Summer is almost over and my favorite season is almost here.... Fall! I love all the fun seasonal activities that occuring during fall! I have really great memories of apple picking, pumpkin carving, making apple pies, raking the yard and jumping in leaf piles, trick or treating, playing soccer, and participating in holiday traditions as a kid. Fall is the perfect time to plan some fun indoor and outdoor activities for your family that encourage your kids to get away from the TV, use their bodies and their imagination, and make memories that your kids will cherish even as adults.
In the fall the weather starts to get cooler, and if you live in the south like me, that means more time to comfortably be outside. This is a good time to take advantage of the outdoors and do things like taking walks, hiking, camping, riding bikes, picking seasonal fruit, playing sports, picking and carving pumpkins, fishing, etc. Even on weekdays when it's a little more difficult to do some of those activities, try getting out in the yard or a nearby park and playing for a little while each day. Take walks around the neighborhood.
The holiday season also begins during the fall, and with that, lots of fun and creative activities and traditions. Creating traditions is exciting for children; it gives them fun activities or events that don't happen very often to expect and look forward to each year. Can you think of some traditions that your family had when you were a child and how much you enjoyed them? Children really get into holidays and enjoy the seasonal crafts that can be done during these times. If you're not naturally creative, there are tons of websites with free ideas and print outs for holiday crafts to do with children of all ages. Your older children may even enjoy helping you decorate the house or make food for holidays. The holidays are also a good opportunity to reinforce values in your children, such as being thankful, giving back to others, cherishing family time. Children learn best from parents who lead by example. My mom used to take my sister and me to buy and deliver toys to families in need around the holidays, which is something that was, and still is, very meaningful to me. But even something as simple as buying some canned goods and bringing them to a local food drive can teach children about giving.
My kids are still young (17 months and almost 3), so our fall activities may be a little more limited than families with older children, but I'm still very excited about all the things we will be able to do together this fall!
* Hiking - we live in the Atlanta metro area, but we're still able to get to local Chattahoochee parks or drive an hour or more to get to some mountain trails. At this point in our family we look for short, easy trails (that we can use our BOB stroller or kid pack on) with something fun for the kids, like a waterfall to hike to or a nature center to visit and learn about animals. Hopefully next year our kids will be old enough for us to get back to camping.
* Apple picking, pumpkin patches and visiting farms - there aren't as many local opportunities to pick apples down here in Georgia as there were in Maine, where I grew up, but after doing some internet searching I've found a number of family friendly orchards where we can pick or buy freshly picked apples. Many of these places also have hayrides, corn mazes, and pumpkin patches. We have also found some farms with livestock to look at and pet, as well as cow milking and farm tours.
* Playing outside - now that it's starting to get out of the 90s, we'll be able to spend more time in the yard playing with outside toys, in the sandbox, bubbles, chalk and paints, going on walks, and playing on the playground at local parks. My kids are fascinated by the rocks, leaves, and sticks they find in our yard - fall is a fun time to make leaf pressings or laminate leaves into bookmarks or other crafts; and sorting rocks can be a good cognitive skill for toddlers to practice. Invite your kids friends over to come play in the yard too - children often use their toys more or come up with creative games when they have peers to play with.
* Crafts and decorating - my daughter is really into arts and crafts already and this year she will have the fine motor skills to participate in some fun, simple holiday crafts. Like I said above, I use the internet to find ideas for crafts and I also shop at a local craft store for inexpensive projects. Last year she had fun putting holiday windwod stickers up, but this year she'll also be able to help me with decorating the house for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
* Reading - I love seasonal and holiday books and my daughter really got interested in them for the first last winter. We have a few of our own classic holiday books and will also be visiting the library frequently to check out new ones. We have also created some family traditions around holiday books, such as Elf on a Shelf and Twas The Night Before Christmas.
* Holiday videos - Pull out old family photos and videos from when your kids were younger or from when you were a child and share memories with your kids. My kids are still a little young for this, but for older children there are some great, classic holiday movies that are short, share good messages and don't have the violence and mature language that some modern movies do. Watch them together as a family! The Peanuts movies, the old animated Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Frosty's Winter Wonderland, Jim Henson's Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas, etc.
* The smells, tastes, and sounds of fall - I love the hearty foods associated with fall and really enjoy making them. My kids already help me make homemade applesauce (my son peels the stickers off the apples and my daughter washes and dries apples, then chops them with her kid's crinkle knife). My daughter helps me chop vegetables for soup too. As they get older I will involve them in making more of my favorite fall foods, like chili, breads, apple pies, and soup. Teaching your children about sensory experiences (smells, tastes, sounds) helps them expand their language, gain better awareness of their environment, and helps them enjoy experiences more. Take the time to talk about the smells and tastes (spiced apples, pumpkins, apple cider, pine trees, etc) and about sounds (crackling fires, animal sounds, the weather, etc) as your kids experience them.
* Music - Play and sing seasonal and holiday songs with your kids. If they're young, teach them the words to simple songs, like 5 Little Pumpkins; if your kids are older and musical, try learning to play some seasonal music on instruments. Also, it has nothing to do with fall, but we've enrolled in a local music class once a week that my kids love!
These are just a few examples of activities to do with children in the fall that are simple, wholesome, encourage movement and thinking, and involve doing things together as a family. What are some fun fall activities that you do with your kids or remember doing as a child? Please share them with us by posting a comment!
Memories are created when there are stong sensory and emotional components to experiences; your children will fondly remember these experiences from their childhood and not the TV shows they watched or the video games they played. Their minds and bodies will also benefit from getting outside, playing, being creative and sharing experiences as a family. And you will cherish these memories as well when your children are grown and living on their own. Take the time now to enjoy the fall season with your family!
Kirsten,
ReplyDeleteRemember doing leaf rubbings, putting paper over a leaf and then rubbing a crayon over it to then see the lines it made. The Alphabet walk in the woods, where we followed the alphabet and had to find something that either began with the next letter or looked like the letter. Building play houses in woods, using pine needles, leaves, twigs, rocks, etc. to outline the rooms and become furniture. Also, do you remember melting old crayons together and putting them into muffin cups, and making our own mixed up color crayons that you used to color pictures of leaves. Fall is a perfect time of year to build your own fairy house, using whatever you find outside to build a house for your special fairy. Using acorns, rocks, and twigs to make household items for the fairies. Oh, remember acorn pipes!! Taking an acorn and hollowing out the top, then making a hole in the side to push in a small twig. And then the fun whistles from the acorn tops. And then the homemade Halloween costumes, so much fun to work together to make. Make and decorate your own Trick or Treat bags rather than commercial bags. Don't forget the gross motor activities necessary to promote muscle tone, trunk stability, attention and organization. This can be done by rolling in the leaves, rolling down a hill, wheelbarrow walking over textures, pulling friends along the grass or leaves in a lanudry basket, jumping on/over/off objects, throwing balls into various sized containers, finding sticks and putting them together to form letters or shapes. But most of all, have lots of fun with your kids!