Go on a Fall walk through the school neighborhood, collecting colored leaves, acorns, etc. in lunch bags or in student-created "Baskets of Beauty".

Use your five senses prior and during the walk:

• Before the walk, sit in a quiet spot and have the children close their eyes. Speak in hushed tones. Ask them to listen carefully to the sounds they hear. Ask them to smell the scents of autumn. Weather permitting, have them lie on their backs and look at the fall sky.

• While on the walk, look for colorful leaves, seeds, nuts, flowers, squirrels, and migrating birds. Take along some magnifying glasses for a closer look.

• Collect a few leaves of various colors, nuts and seeds. Later, discuss how the leaves, nuts and seeds are the same and different, how they smell, could they be eaten, and how they feel.

Have students choose a favorite leaf and complete a leaf report similar to this one.

Make a regular graph or a use masking tape to create a floor graph to show the colors of their favorites.

We also used tiny candy leaves (the ones you usually sprinkle on frosting) to make individual leaf graphs.

Copy this Fall Concentration game on two colors of paper. Use as a center or as a take-home activity to review the signs of fall.

Copy this fall leaves blackline of 9 leaves on three different colors of paper to use for sorting activities. Sort the leaves by color, shape and size. Give students a copy of each color to cut up and use at home for sorting practice.

You could also play a listening game in which clues are given to find the "secret leaf". Lay down all of the leaves. Say, "This leaf is not yellow." "This leaf is not large." "This leaf has smooth edges." Continue until all but one leaf is eliminated. After the children understand the "secret leaf" game, have them ask you questions to discover the secret leaf. "Is the secret leaf red?"

Color sort

Shape sort

Leaf size sort

We did a leaf experiment by using a popsicle stick to rub some of the green color (chlorophyll) from a green leaf on to a coffee filter strip. You can see some of the green color on the picture at the top right. We placed the strip in a cup of alcohol for a half hour (use a plastic cup!). After we took it out and it dried, we could see a small band of yellow color that had separated from the green. We learned that is because there are other colors "hidden" in the leaves, but the green color covers them up. In the fall, the other colors in the leaves can be seen when they change colors.

Leaf Lessons Book

We made a book about some leaf activities. Cut the pages in half. The first page consists of a cover. On the next page, the children either draw or  trace a leaf and describe it.

Cubes are used to measure the leaf on page 3.

On page 4, the children drop their leaves and record how high they can count before their leaf reaches the floor.

On page 5, the children measure the area of their leaf by covering it with pennies.

On the last page, the children discover that their leaves float. Then they place one penny at a time on their leaf to discover how many pennies it will take to sink their leaf.

Click on the link if you would like a copy of the

Leaf Book.

Trace a child's arm and hand to make a fall tree. Glue colored tissue pieces on for the leaves.

Make a fall wreath by gluing leaves and acorns to a paper plate with the center cut out.

This is a TLC type scarecrow where the children cut and glue on shapes and then embellish it with crayon drawings.

This scarecrow pouch was made by cutting a foam plate in half and lacing the edges together with rope. The children drew on a face, glued on a bow, and stuffed it with straw.

Fall or Harvest Center Activities

These are examples of rotating center activities to celebrate the season. Parent volunteers and teachers are in charge of these centers and classes rotate to a new center every 20 minutes (or any designated time limit). This can be done with all of the kindergarten classes or in one classroom on a smaller level. Click here for additional center ideas that are Halloween related.

Have the children decorate sugar cookies.  Add a drop of red and yellow food coloring to white frosting in a dixie cup. The children  stir it and frost the cookie. They may also add decorations--sprinkles, M&M's, etc.

Have a fall tasting party and graph preferences. Some food ideas  for tasting and graphing are:

Pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds

Applesauce or apple chips

Pumpkin, apple, or banana bread

Do spider web paintings, rolling marbles in white paint and then over black paper. Attach spider rings when dry.

List fall words and then write a story and illustrate a picture. 

Find the letter in the hay. Fill a large tub with hay and
add large letters for them to find and match to a fall item, such as "I" by the Indian Corn, etc.

Face Paintings (Possibly your Art Teacher could help with this.)

Make book marks with fall stamps.

Fall candy sort/graph.(pumpkins, candy corn, orange and black M&M's etc.)

Glue sunflower seeds onto a sunflower worksheet that has numbers in the center of each flower. (such as 5).