Autumn is a magical season. We love its magnificent colors, all the colorful leaves, its warm weather, even its rainy days. Autumn offers us beautiful crafting materials and a story-like scenery so we must take advantage of all these. So, we present you our favorite autumn activities for children.
Colorful autumn activities for children we do each year
Leaves Hunting
Inspired by Momijigari which is the Japanese tradition of visiting areas where leaves have turned red in the autumn, we go on a hike in the forest. We collect leaves of various colors and size. We continue the activity at home, where we categorize the leaves we gathered according to color, size or shape.
Painting on leaves
We love to use watercolor to paint on leaves. Our daughter likes to paint them with her hands using non-toxic finger paint. This activity may become messy, but it’s worth it. It equals minutes of fun!
Autumn tree art
There are numerous ways to make an autumn tree. All you need is paper, watercolors, natural leaves or colored pieces of paper and some glue. I usually draw the tree stalk and the branches for my daughter (we also use real branches and stick them to the paper) and then she decorates the tree with leaves. Sometimes we have small natural leaves, other times she cuts small pieces of crepe colored paper and uses them as leaves. Or, she just uses her fingers soaked in paint to bring the tree to life.
Leaves Characters
Besides painting on leaves, we also create characters using the leaves as their bodies. This year we made a postcard with our family.
Stamping with leaves
This is a really easy activity to do with your kids. All you need is some natural leaves, paper and and some fall colors paint (it works better with tempera paint bottles). We choose leaves in varying sizes and shapes. We paint the leaf, to turn it over and place it on a white piece of paper. Then, we press down on the leaf and then easily lift it off. We repeat these steps until we have a nice autumn painting.
Pumpkin carving
Each year, at the end of October, we go to grandma and grandpa and carve pumpkins together. Our little girl is responsible for removing the contents of the pumpkin and separating the seeds (we always fry and eat the seeds after they dry).
Cooking pumpkin pie
We have our own cooking tradition in October: making no-bake mini pumpkin pies together. There are a lot of great recipes on the internet. We chose the one that best suited our taste and adapted it (we don’t use sugar and we like our ingredients to be as natural as possible).
Visit the Botanical Garden
Each autumn, in October, we take a fall-color tree walk in the Botanical Garden. It is an unforgettable sensory experience!
Rake the leaves
If you have a yard, gather your family and rake the leaves into a big pile. Then jump! This year, we did it inside the Botanical Garden with our friends and their kids. It was fantastic!
Go camping
Autumn is one of the best times to go camping. The weather is still warm, ticks and other insects are gone and it is not a very crowded period. You can impress your kids with a bonfire. It will keep you warm and relax you before a good night sleep. Don’t forget your hammock!
Got any other ideas of autumn activities for children? Do share!
