Fall Fun Galore: Crafting Up 30+ Cozy Activities for Kids!
As the leaves begin their enchanting transformation from vibrant greens to warm hues of red, orange, and gold, there's a magical feeling in the air. Fall has arrived, bringing with it a plethora of opportunities to engage your little ones in creative and entertaining activities. Whether you're a parent, teacher, or caregiver, join us on a journey through the season of pumpkin patches and crisp air as we explore an array of crafts and activity ideas to keep kids happily immersed in the spirit of fall.
As we bid farewell to the lazy days of summer, autumn ushers in a burst of inspiration for crafting that reflects the beauty and charm of the season. From crafting leafy masterpieces to whipping up delicious autumn treats, our blog is your go-to destination for all things fall-related fun. So, grab your glue sticks, dust off those crafting supplies, and let's dive into the wonderful world of fall crafting that will not only ignite the imaginations of your little ones but also create lasting memories for the whole family.
Get ready for a season of pumpkin spice, colorful foliage, and endless possibilities for crafting joy. Let's embark on this autumnal adventure together and make this fall a time filled with laughter, creativity, and the warmth that comes from shared moments of crafting delight.
Check them out directly at the links below or scroll to read about each individual idea.
Literacy
Numeracy
STEM
Process Art
Outdoor
Water
Small World
Mark Making
Can you count and build the apple trees in the orchard? This activity is a fun and easy way to build fine motor skills and practice counting!
Pour a green sensory bin filler in a container and place craft rolls around the container to act as the trunks of your apple trees. Then place numbers at the base of each tree and balance popsicle sticks on top to form trees! When ready, invite children to stack the number and balance the correct number and colour of apples on the tree!
This activity is a fun and easy way to build fine motor skills as you explore all the leaves you collect on a nature walk!
Take your leaf collection and begin sorting all the leaves of different colours into the individual compartments and leave one free to add scissors and hole punches! Remove the compartments and place them on the PlayTray lid and encourage children to begin snipping the leaves to make leaf confetti to fill your tray!
Ways to extend the play:
-Use your leaf confetti as a sensory base in small worlds!
-Measure your confetti in vessels!
-Use it in a fall soup!
This activity is a fun and easy way to incorporate leaves into your early math activity!
Go on a nature walk and collect different fall leaves and bring them home! Place the leaves in a bowl. Using chalk markers, draw a grid / graph on the tuff tray. On the bottom axis add colours of your leaves on the ascending axis add numbers!
Additional ways to play:
-Graph the leaves based on type
-Graph patterns
This is a fun and easy sensory activity for children to explore that inspires creativity and learning!
Go on a nature walk in your local community and collect different nature treasures. Bring them home and sort them in the PlayTray compartments! In the large deep tray, pour water so it is half full and then dye the water orange with food colouring or liquid watercolour paint! Add scoops, bowls, measurement tools, and ladles!
Invite your child to begin exploring creating soup! Mix and measure different ingredients! Pour, scoop, ladle into bowls to serve or colour sort.
Are your children interested in the changing colours of fall and collecting different leaves to keep? This fun and easy activity will support their inquiry and allow them to keep their favourie leaves for all the seasons to come.
Take your children outside to go on a nature walk and encourage them to collect leaves of all colours, sizes & textures! Look for leaves with very defined textures on the back.
Once you have your leaves roll our air dry clay and gently lay your leaf out over the clay and press it into the clay gently or roll over it with a rolling pin! Peel back the leaf to see the imprint and observe the textures and allow it to dry. Once dry children can touch and feel the textures, of the leaves they preserved and you can even paint them with watercolours.
Every imprint will turn out so different!
Watercolour Leaf Paint Crayon Prints
This activity is creative and colourful way to preserve your child's favourite nature finds!
All You Need:
-Leaves
-Watercolour paints
-A white crayon
-A thick piece of paper
Step One: Go on a nature walk or collect leaves that have fallen in your yard! Make sure to look for leaves of different shapes, sizes and textures.
Step Two: Place your leaves underneath a sheet of paper and take a white crayon and on the long flat part rub it against your leaf to make an impression!
Step Three: Using watercolour paints, paint over your leaf impressions to see the design appear!
This fun, easy and colourful process art activity is inspired by the leaves changing colours in the fall! Explore mixing colours, different painting techniques and more.
All you need:
‑Liquid Watercolour Paints
‑Colour Diffusing Leaves
‑Paint brushes
‑Pipettes
‑Spray bottles
Go on a nature walk in your community and start looking for signs of fall! What does fall look like? Begin collecting leaves that you notice fall colours in and that have changed. Talk about the colours of fall and what colours you see in the leaves you collected for inspiration! Lay out your colour diffusing leaves on a tree and pour paint in paint pots. When ready encourage children to begin painting and exploring colours.
