How to Teach your Child about Fall

By TheNanny612 On October 4, 2007 · 1 Comment

What better time
to teach your child about fall than when we’re right about to enter the
midst of it? Fall is a great teaching tool because it applies
to so many different areas of life. Not only do kids learn about the seasons,
but they also learn about the nature behind the seasons changing. As kids get
older, these lessons can be used again and again in different ways. For example,
as adolescents, they will learn about literature and poetry and the images and
lessons of fall will play a big part in that. And when it comes time to learn
hard lessons about death and loss, your kids will have a better grasp on it
if they can compare it to the changing of the seasons.

But
how do you teach your child about fall? After all, you’re
obviously not about to introduce poetry and death into the conversation
right away. No, instead, you’re going to want to teach your child
the very basics about fall. More than the other seasons, fall is a season
when you can really see the changes that are taking place in the world around
you. This makes it the best season for using actual hands-on experiences
to understand the changing seasons. And the best way to teach your child
about fall is to get out and immerse them in the experience of the season.

One thing
that you can do with your child is to keep a journal throughout the season.
This may be a written journal, a photo journal or both. You may keep
it daily, a few times each week or just once per week. Each time that you go
out, you will focus on looking at certain things in the neighborhood. For example,
there may be a big tree at the end of your block that you journey out to each
day. You’ll take a picture and write down observations about what you
see. At the end of the fall season, your child will have an entire book of observations
that he or she made. You will be able to see how the trees changed, how the
weather altered, and what other differences took place because of the changing
of the seasons. This will really help to reinforce the seasonal changes that
your child might not be able to see on a day-to-day basis. Plus, this
kind of observation is great for developing a science background for your child.

Of course, it’s
not just the changing of the leaves that fall is all about. Another
important fall lesson is that it’s a time when we normally start to eat
different foods. Watermelon and other summer foods are out and we eat
more squash and pumpkins. We may also eat more stews and foods for warmer weather.
Learning about fall foods will help your kids to learn about nutrition
and how we eat different things in different seasons to give our bodies a well-rounded
diet. Kids can also learn about cooking during the fall months and cooking is
great for all sorts of different lessons that kids need to learn. While cooking
fall foods, you’ll have reason to discuss what importance the different
foods have to different cultures and you’ll have an open doorway for teaching
your child about important fall holidays like Thanksgiving.

By teaching your
child about fall from a young age, you’ll be teaching him or her many
different lessons. Learning about the change of seasons will be the most important
of these lessons because it will apply learning to understand the seasons (or
cycles) of life. But there will also be many minor lessons learned that will
help your child with different areas of life for years to come.

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