With the different colorful leaves around, a change of season, cooler temperatures, and pumpkins all over the place, fall provides natural opportunities for learning – especially for kindergartners. Our private school uses fall as a wonderful opportunity for hands-on learning, crafting, and age-appropriate STEAM activities to get children creative, exploring, and inspired. Is there any better way to learn than to have fun?

Each activity below nurtures young minds in a holistic and balanced way, combining creativity, academic readiness, cognitive and motor skills, as well as socio-emotional wellbeing and growth. At JLP Inspiring Minds we believe that learning should be engaging, purposeful, and centered on the child. Whether we are exploring the science of leaves changing color, experimenting with pumpkin math, or getting creative with the colors of fall, our approach is always to ignite a love for learning, thinking outside the box, and being brave enough to try new things. When children have a balance of learning through structurecoupled with creativity and freedom, they thrive!

Without further ado, here are our top seven, and most favorite, fall activities that are age-appropriate for your kindergarten student, and also buckets of fun while learning important lessons.

1. Pumpkin Seed Counting

Give each child a slice of a pumpkin that still has all the seeds inside. Ask them to estimate how many seeds they think are in their slice of the pumpkin. Then, get them to scoop the seeds out to count them and see if they estimated close. You can do this in small groups of learners or as individuals, depending on the learners. This teaches kindergarten children the value of estimation and facts, and if they work in a group, they will need to solve the problem as a team!

2. Leaf Sorting Science Exploration

Before the class starts, go outside and collect as many different types of fall leaves as possible. Get different shapes, sizes, colors, and more. Give each child a magnifying glass to help them inspect the leaves and identify which ones are similar, and then form collections of those. Encourage your kindergartners to look at textures, patterns, sizes, colors, and anything else they can come up with to differentiate and collect their leaf selection.

3. Nature Walk Journalling

The nature walk journal is a hit for little ones. Take them for a little walk outside and encourage them to identify the things that might be interesting or make fall seem different from other seasons. When they get back, get them to draw or make a note of those things in their school journal. This activity blends language and creativity with identification and mindfulness.

4. Warm And Fuzzy Storytime

When the weather starts to cool down, one of the best things we do is huddle up for a few fall-themed stories. Reading to kindergartners is not only great for their language and literacy development, but it also sparks a connection between the class as we all engage in an adventure together. Stories bring that sense of inclusion, acceptance, and enjoyment while learning valuable life lessons and new ways of thinking about things through different stories.

5. Build A Scarecrow!

This activity requires a little prep work. Separate learners into small groups, and assign different roles in the scarecrow building process to each person. Get them to go home and find old shirts, fabrics, and other interesting materials to bring back to school to make a scarecrow with their friends. Roles you can assign are “hat maker”, or “Head stuffer”, or “scarecrow dresser”. Let them create their own scarecrows in class with their groups and keep them in the classroom for the season.

6. Plant Seeds And Watch Them Grow

Give each child an egg box, or a clear plastic cup, a couple of seasonal seeds, and some soil at the beginning of the season. Prompt them through planting their seeds, and put their names on each. Put your planted seed pots near a window that has some sunlight, and teach them how the seed will start to grow! This is a wonderful kindergarten biology lesson that’s easy to apply to different levels of learning.

7. Fall Leaf Printing

At our private school, we love to provide our learners with opportunities to get creative and express themselves freely. The fall leaf printing activity is the best, allowing for wonderful freedom of artistic expression. Use leaves gathered from other activities, and provide the learners with fall colored paints. Let them stamp their leaves with different shapes and textures into the paint to create beautiful painted collages.

8. Bonus Activity! Pumpkin Spice Cool Crunchie Recipe (No Bake)

If we know anything about kindergartners, it’s that they love food… and baking just adds to the fun! Baking requires some skill, too, there is a process to it, measuring, and a systematic method to ensure you bake the right thing, and not something totally different. These no-bake pumpkin spice crunchies are a hit, and we don’t need to worry about the risks of heat or sharp utensils at such a young age.

Try it out!

Ingredients:

1 cup of peanut butter, 1 tsp vanilla extract, ¼ cup of chia seeds, ½ cup of pumpkin puree, ½ cup of maple syrup, ½ cup of chocolate chips, 1 tbsp pumpkin spice, 1 ½ cup of rolled oats.

Method:

• Mix the peanut butter, maple syrup, pumpkin puree, and vanilla extract together.
• Next, add in the dry ingredients – chia seeds, choc chips, rolled oats, and pumpkin spice.
• Stir everything together until it forms a dough (you can add more oats if needed).
• Put the dough into the fridge or freezer to cool down a bit and get a little firmer.
• Once it’s slightly harder, grab off bits of it and make little balls and enjoy!

Enroll In Kindergarten At JLP Inspiring Minds Private School

With smaller class sizes, teachers can facilitate meaningful hands-on learning experiences during the season change. The opportunities are endless, and in our classrooms, children get to benefit from our unique approach to holistic education. We ensure each child gets supported at their own level, knowing that each child develops at their own pace.

At JLP Inspiring Minds, everything is a learning opportunity – including the season change. Come and see how our private kindergarten program nurtures curiosity and confidence. Call us today at 954-746-5437 to schedule a tour or speak with one of our caring educators.