What colours are they using? How do they reflect your conversations about fall?
Fall Leaves Nature Wands
Make fall magical with these quick and crafty nature wands! It is such a fun way to give new life to recyclables and extend a previous activity.
Go on a nature walk in your community and collect fall leaves of all colours and some sticks! Bring them home and trim them all up to create leaf confetti. Then grab a cardboard box or a cereal box and draw on stars and cut them out! Use hot glue or tape to attach your cardboard star to your stick and use white glue to spread it across the star. Then take your leaves and decorate your wand!
Go out and use them for dramatic play, to observe the changing seasons or whatever children can imagine!
Sorting Leaves
This activity is a fun way to explore nature and sorting! Take your children on a nature walk and collect all kinds of leaves of every colour and shape. Once you have collected all the leaves in the forest place them in a bowl and set out your sorting circles and invite children to sort!
What can you sort by?
-Colour
-Type of leaf
-Size of leaf
Leaves are falling from the trees and are changing colour everywhere around us! This activity is a fun way to talk about falling leaves and the colours of fall. Your little learners will build fine motor skills as they colour sort!
In a large container pour a fall themed sensory filler (I chose popcorn kernels) and then hide different fall leaves throughout! Then take sticks from your latest nature walk and place them over top the container! This will have it resemble a tree whose leaves have fallen. Then place the colour frames around the sensory bin with matching colour tweezers.
Encourage children explore the forest floor and sort the different coloured leaves!
Ways to extend the play:
‑Sort the leaves by type!
‑Sort by size
‑Create patterns by colour, type, size, etc!
This activity is a great way to get out with your children and explore your local neighbourhood or backyard for a scavenger hunt for colour themed nature treasures!
Simply go on a walk and talk about the seasons and specifically fall! What colours do we see in fall? What trees are you noticing have changed colour? Then collect leaves of all the colours of fall and encourage them to order them in colour order.
This activity is a great way to talk about:
‑Identifying different colours and shades
‑Talk about what leaves you have found, what trees are they from?
‑Build fine motor skills as they place thier treasures as an arch!
‑Talk about how we see some of more colours than others in certain seasons!
Can you excavate the letters from the fall leaves? This activity is a fun way to explore letter recognition and a fun new way to explore puzzles!
In a tray empty out your alphabet puzzle and spread out the letters! Place the alphabet puzzle in the opposite corner. Once ready, pour your fall leaves on the letters and hide them. Add different construction vehicles to the tray to help children excavate the letters.
Way to extend the play:
‑Sort the vowels
‑Practice spelling sight words
‑Call out specific letters and encourage them to find them!
This activity is a fun process based art way to create a fall forest inspired canvas!
All you need:
‑Canvas
‑Yarn
‑Washable Tempera Paint
‑PomPoms
‑Clothespins
Tape the beginning of your yarn to the back of your canvas and begin wrapping the canvas! Wrap yarn to create lines thick and thin on your canvas. Once finished wrapping tape the end to the canvas. Pour fall coloured tempera paints on a paper plate and add the corresponding large coloured Pom Poms to a clothespin!
Then invite children to dot paint all over the canvas with all your fall colours to simulate fall leaves! Once the canvas is covered in colour allow it to dry. Once fully dry, unwrap your canvas from the yarn and reveal your birch trees! Encourage children to make black tallies on opposite sides up the tree and see your fully formed fall canvas.
Did you know when it gets cold, especially on rainy days, pine cones fold their scales to prevent seeds from spreading under humid weather whereas on a sunny dry day, these scales gape open to release the seeds. This strategy promotes the survival of a species by dispersing seeds for propagation at greater distance!
So this experiment shows how they fold their scales and is super easy! Go on a nature walk and hunt for pinecones of all shapes and sizes then bring them inside. Fill a sensory tray with cold water and add extra ice cubes to ensure it’s cold. Then pop your pinecones in and observe. When ready seal the tray with a lid and leave it overnight. Talk about what you think will happen!
The next day open it up and see how the pinecones have closed.
Can you bake an apple pie? This is such a fun and easy sensory bin inspired by my favourite fall activity - baking pie and picking apples!
Take a bag of oats and pour them in a tray add little pie tins, cinnamon sticks, and green and red Pom poms to be your apples! Then take brown felt and cut it in strips to weave over top your pie to be your crust. Add kitchen tools to help with your baking and recipe cards!
Children will practice scooping, pouring, measuring and can talk about early math concepts!
Also I love the multi sensory aspect of the cinnamon sticks that makes this smell amazing.
This activity is a fun and easy way to celebrate the coming of fall and changing of leaves and exploring textures.
All you need:
‑Canvas
‑Fall coloured washable tempera paint
‑Paint brushes
‑Aluminum foil
Pour your fall coloured paints on a paper plate and then using brown paint paint the trunk and branches of a tree!
