Fall is a wonderful time for hands-on learning with young children! As the leaves change color and fall from the trees, you have plenty of opportunities to explore nature, create simple crafts, and enjoy autumn together.
If you're looking for fall activities for your preschoolers or young homeschoolers, here are three ideas to try: DIY leaf rubbings, a tree-themed busy box, and an outdoor fall scavenger hunt. These simple activities help children explore the textures, colors, and changing world around them while making memories along the way.
DIY Simple Fall Craft: Leaf Rubbings
We ease into fall with simple fall project we did when Grandma was in town: we searched for favorite leaves and made rubbings! A nearby maple tree shed it's super-sized leaves for us to enjoy, and it was fun to create leaf rubbings, a simple art project for all ages.
Leaf rubbings are simple. We used some butcher paper that I had from wrapping new dishes, old crayons that were missing their wrappers, and the leaves we found in our driveway.
It took my elementary-aged kid a few tries to learn to rub using the long edge of the crayon. We enjoyed watching the magic of the leaves appear on the paper. My preschooler liked mixing in new crayon colors to better represent the fall colors. We talked about the veins of the leaves, and we delighted in feeling the textures on the leaves after we'd rubbed them on paper.
Keep a Little One Busy with a "Trees Read and Play" Busy Box
A busy box is a self-contained box or bag that has activities for a toddler, preschooler, or kindergartner to play with independently (or mostly independently!) on the go or at home. Our "Trees Read and Play" involved these tree-related activities.
- Fall Scavenger Hunt: I included the printable fall scavenger hunt (see below for free access!). I also put in a toddler camera.
- Felt Tree and Leaves: I made this myself, but I saw it all over Pinterest.
- Ripped Paper Tree Collage: My daughter helped draw the brown lines that are the tree’s branches and trunk.
- Fall ABC Game: Roll and Say Fall ABC by Fantastic Fun and Learning.
- Leaf Matching Game: Fall Leaves and Shadows matching file folder game from totschooling.net.
- Where is the Leaf?: We also included this preposition booklet from Pre-K Pages.com.
- LEGO brick tree: I have a LEGO Duplo tree and Duplo blocks to give some more hands-on fun.
- Tree snack (pretzels and grapes): See this idea from Fantastic Fun and Learning Of course we needed to include a snack. (Not pictured)
- Apple trees: Red and green puffs provide another way to play with apple trees.(Not pictured)
These activities encouraged pretend play, and helped my little one with her fine motor skills, alphabet recognition, and more.
Fall Outdoor Scavenger Hunt
Another fun activity is to hold a Fall Scavenger Hunt. We went for a short walk and brought a camera. I had a cheap $15 kids camera that did not take great pictures but is fun for a preschooler. We could always have used our phone camera too!
Then, we used the checklist I created to find the fall items and animals that I included on the scavenger hunt list.
A perfect book to accompany any fall walk is the appropriately named Fall Walk by Virginia Brimhall Snow. Each page in this book features a short poem about walking and playing outside, along with a sketch of a tree and a colorful image of a fall leaf from that tree. Young children will like looking at the pictures and maybe listening to the poems, while older children will enjoy finding the specific leaves or identifying leaves they find with the book as a guide.
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