As summer comes to an end and fall begins, Montessori educators can focus on themes and activities that connect with the changing seasons. They can explore nature and the environment by taking students on outdoor field trips to observe the leaves changing color and collect different types of leaves. Engaging in sensory activities like making apple cider, creating leaf collages, or exploring the life cycle of a pumpkin can also enhance learning. Additionally, discussing and incorporating the concept of gratitude and the importance of giving thanks during the harvest season can help instill important values in students.
Incorporating themes and activities centered around the end of summer and the start of fall in the Montessori preschool classroom is important for several reasons.
Connecting with the natural world: Fall is a time when many changes occur in the natural world. The leaves change color, the temperature drops and animals prepare for hibernation. Incorporating activities that focus on these changes allows children to connect with nature and learn about the world around them.
Developing a sense of time: Understanding the changing seasons is an important part of developing a sense of time. By discussing the end of summer and the start of fall, children learn to associate specific events with specific times of the year.
Encouraging exploration and experimentation: Fall provides a wealth of materials for exploration and experimentation. Leaves, acorns, and pinecones can be used in a variety of sensory and math activities, while pumpkins and apples can be incorporated into cooking and science experiments.
Fostering creativity and imagination: Incorporating fall themes and activities allows children to use their creativity and imagination to explore the natural world. This can help to foster a love of learning and a joy in discovery.
Providing cultural and historical context: Fall is a time when many cultural and historical events occur, such as Harvest festivals and Thanksgiving. By incorporating activities related to these events, children can learn about different cultures and traditions.
Encouraging socialization and teamwork: Many fall activities, such as apple picking and pumpkin carving, require teamwork and socialization. By participating in these activities, children can learn important social skills, such as communication, cooperation, and problem-solving.
Promoting healthy habits: Fall is a time when many fresh fruits and vegetables are in season, such as apples, pumpkins, and squash. Incorporating cooking and nutrition activities centered around these foods can help to promote healthy habits and encourage a love of healthy eating in children.
Providing opportunities for movement and physical activity: Fall provides many opportunities for movement and physical activity, such as jumping in piles of leaves, hiking, and playing outdoor games. Incorporating these activities into the classroom can help to promote a healthy lifestyle and physical development in children.
To sum it up, incorporating themes and activities centered around the end of summer and the start of fall in the Montessori preschool classroom provides numerous benefits, including connecting children with nature, developing a sense of time, fostering creativity and imagination, providing cultural and historical context, encouraging socialization and teamwork, promoting healthy habits, and providing opportunities for movement and physical activity.
Fall Themes You Might Like to Explore in Your Classroom
Changing Seasons: Children can learn about the changes that occur during this transitional period, such as the leaves changing colors, the weather getting cooler, and the days getting shorter.
Harvest: Children can learn about the different fruits and vegetables that are harvested during this time, such as pumpkins, apples, and corn.
Autumn Animals: Children can learn about animals that are particularly active during this time, such as squirrels and birds that are preparing for winter hibernation.
Fall Learning Activities for Young Learners and ideas for the invitation to play activities for preschool students
- Seasonal Art Projects: Encourage children to create seasonal artwork such as fruit prints and watercolor pictures of fall foliage.
- Sensory Bins: Set up sensory bins filled with materials that relate to the changing season, such as pinecones, acorns, leaves, and apples. Create a harvest sensory bin filled with corn, beans, hay, and other fall-themed objects for a hands-on sensory experience.
- Seasonal Literature: Provide children with books and stories about fall, including books that explain why the leaves change colors and fall from the trees.
- Harvest Activities: Introduce activities such as making apple cider, sorting and counting apples, and making pumpkin pie.
- Nature Walks: Take children on nature walks to observe the changes happening in the natural environment, such as the changing colors of leaves and the migration of birds.
- Seasonal Songs and Rhymes: Introduce songs and rhymes that celebrate the changing season, such as “Autumn Leaves” and “Five Little Pumpkins.”
- Science Activities: Conduct science experiments that explore the properties of leaves, the process of photosynthesis, and the changing of seasons.
- Gardening: Teach children how to plant and care for seasonal plants, such as pumpkins and mums.
- Indoor and Outdoor Play: Plan activities that allow children to engage in seasonal play, such as raking leaves, jumping in leaf piles, and playing with seasonal-themed toys.
