I got some great ideas from this guest post about ways to have fun outside this fall with Darah! I hope it gives you some good ideas, too!

Fall Activities in the Garden

Fall presents a wonderful opportunity for children to learn through play in the garden and outdoors. Although summer is over, the blustery colorful change in season in no deterrent to fully take advantage to play alfresco.

Numerous creative activities can be combined with clearing the garden after the summer months in preparation for winter and putting it to bed.  Depending on the child’s age and learning level the garden provides a perfect space for promoting color recognition, social play, fine motor skills, mathematical concepts, sharing with friends and imaginative play. There is also scope for the use of natural materials combining learning about the garden with other development skills.

Children can help with all the garden tasks converting them into a fun activity rather than a cumbersome chore. All the necessary jobs to prepare the garden to get through the winter ready for the following spring such as weeding, trimming the borders, dead-heading, plant protection and preparing the lawn can become a fun challenge for a child. Counting how many plants you need to dead-head, what color leaves have fallen onto the lawn, what the leaves feel like, the noise they make when they are scrunched up, how many borders need trimming, everything can be turned into a tool for learning.

Weekends can be occupied with fun educational activities for children. Packing up the garden is the perfect time to teach a child all about different garden tools and their uses, where they are stored in different garden sheds and how one should take care of them. Naturally a child may not be able to handle actual tools at they could be potentially dangerous but they can practise on their mini imitation tools!

If you have a wooden garden shed you may wish to spend a day cleaning it out, painting a protective layer over it, dusting and sweeping, reorganising and making space for potted plants that have finished bringing in the tubs. A child could be in charge of cleaning all the pots and planting bulbs that will last through the winter. The bulbs that they plant they can be in charge of monitoring, learning how to care for new life and observing things grow at the same time, both fantastic educative opportunities.

A great idea is to allot a child their own section in the garden for them to care for, decorate as they wish with pebbles and stones and watch life grow once the winter is over.

Not only does fall present obvious tasks in preparation for winter which can be made into learning experience for children, wonderful imaginative, creative games can take place. Fallen leaves provide a perfect supply of material for numerous craft activities such as leaf collages, leaf stencils and home-made cards.  Scavenger hunts are exciting; children can be given a set of words and a bag and sent out to the garden to find all the objects (leaves, feathers, acorns, conkers, bark etc).

All the sticks, twigs and foliage that is cleared from the garden provide resources for imaginative play, building tepees, reconstructing imaginary villages, for dressing up, the possibilities are endless for children to explore and play expanding and learning all the while.  The fall season is a great opportunity to take advantage of different dimensions for learning through play.

This guest post was brought to you by Tiger Sheds.