites and running with it in the wind. And the parents are usually equally excited!
Here are some great kites from Amazon:
Indoor fall activities
Of course, as the days become shorter and colder, we spend more time indoors.
Whenever we cannot go outside but our daughter seems to have excessive energy, we know our Pikler triangle will have a huge success.
And there are many other great fall-related activities you can do at home. Here are some of them.
Arts and crafts with leaves
There are so many activities you can do with leaves.
Here are 3 of our favorites:
- Leaf rubbings – Place paper over a leaf and rub the side of a crayon or an oil pastel gently on the area over the leaf. (Here’s a handy how-to guide)
- Leaf printing – Apply some paint (acrylics worked best for us) to the back of the leaf and press onto the paper.
- Tree collage – Paint a tree without leaves (trunk and branches) on a piece of paper and glue some real small leaves around.
Fall decorations
The Montessori approach puts a lot of emphasis on beauty.
One of our favorite activities is to create our own decorations. All you need is a little vase where you’ll arrange the leaves you found outside. It is always beautiful.
You can add some acorns and pines (I recommend washing them thoroughly and drying them) and create a nice little fall-themed table decoration.
Baking and cooking
Last but not least, our favorite activity has become baking and cooking. Thanks to the learning tower, I now have a little helper in the kitchen.
I recommend this great recipe for a kid-friendly pumpkin “latte”.
Toy ideas
Here are our favorite fall-related Montessori-friendly toys:
Book ideas
Here are our favorite fall-related Montessori-friendly books:
Free fall-related printables
Last but not least, we have created some fall-related printables you can download for free. Enjoy 🙂
Chestnut Counting 1-20 (Count & Clip)
Bonus: Fall song
We love to sing this song when we are outside!
