Fall Activities for Preschool

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Are you searching for things to keep your kids busy for fall? Here are a ton of ideas to get creative and prepare fun fall activities for kids! There are some great ideas if you are running a home daycare here.

There are so many fun cheap fall activities you can do with kids. It doesn’t have to cost money to keep kids entertained. Many ideas can even be free. 

Cheap fall activities for kids

Collecting leaves (you can iron them between waxed paper and it will coat them with enough wax so they won’t get brittle and make art with them such as leaf garland).

• Leaf collages or leaf glitter.
• Fall Nature Wands DIY
• Visit a fire station or have a fire truck come to your daycare.
• Read.
• Visit a police station or have a police car brought to your daycare.
• Visit the park.
• Take a nature walk.
• Learn about composting.
• Bird watch.
• Watch bugs under a magnifying glass, (study Entomology)

Autumn has so much fun for kids to have. These activities can be adapted to many ages, but preschoolers will love them too!

• Learn tree identification.
• Make paper airplanes from your scrap paper.
• Rent a movie and have popcorn.
• Let the kids cook lunch or snack. Check out the blog for tons of kid-friendly recipes we have cooked. Click here for a monster cookie recipe that would be fun. 
• Get the kids in the kitchen for sensory experiences. 
• Write letters to grandparents.
• Play at the mall.
• Find new ways to make your class eco-friendly. 
• Have a picnic inside.
• Dress up. You can even make these easy Halloween costumes from stuff you already have around the house!

Are you looking for a planning sheet to keep your life on track? Check out this one on etsy. This pack comes with a sheet for lesson plan/family plan as well as other sheets. You can also get the daily planning sheet on it’s own here. It has a place for your daily menu, evening plans, lesson plans, supplies to prepare and more. Print it once or print it 1000 times. Once you download it, it’s yours. 

There are a ton of great fall books, check out amazon or the library to find some fall themed titles.

• Read a story and do an activity inspired by it like “Give a Mouse a Cookie” and then make cookies.
• Read a Halloween story like Spookley, Pumpkin Jack, or Five Little Pumpkins

• Do a chant like Five little Pumpkins:

5 little pumpkins sitting on a gate

The first one said, oh my it’s getting late

The second one said, there’s a chill in the air

The third one said, but we don’t care

The fourth one said, let’s run run run

The fifth one said, and have some fun

Whoosh went the wind and 

Out went the light

And the 5 little pumpkins ROLLED out of sight!

• Color.
• Sing some fall leaf songs.
• Count pumpkins or apples.

Preschool activities for fall are lots of fun too. The opportunities in fall are limitless. 

• Call the health department and ask if they have someone that can come and talk to the kids. In my town, they will send a dental hygienist to teach the kids about brushing their teeth! Or you can do a dental health unit on your own. 
• Visit an ambulance station or have an ambulance brought to your daycare.
• Make leaf rubbings with paper over a leaf and then draw with a crayon.
• Have a sports day and learn a sport or celebrate one the kids like.
• Make the kids a fall ice tower and let them excavate it. So many science lessons in this. 
• Have a color day every day of the week. Everyone can wear that color and you can do an art project using it too.
• Bob for apples.

Check out these fire safety lessons you can order and print out for teaching fire safety!

Preschool activities for fall

• Save up your empty boxes, paper towel tubes, and empty cans and bottles that are washed out and let kids create instruments, castles, houses, buildings, roads for cars, tunnels for cars, tall stacks, or whatever their minds can create to make with them.
• Churn homemade butter from cream.
• Puzzles, even homemade. Let them draw a picture and then cut it into puzzle shapes so they can put it back together.
• Make homemade mini books.
• Make a seed collage with dried corn seeds that you take off the cob or other seeds you have saved.
• Have a tea party.
• Build a fort.
• Visit a pet store.
• Make applesauce or apple cider.
• Make a scavenger hunt for them to hunt outside (for very little kids, you can make the list of what to find from pictures so they can match a rock to a picture of a rock, etc.) Here’s a fun one! 

• Play house.
• Play school.
• Decorate the front door.
• Make up a play.
• Put on a puppet show.

Fall lesson plans for preschoolers

• Make slime or playdough in fall colors. Here’s even a recipe for one and a scavenger hunt for it. I spy playdough style. 
• Here is another playdough that is cinnamon scented! Fun sensory experience.
• Thumb wrestle.
• Make up jokes.
• Play restaurant or store.
• Make bird feeders.
• Play with balloons.
• Make stick horses and ride them. You could even put on a rodeo.
• “Camp” in the back yard.
• Go bowling.
• Make up an obstacle course.
• Make up songs.
• Have a dance party.

Games are so much fun and teach kids a lot of skills. Check out some of these games for fall.

• Play I Spy.
• Hide and Seek, Ring Around the Rosie, Duck, Duck, Goose, or Simon says.
• Play tic tac toe.
• Card games or dominoes.
• Play board games.
• Twister.
• Play hide and seek.

There is a ton of great fun toddlers can have in fall that gives them sensory experiences, literacy skills and so much more. Check out these fun fall activities for toddler lesson plans.

• Paint pumpkins or carve them.
• Have an art party.
• Have a teddy bear picnic?
• Make caramel apples.
• Make pumpkin pie.
• Pumpkin stamps and stamp paint.

Even babies can have fall fun. Get inspired to do some fun things with your younger kids too. 

• Play in the mud and make mud pies.
• Explore pumpkins.
• Have a pillow fight.
• Build with blocks.
• Make them some Easy Fall Sensory Bottles That Are Calming For Kids.

These craft ideas will help you come up with some fun crafts to make with the kids for fall. 

• Do some upcycling projects. 
• Make fall suncatchers 
• Make a leaf tree.
• Discovery bottles with fall items.
• Collages made with nature items you find.
• Read a story and act it out.
• See if the library has a storytime person that comes out, ours does!
• Rent a movie or books from the library or attend their story hour program.
• If you use your imagination, there is no limit to what you can come up with that your kids will think is tons of fun. Think about the fall season and what is available for less at that time. Halloween stuff can be bought and used after Halloween is over. It’s a great time to get cheap dress-up clothes!
• Apples and pumpkins are much less expensive when they are in season in the fall. Think about how to get free and inexpensive materials. You can do a lot with a little when you use your imagination!