Fall Activities for Your Outdoor Classroom

Fall is a wonderful time to explore the outdoors with your children. With the seasons changing, the world is ripe for learning and understanding… and it is a rather interesting time as well!October calls for pumpkins, gourds, and ghouls. No one but The Adventurous Child would associate Halloween with woodworking, but maybe that's what makes us special. At the end of your Halloween celebration this year, hold onto your pumpkins! (Read on to learn why.)The outdoors is the perfect place for banging nails and sawing wood. A preschool woodworking learning center may include a platform containing a tool storage cabinet, real tools and work benches. Children enjoy designing and constructing their wood masterpieces. They also learn to change physical properties like size, shape and texture as they master the tools and manipulate the material.However, before you let the children construct wooden masterpieces, teach them about hammering with something a little softer… like a pumpkin! Its malleable skin will make it easier for children who are hammering nails for the first time. We recommend you use a roofing nail. With its large head and short body, it can be hammered in 2-3 tries. Once the children have mastered that, they can move onto hammering nails into wood, and from there, they can construct their tours de force. As always, make sure everyone is wearing safety goggles!Early November is a great time to take your children for a hike. Whether you actually take them into the woods or around your playground, they will enjoy being outdoors during the seasonal transition. Now is the time to kick up some leaves and talk about the cooler temperatures. Ask them how the air feels on their skin, what colors they see, and what season follows autumn.Some of the fun things you can do with children outdoors right now include engaging them in discussions about animals and plants that are going through autumnal changes; ask them whether the lighting is different (this works especially well if you take them outside at the same time every day); bring a notebook to use as a nature journal for written descriptions or pictures; bring a recorder to capture the sounds of the day; and bring several baggies and a black permanent marker to give your children practice with sorting. Collect seeds, nuts, pinecones, rocks, and leaves and place them in the labeled bag. (Thanks to Renee Carver for these wonderful suggestions!)At the end of your hike, whether it lasts 15 minutes or an hour, you can sit down at your literacy gazebo and write and draw about your experiences. Children will be excited to talk about everything they saw, smelled, felt, and heard… while tasting some nice apple cider (our favorite autumn treat).Autumn is an exciting time of year, so why not invite your children to learn from its many gifts?