Help Children to Fall in Love with Fall

Children love "heavy work" that uses their muscles and gives their brain important sensory input. Allow them to water fall flowers, roll pumpkins, jump from straw bales, rake leaves and jump in the piles, carry buckets full of nuts, and pull plants that have finished their growing season. All these autumn activities are favorites for children and really contribute to positive behavior and growth.

Not everything has to be big-body play. There are also options for tabletop experiences. Flower painting with spent seed heads changes up the average art experience. Also, invite the children to use tweezers to deconstruct the seed heads.

It's always healthy to just slow down and "be" in nature a bit. If there are a few asters or mums blooming, watch for birds, bees, and butterflies getting the last sips of nectar and pollen for the year. Talk about how important it is for our play spaces to provide food for these creatures as they prepare for winter or begin to migrate.

Children also enjoy counting grids and matching tasks with fall themes. Sensory tables can be filled with field corn or dried leaves. With any of these ideas, be sure to follow safety and supervision procedures when playing with children who still mouth objects to learn about them.

In all these lesson planning decisions, remember to develop invitations based on your observations of the children and what is captivating them. Make it active and meaningful. Consider the difference between a teacher-directed lesson plan about apples and a child-centered lesson plan involving apples.

Lesson Plans

Teacher-directed planning: Apples

Ideas come from: Books and what the teacher wants the children to learn

Focus: Exposing children to activities related to apples.

Activities planned:

• Read books about apples.
• Do finger plays and songs about apples.
• Children use red finger paint to dab red apples on green paper trees.
• Cut out apple shapes and have children paint them.
• Eat apples for a snack.

Learning: The children learn that apples are red, they grow on trees, and apples can be eaten.

Child-centered planning: Apples

Ideas come from: Observing the children at lunch as they discovered one child had a red apple in her lunchbox and another child had a yellow apple in his lunchbox.

Focus: Planning ways for children to discover and explore apples that will lead to deeper interests and understanding.

Activities planned:

• Bring different colored apples to the classroom and cut for children to explore how apples of different colors are the same and different
• Children taste apples of different colors and discover some apples are sweeter and some apples are crunchier than others.

Learning: Children's learning grows as discoveries are made and additional activities are planned to build on the children's interest and curiosity about apples.

Making Applesauce

Think how different it would be to bring apples back from a field trip to an orchard and make applesauce with children and serve it for a snack, versus having a clip art apple character on a page and practice writing the word apple. Honestly, which would YOU rather do?

Making homemade apple sauce is a fun, physical activity. Children can use mashers or a simple food mill. The turning and squishing is engaging. This is transformational science at its finest. The skins and seeds can be composted. Preschoolers and school-agers may have success helping to cut the raw apples for cooking. If an adult cuts the apple in half, the children can do the next cut with a child safety knife or serrated plastic knife, now that the apple has one steady flat side. Working in small groups with careful supervision is important for an experience like this.

It is really easy to build fine and gross motor skills into the applesauce-making. The children can label their homemade applesauce or measure by scoopfuls for a snack. One skill that children are learning is "perspective-taking." Take this opportunity to show children how the insides of an apple appear different if they are cut vertically vs. horizontally.

Books

There are hundreds of great children's books that can supplement the more active fall explorations. Here are a few to get you started:

• Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson
• Because of an Acorn by Lola Schaefer and Adam Schaefer
• Countdown to Fall by Fran Hawk and Sherry Neidigh
• Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn by Kenard Park
• In November by Cynthia Rylant and Jill Kastner
• Leaf Jumpers by Carole Gerbe
• Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert
• Pumpkin Circle: The Story of a Garden by George Levenson
• Pumpkin Jack by Will Hubbell
• Red Leaf Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert
• The Thankful Book by Todd Parr
• Those Darn Squirrels by Adam Rubin
• We're Going on a Leaf Hunt by Steve Metzger

Teachable Moments

The best planning for children combines both teacher-directed and child-centered approaches.

Look for "teachable moments." Children are naturally curious. While they play outside, children may discover stones in the play area and begin to gather them into a pile. This becomes a child-centered "teachable moment" if the teacher helps children who are interested in stones build on their interest, explore, and learn.

Perhaps a child has brought in a chrysalis found in the yard. This might change that day's entire focus and lead teachers to bring out art materials for children to create butterflies, scarves for children to use to dance as butterflies, or to add books about butterflies and moths to the reading corner.

There's a difference between having some interesting pumpkins in the play yard that children can explore as they choose and structuring an event like "We are going to line up and roll the pumpkins from here to the fence." Like our colleagues at Mifflinburg Summit Early Learning ask, "What are the yes's that we can say to children this fall?"

SO…when it comes to falling in love with fall, follow the children's lead. Notice what they are noticing, watch what they are watching, and support their exploration and enjoyment of those things. Having some of the above ideas ready as an invitation is perfectly appropriate, but if children’s eyes and minds and joy take a different direction, support that with lots of "ooohs", "aaahhs", and "I wonder…s".

Want to learn more? Check out these courses!

"Finding Wonder in Found Objects"
"Family Child Care: Welcome Wonder Through Inquiry-Based Strategies" (similar course written just for FCC providers)