It’s pumpkin spice season! Everybody loves the coziness, the orange hues, and the falling leaves. Let’s look at some fun activities for your students that can be done in the classroom this autumn.
Mindful Fall Activities
How does taking a breather with mindful nature walks sound? Fall is perfect for slowing down and soaking in those beautiful changes around us. Imagine your students pausing to notice the crunch of leaves, the warmth of fall colors, or the scent of autumn air. It’s a refreshing way to start or end a lesson and helps students practice being present—something we could all use more of!
Cultural Fall Activities
Spice up your autumn plans with a dash of global flavor! With Cultural Fall Festivals, you can let your students “travel” the world without leaving the classroom. Share stories, crafts, or even a quick video clip of celebrations like Mexico’s Día de los Muertos or India’s Diwali. These mini adventures spark curiosity and broaden their world, all through the magic of fall.
Sensory Fall Activities
Autumn is a sensory delight! Let’s start with some activities for the younger children. If you’ve got tiny students who love to explore hands-on, a tray table full of fallen leaves can be used for several different activities. First off, with letter magnets for a scoop and sort activity. Every alphabet they get from each scoop, they have to pronounce. Depending on their level, they might have to come up with a word using the letter.
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Secondly, they can brush up on their fine motor skills. This is done by the leaves mixing with a bunch of other materials such as marble or shiny stones. This activity will get them familiar with using a tong to pick up the desired item based on the teacher’s instructions.
Another way of utilizing the tray table full of leaves is mixing the leaves with other materials. This can include different textures such as paper, tissues, crepe paper, and newspaper. This activity requires students to close their eyes and only remove one type of material based on the description given. This is a great activity for sensory processing.
What better way to fully take in what fall is all about other than having the students pick the fallen leaves themselves? Whether it is during class before any class activity commences, or they can also bring the leaves from home. These leaves can be used for an arts and crafts activity, dip the leaves in paint and stamp them on drawing art blocks to create their own fall masterpiece. Creativity frees the mind in a way that enables a person to absorb knowledge more efficiently. Perhaps you can add more creative activities in the classroom?
Outdoor Fall Activities
Bring your students on a leaf scavenger hunt and leaf exploration!
Before going on a nature walk with children, bring in a few leaves ahead of time. It can teach them the different types that are out there. You could also wait until after your nature walk when children have found their own leaves to examine or have them find something similar to what you have shown them, to further test their knowledge and memory.
Outdoor Creative Writing Prompts
What could be better than using the crisp fall air as your classroom? Take writing time outside with Creative Writing Prompts inspired by autumn landscapes. Let students choose their “writing spot” and get those imaginations flowing, whether they’re inspired to write poems, short stories, or just jot down how the world looks in fall. For an added artistic twist, let them pair their words with leaf rubbings or sketches.
STEM Activities for Fall Season
Science can never be more fun than this! The following fall classroom ideas are full of Science knowledge for your little geniuses. If you’re trying to incorporate more of these learning opportunities with a twist of fun and fall, try these activities.
After the little scavenger hunt, have them bring back some leaves for a fun experiment. They can explore the concept of color and understand how chlorophyll works in leaves. This can be done on a different day. Depending on how much time you have left for the class session. Let them know beforehand to get them more excited! The experiment is easy and will leave the kids in awe.
The supplies for this experiment are rather simple. You will need a pot of boiling water (handled by adults only), rubbing alcohol, test tubes with lids or any small containers with lids, different colored leaves, and tongs. (also handled by adults only)
All you have to do is place leaves in a boiling pot of water for 5 minutes. While they are boiling, fill up small containers with rubbing alcohol. When the five minutes are up, use the tongs to remove the leaves and place each one in the rubbing alcohol making sure to sort by color. Observe what color the alcohol is. Come back throughout the day and check if the alcohol has changed color.
If you thought we forgot about your older students, we have not! You can change the scavenger hunt and leaf experiment for them. It allows the older students to go into more in-depth lessons with the leaves. Perhaps they could also conduct this leaf experiment themselves with adult supervision, of course.
Exploring Life Cycle and Plant Parts
Teach children about pumpkins! The life cycle, as well as the parts of the pumpkin. Perhaps a fun worksheet would do the trick. You can also choose other fruits and vegetables that are commonly used in making autumn delicacies like apples. They can learn about parts of the apple tree, and also find out why pumpkins do not grow on trees.
Bring math into the season by using pumpkins, leaves, and acorns as manipulatives for Fall-Themed Math Activities like counting, sorting, and pattern recognition. For older students, integrate measurement activities by weighing pumpkins or comparing their sizes.
Fall Literary Adventure
Have your students read up on classic books that are perfect for the fall season. What better way to indulge in literature than to immerse yourself in the perfect setting and weather? Students can write their own essays or have a class discussion on different topics you have given them.
We hope this article is helpful if you are searching for ways to spice (pumpkin spice, get it?) up your classes this fall. Feel free to let us know if you have other interesting activities you’re doing this fall. You can share it with all of us. Do check out our Top 5 Holiday Classroom Activities for Teachers if you would like to get ahead and plan for the holiday season!