When ready tear a sheet of aluminum foil and ball it up! Then press it into the paint and then press it on the canvas where the branches are to create leaves.
This activity is a great way to use children’s nature walk finds for a fun, crafty math activity!
Simply offer children a die (or dice) to roll and count / add up your numbers and place that many eyes on your chosen leaf!
This fun counting activity is a great fun way to welcome fall and encourage children to practice number recognition, counting and forming numbers!
Take a piece of bristol board and draw the outlines of different apple trees all over the page. Then place number pebbles in a bowl and pom poms in another bowl. Place them beside your orchard board and encourage them to count and match.
You can start by:
1. Placing numbers beside the apple trees and encouraging children to count and place that many apples on them!
2. Placing apples on the trees and encouraging children to count and find the matching number!
Ways to extend the play:
‑Create number sentences by placing pom poms of different colours to represent numbers and amounts. For example: 3 green pom poms and 1 red pom pom! 3+1 = ?
‑Place the number pebbles beside the trees and invite them to put the correct amount of apples on!
To use your apple board over and over again make sure to laminate it! That way it will last forever and you can take it indoors and outdoors
Parts of a Pumpkin Investigation
This pumpkin investigation tray for is such a fun fall themed STEM invetsigation for little learners! Children can learn all about the life cycle of a pumpkin and make obervations of the fully grown pumpkin.
What are the stages of the lifecycle of a pupmkin?
1. Pumpkins Seed – The first stage of a pumpkin’s life where soon the seed grows to break the surface of the soil.
2. Sprout – During the seedling stage, the pumpkin’s stem and leaves begin to develop. This is when the plant starts to produce roots.
3. Plant – Once the root system has developed, the pumpkin will begin to grow. It grows by absorbing water and nutrients through its leaves. As the pumpkin grows, it will start to form a shell.
4. Pumpkins Flowers – During the flowering phase, the plant produces flowers. These are male flowers that produce pollen. Female flowers produce fruit. A beautiful bright yellow bloom will attract your children.
5. Green pumpkin (juvenile) – The first sign of a pumpkin’s growth is when the stem begins to swell. During the fruiting phase, the pumpkin starts to develop its characteristic shape. This is when the stem will begin to form. When the stem swells, the pumpkin absorbs water and nutrients from the soil. After the stem swells, the pumpkin starts to grow larger. The pumpkin continues to grow until it forms a shell. A pumpkin’s shell protects the pumpkin from being eaten by animals and other pests.
6. Orange pumpkin – The pumpkin is fully grown, ripe, and ready to be picked from a pumpkin patch.
This fun and easy fall inspired counting orchard activity is a great way to work on number recognition, counting and play!
In the playtray pour a green sensory base (I used split peas) and hide different loose numbers! Then pour in pompoms that are the colours of apples and add small world pieces (trees, pebbles, animals, etc) and add tweezers. Place a ten frame beside the tray! Invite children to find the coloured numbers and match the correct amount of apples to them!
Ways to extend the play:
‑Create colour patterns
‑Count the other small world pieces
‑Can you stack all the forest friends?
Can you count and sort all the fall treasures? This activity is a fun invitation to explore numeracy and different opportunities to represent numbers with different loose parts and natural items!
Did you know an environment rich in loose parts naturally encourages math skill development? Children love to explore and group items as they are interested and incorporating math into an open ended activity will naturally lead them to inquiry! Through loose parts in this tray children can explore counting, number recognition, sorting, patterning grouping, beginner math equations, and more!
Ways to extend the play:
‑Create fall patterns
‑Write equations on the plant pot labels and add that amount to the pot!
‑Represent numbers smallest to largest
‑How many ways can you make and represent a number?
‑Read the book and point out the numbers as you see them!
This activity is a fun and easy way to incorporate leaves into your early literacy activity!
Go on a nature walk and collect different fall leaves and bring them home! Count out 26 leaves and using a marker or a chalk marker write uppercase letters ‑ place them in a tray! Then on a tuff tray using a chalk marker write lowercase letters and invite children to find the letter leaf and match.
This activity is a fun way to explore letter formation and use all those fall leaves your child is collecting for learning
Go on a nature walk and collect all kinds of leaves, once you return home take a chalk marker (or any marker) and write different letters on them. Place the letters in a tray. Then take orange craft sand and pour it in your sensory PlayTray and all your leaf letters and different mark making tools! Invite children to use the tools to recreate the letters in the sand and explore formation!
To extend the play you can explore spelling and forming sight words!
Can you excavate the pebbles from the fall leaves and build your forest structures? This activity is a fun way to explore small world play, open ended play and creativity.
In a tray place different natural materials (branch blocks, rocks, pinecones, etc) and pour fall leaves! Place different small world pieces around the tray like mountain structure, play stumps, logs and more. Add your construction vehicles to maneuver your fall construction site!
