
How’s that for some alliteration?! This week we’ve been doing some activities at home that incorporate everything fall! I am a huge fan of this season and my mom and I have come up with some fun things for the kids to do that uses some of my favorite fall items! Check out these activities and try some out!
Pumpkin Spice Play Dough
My kids are obsessed with play dough of any kind, but making your own and adding a fun scent to it is cheap and easy! It has the perfect non-messy texture and our batch has already lasted a couple of weeks! We literally play with this everyday and just throw in different cookie cutters, scissors and even our real Play Doh set toys to change things up! Here’s the recipe:
1 cup flour
1 cup water
¼ cup salt
1 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tsp cream of tarter
½ tsp pumpkin pie spice
orange food coloring
Toss all ingredients together. Turn stove onto medium heat and continue to stir until mixture starts to clump and then eventually into one big lump. Remove from heat, let cool until you’re able to touch it, and knead the dough until soft and pliable.
Pumpkin Spice Play Dough
My kids are obsessed with play dough of any kind, but making your own and adding a fun scent to it is cheap and easy! It has the perfect non-messy texture and our batch has already lasted a couple of weeks! We literally play with this everyday and just throw in different cookie cutters, scissors and even our real Play Doh set toys to change things up! Here’s the recipe:
1 cup flour
1 cup water
¼ cup salt
1 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tsp cream of tarter
½ tsp pumpkin pie spice
orange food coloring
Toss all ingredients together. Turn stove onto medium heat and continue to stir until mixture starts to clump and then eventually into one big lump. Remove from heat, let cool until you’re able to touch it, and knead the dough until soft and pliable.
Leaf Painting An easy and cheap way to create some artwork is to use some of those leaves that are covering your yard! Collect a variety of leaves and press them between some books until they are flat and dry. We taped the leaves to a piece of large paper, and Leo painted on and around the leaves. When it had dried, we were left with even more colorful leaves and the leaf prints on the paper when they were removed! This is also an opportunity to talk about why the leaves change colors (yep, there is the science nerd coming out) or talk about the different seasons! |
Leaf Stamps
Another fun art project was stamping leaves on paper using homemade stamps! You can use pre-cut foam leaf shapes or draw and cut your own. Then glue the foam (or stick if it already has adhesive) to one side of a wooden block. Then, use paint (or a large ink pad) to stamp the leaves onto paper! You could also add in some educational pieces to this by having them stamp certain numbers, letters or shapes that you draw on the paper.
Dia de Muertos Sugar Skull Decoration
In our house, the movie “Coco” was on repeat for a good month over the summer! I couldn’t get those songs out of my head! But it incorporated some fun culture into our discussion about Dia de Muertos and all of the traditions that go with it! I was lucky enough to be in Mexico studying abroad on that day and went with my classmates to a small village and walked through all of the houses to see their displays called “ofrendas”. To bring some of that into our house, I found some wooden sugar skull decorations and had Leo use his fingerprints to paint them!
Another fun art project was stamping leaves on paper using homemade stamps! You can use pre-cut foam leaf shapes or draw and cut your own. Then glue the foam (or stick if it already has adhesive) to one side of a wooden block. Then, use paint (or a large ink pad) to stamp the leaves onto paper! You could also add in some educational pieces to this by having them stamp certain numbers, letters or shapes that you draw on the paper.
Dia de Muertos Sugar Skull Decoration
In our house, the movie “Coco” was on repeat for a good month over the summer! I couldn’t get those songs out of my head! But it incorporated some fun culture into our discussion about Dia de Muertos and all of the traditions that go with it! I was lucky enough to be in Mexico studying abroad on that day and went with my classmates to a small village and walked through all of the houses to see their displays called “ofrendas”. To bring some of that into our house, I found some wooden sugar skull decorations and had Leo use his fingerprints to paint them!
I hope you try some or all of these activities out with your little ones or in your classrooms! Are there any fall activities that you've tried and loved? Let me know in the comments! We will be doing different themes in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for more fun fall (and holiday) activities in posts to come!