Educational Fall Activities

Fall may be a terrific time of year for fun crafts but you don’t want
to be so focused on the fun that you forget about the great educational opportunities
that the season presents. Sure, it’s great to carve pumpkins and make
Thanksgiving turkeys out of construction paper during these months. But in addition
to these arts and crafts, you can come up with a number of different fall activities
which give your children great educational skills. In fact, there are fall activities
to cover all of the basic school subjects and then some.

Here are some educational fall activities for each subject:

Reading / Writing

• There are many different stories out there about fall.
  Look for those that are about the changing of seasons as well as those that
  relate to the fall holidays.
• Work on learning the alphabet by practicing with fall themes.
  For example, “P is for Pumpkin” is a good way to work on that
  particular letter.
• Make a fall story book. Paste leaves and other fall items
  into a scrapbook and then work with kids to write a story that relates to
  fall.

Science

• Go outside and observe the changing seasons with kids.
  Keep photo and written journals about these changes.
• Fall animals. Activities involving squirrels and acorns
  are great for teaching kids about animals and fall.

Social Studies

• Use the holidays such as Columbus Day and Thanksgiving to teach kids about
  history.
• Explore how different cultures explore holidays in different
  ways to teach kids about diversity.
• If you taught kids about Labor Day early in the season, you can reinforce
  these lessons by bringing them back up again. Point out that work
  and community are important educational areas at all times of the
  year.

Other subjects

• Music. Kids love music and they learn a lot from it so
  incorporate fall themes and music this season. One great activities making
  musical shakers out of gourds by cleaning them out and filling them with beans.
• Motor skills. The arts and crafts that are associated with
  fall themes are good lessons in and of themselves because they teach kids
  motor skills which are an important part of the rest of their education.
• Environmental lessons. Kids can learn environmental lessons
  during the fall months by getting out and exploring nature. Take kids hiking
  or camping before it gets too cold and use it as a way to teach them about
  how to treat the earth kindly and why that’s important.

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