Ways to extend the play:
‑Can you build a fall fort?
‑What structures can you build with the loose parts and natural materials
‑How many pebbles can you find hidden in the leaves?
‑Scoop & clear all the fall leaves
This process art activity is a fun and easy way to incorporate nature and art
Go on a nature walk and collect pinecones of all different sizes!
To prep your activity put the canvas on a flat tray surface then pour fall coloured washable tempera paint on a paper plate. Dip your pinecones in the paint and begin pressing, rolling, and scraping your pinecones on the canvas to explore textures and colour mixing.
On the bag draw the shape of a tree and using matching permanent markers draw circles of different sizes to represent your pom pom apples! Wait for the marker to dry. Once complete, pour a gel into the bag and pour your pom Poms in. Seal the bag and tape it down and then play.
This activity is a fun way to build fine motor skills and talk about colours and size!
This activity is a fun way to use your fall nature finds to make some creative art you can keep to remember the season all year round! All you need is a canvas, washable tempera paint, leaves and flat paint brushes.
All you need:
‑Washable Tempera Paint
‑Canvas
‑Flat paint brushes
‑Tray or container
Place your leaves in a tray and pour out washable tempera paint of all colours. Once ready paint one of your leaves on the front side (not as veiny side) until the leaf is covered in an even layer of paint. Once ready, place it paint side down on your canvas and gently tap the leaf to press the paint into the canvas. Remove the leaf and see its imprint!
Experiment by mixing colours on leaves or doing single colours to create a unique fall canvas!
Can you count all the correct colour leaves to form your fall tree? This activity is a fun and easy way to practice number recognition, counting, colour sorting and celebrate fall!
On a PlayTray lid, take a brown washable marker and draw a tree! Once you have created your tree draw little squares with colours to match the fall leaves on the side to represent them. Then write numbers beside each colour. Pour foam leaves in a playtray compartment and then encourage children to count the colour amount of leaves of each colour and form their fall tree!
Ways to extend the play:
‑Write number sentences beside each colour and have children solve place that many leaves on the tree
‑Create leaf colour patterns on the branches!
Pumpkin Seeds Counting
Can you count with the pumpkin seeds? This is such a fun and easy fall themed counting activity which gives new life to
As the leaves fall and change colours there are so many fun and easy activities you can include them in.
Here are some easy, low prep activities you can do with leaves:
1. Sorting : you can sort them as many ways as you can think of! Shape, size, colour,etc
2. Match the leave by tracing the outline of different leaves and encourage children to find leaves that match!
3. Cut leaves in half and find the match
4. Put them on a light panel to explore their colours and notice similarities and differences!
We even laminated our leaves to preserve their colours and keep them for play another day!
This activity is a great way to explore falling leaves and sorting colours.
On a ziplock bag draw a tree with permanent marker, on the bottom of the bag using fall coloured permanent markers draw little baskets at the bottom! Then add hair gel, a small amount of water and foam leaves.
Encourage children to have the leaves fall from the tree and move them into the correct colour bucket! To extend the play children can count how many leaves of each colour!
Today is the first official day of the fall season and I love the changing colours! So I wanted to make an activity inspired by them
This activity offers an opportunity to go outdoors, explore and then be inspired by nature and fall. You can mix loose parts and natural items you find on a nature walk to decorate and create your tree!
For this activity all you initially need is a piece of Bristol board to draw a tree and tree branches onto form the shape of the tree. From there, offer different materials to decorate your tree inspired by fall
‑Invite children to use loose parts and nature items to recreate things they observed or associate with fall (leaves of different colours, mushrooms, acorns)
‑Talk about what happens in the season when fall starts?
‑What colours do you associate with fall?
Can you match all the apples & acorns to the tree they fell from and clean up the orchard?
This activity is a super fun way for children to practice fine motor skills as they post the apples and acorns with the tree! Children are also able to match colours as they dig through the black bean soil.
Scoop up some fall themed spelling words with this cute and easy literacy activity!
Steps:
1. Simply pour a sensory bin filler of your choice (I used black beans) in a container and place letter tiles in the mixture.
2. Once complete take a blank piece of paper and write fall themed words your child would recognize on it!
3. Invite your child to discover the letters and prompt them to match the letters to word on your sheet
4. Have fun!
This small world sensory bin is a fun way to explore forest animals and their habitats!
In a large container pour a mixture of fall coloured sensory bin mix (I used corn kernels, beans and lentils) then add different forest themed small world pieces; sticks, tree blocks, rocks, gourds, mushrooms, pinecones, etc. When ready, add your forest animals.
Ways to extend the play:
-identify all the animals we see in the forest! What do their tracks look like?
-Can you order the animals by size?
-What do these animals eat?