In this blog post, I will share 5 ways to teach fall activities to your kids in elementary! You will learn about fun fall mentor texts and writing craftivities! I’ll share the mentor texts that I use and the activities for Reading, Writing, Poetry, Math, and Science.
Don’t you just LOVE fall? I love all the smells of pumpkin spice candles. I love the taste of pumpkin spice lattes and pumpkin bars. I love the feeling that’s in the air as you walk outside and the feeling that Halloween and Thanksgiving are right around the corner.
All the beautiful fall colors of orange, gold, red, green, and yellow just makes my feel so warm and fuzzy! I also LOVE to do fall activities with my first graders through reading, writing, math, science, and art. It is so fun to read fall books, do fall projects, fall investigations, fall math problems, and just have some fall fun!
1.) Fall Reading Activities for Kids
Owl Moon: We compare realistic fiction and fiction books about owls using a Venn Diagram and then label the parts of the owl. If you want to check out my Owl Moon resource, click here.
Stellaluna: We make a lap book using a moon, bat, googly eyes, and toothpicks on the cover. Inside we write the sequence of events and complete a characterization template. If you want to check out my Stellaluna resource, click here.
Spookley the Square Pumpkin- we write the beginning, middle, and end of the story and make a lap book that opens up to see the inside. If you’re interested in my resource for Spookley, click here.
2.) Fall Writing Activities for Kids
Scarecrow Pete: We make a scarecrow and then write a Procedural story about “How to Build a Scarecrow”! If you want to check out my scarecrow resource, click here.
Procedural Stories can be so fun! How about writing “How to Carve a Pumpkin” and “How to Make Pumpkin Pie”. If you’d like to check out my resource for how to carve a pumpkin click here.
If you’d like to check out my resource for how to make pumpkin pie, click here.
3.) Fall Poetry Activities for Kids
Poetry is so fun to use for any season and holiday! I have focus poetry every Friday and we get a new poem to glue into our Focus Poetry Notebook. We highlight certain words in our poem that we’ve learned such as nouns, verbs, or adjectives.
Meanwhile, the students create a mental image in their mind and illustrate a picture to go with the poem. If you’d like to check out my Focus Poetry BUNDLE which has poems for each month and holiday for the whole year, click here.
4.) Fall Math Activities for Kids
The Leaves Are Falling One By One: We go outside and gather leaves on the playground in baggies. We sort, count, and graph them. If you want to check out my Leaf Investigation resource, click here.
Ten Timid Ghosts: We talk about ways to add three addends together using Witches Brew. I put together candy corn, Indian corn, and candy pumpkins, and the students sorted them and added three numbers. If you want to check out my Witch’s Brew resource, click here.
5.) Fall Science Activities for Kids
From Seed to Pumpkin: We make a craftivity of the life cycle of a pumpkin and then write the sequence of it. If you want to check out my pumpkin thematic unit, click here.
Why Do Leaves Change Color: After we have graphed our leaves and sorted them, we make a leaf man! We even add acorns for the eyes!
Pumpkin Jack: We carve a pumpkin on Halloween and then save some parts of it into jars with three different environments: sand, air, and water. We watch what happens as it decomposes. We write our investigations in our pumpkin journal.
Barn Owl: We also do a feather investigation with owls. We talk about how the feathers help them fly with silent wings using force, motion and energy. We investigate different types of feathers and then illustrate and label them. If you’re interested in my owl thematic unit, click here.
Owl Babies: We also talk about the owl life cycle and make this craftivity. If you’d like to see my Birds of a Feather Thematic Unit, click here.
Corn is Maize: We investigate Indian Corn in 3 different natural resources: sand, soil, and water. We predict which corn will grow the fastest and which will not grow at all. This is so fun to watch and it’s amazing to see the differences in the three corns! We record our investigation in our corn journal. If you are interested in my corn resource, click here.
How about a craftivity about what we learned about corn and glue popcorn on it too!
On Halloween, we have a Pumpkin Patch Day! Each student gets to decorate a pumpkin of their favorite storybook character, and they also get to dress up like their character at school! We also have a character parade around the school to show off our character costumes.
My first graders had a blast seeing all the pumpkins and costumes! If you’re interested in checking out my Pumpkin Patch Home Project, click here….it’s a FREEBIE!
And…you can’t forget to decorate your door for fall!
I hope you have some great ideas on how to include the 5 ways to teach fall activities to kids. Happy Fall Ya’ll! If you’re interested in another blog post about my cross-curricular day in first grade, click here.
Until next time…let’s take your classroom to the next level!
