Explore creative ways to help kids connect with nature, express themselves, and enjoy family time this fall.
By Jessica Mitchell-McCollough, Ph.D., Director of Education
The arrival of fall can be an adventurous time for kids and families!
The season brings cooler weather, changing colors and flavors, and spooky holiday fun centered around Halloween. Helping kids to understand the changing seasons means observing what’s happening outside in your neighborhood, learning how weather impacts plants and animals, and often making different choices as we observe these shifts.
From wearing warmer clothing to eating different foods (hello soup season!) and building family traditions that come with this time of year, talking to your kids about the world around them can spark their curiosity and provide fun new opportunities to learn and grow together!
Here are some fun fall activities for kids and families to try:
- Go on a seasonal stroll. Experience the shifting weather together by going on a walk outside. Invite kids to use their senses. What do they hear, smell, feel or see? Look for the changing colors of the leaves, count how many insects and animals you see or talk about the changes in the weather. Encourage your kids to ask questions. You may even learn something new together!
- Create fall art. Collect different objects such as colorful leaves, sticks, pinecones, or fallen walnuts or acorns. Use paper and glue, paint or other materials make a Halloween texture collage to capture the beauty in the changing season. Bonus if you use collected objects to decorate a pumpkin!
- Act out Halloween stories. Pretend play can be a wonderful way to help kids explore feelings. When it comes to spooky season, putting kids in control of the storytelling helps keep them from getting scared. Share stories together and then act them out. You can also tell stories together using homemade puppets. Storytelling keeps the spooky parts of this season fun and can help you build new family traditions along the way.
- Have a cozy family Halloween movie night. When the weather gets cold, stay inside and curl up together and enjoy a kooky and spooky episode from PBS KIDS Celebrates Halloween or listen to a podcast and learn about fall flavors to taste together. Talk to your kids as you watch or listen. Ask them questions about their favorite characters or how the colors or music in the show make them feel. Or, let them make predictions about what they think is going to happen in the story and then keep watching or listening to see if they are right!
The changing seasons are a wonderful time to spark curiosity, explore together, and build family traditions.
For more ideas, visit NebraskaPublicMedia.org/education