- Leaf Collecting: Children can collect and sort leaves by shape, size, and color. They can also learn about the different types of trees that the leaves come from.
- Pumpkin Carving: Children can help to carve pumpkins and learn about the different parts of a pumpkin.
- Apple Tasting: Children can taste different types of apples and learn about the different flavors and textures.
- Making Bird Feeders: Children can make simple bird feeders out of paper plates and birdseed to hang outside for the birds.
- Outdoor Walks: Taking children on nature walks can provide endless learning opportunities, such as observing the changing colors of the leaves, listening to the sounds of nature, and feeling the changes in the weather.
- Nature Art: Take the children on a nature walk and encourage them to collect leaves, sticks, and other natural materials to create their own nature fall art.
- Musical Instruments: Set up a music area with various instruments such as drums, tambourines, and shakers for the children to explore and create their own fall rhythms.
- Painting and Drawing: Set up a painting and drawing area with different types of paper, crayons, markers, and paint for the children to create their own fall art masterpieces inspired by great artists.
- Leaf rubbing: Provide preschoolers with a variety of leaves and paper, and encourage them to make rubbings by placing the leaves under the paper and rubbing the paper with crayons or oil pastels.
- Pumpkin exploration: Set up a table with a variety of pumpkins of different shapes and sizes, and let children explore them by touching, feeling, and comparing.
- Apple picking and sorting: Provide baskets of apples and sorting trays, and encourage children to sort the apples by size, color, and shape.
- Fall-themed play dough: Create a batch of homemade play dough in colors such as orange, yellow, and brown, and provide fall-themed cookie cutters such as rolling pins, cookie cutters, and sculpting tools for the children to create their own masterpieces.
- Hay bale maze: Set up a simple maze made from hay bales for preschoolers to navigate.
- Scarecrow building: Provide materials such as straw, old clothes, and hats, and let children work together to build a scarecrow.
- Corn husk dolls: Provide corn husks and twine, and demonstrate how to make simple dolls by wrapping and tying the husks.
- Pine cone painting: Collect pine cones and provide paint and brushes for children to decorate and personalize.
- Apple cider making: Set up a simple cider press and let children help make fresh apple cider.
By incorporating these fun and engaging themes and activities in the Montessori preschool classroom, young learners can understand and appreciate the changing of seasons and all the unique experiences that come with it.
Woodland Animals Poster Match Up Cards – Free Fall Printables
click here to download free fall printables
Autumn Learning Resources and Children's Books
Farm Cards for Object to Picture Matching Activity with Safari Toob
Three-part cards with twenty images for the object to photo matching activity. The printable features clear true to life images.
Forest Vocabulary 3-part Cards
Forest Vocabulary 3-part Cards for Kindergarten, First, Second Graders. This file includes:
36 themed vocabulary cards (four to one page) with forest elements – plants, wild berries, wildflowers, trees, pine cones, fungi with large unique graphics and text to match.
Autumn Unit Printable Hands-on Activities for the Montessori Classroom
Collection of Fall themed printable hands-on activities
Great for the Montessori classroom
American and British spelling (a separate folder for each)
Cards, student booklets, scavenger hunt
Printable features real photographs, clipart, and watercolor images
Pre-reading, reading, fine-motor, writing, vocabulary, counting, sorting
Geography, Language, Math, Sensory, Human Body
Fall Printables for Toddlers and Young Preschoolers
Engaging pack of fall-themed printable activities for children ages 2-5 that support student’s development in various areas, such as reading, sight words recognition, classification, counting, fine motor skills, cutting skills, concentration, helps to expand vocabulary and get active in nature.
Animal Tracks Montessori Three Part Cards Autumn Themed
Three-part cards with wild animal tracks. The printable features photos of a bear, wolf, boar, hare, squirrel, duck, mouse, lynx, deer, turkey.
Mushrooms 3-Part Cards Montessori Printable for Children
Montessori inspired Mushroom 3-part cards with 25 types of fungi.
Autumn Watercolor Matching Cards
48 watercolor matching cards with leaves and other autumn treasures.
Seasons - Sorting and Matching Pictures and Facts - Editable
Sorting and classifying printable activity to teach students about the four seasons.
Types of Mushrooms Printable - Nature Curriculum in Cards
Types of Mushrooms – 3-part card activity and handwriting sheets.
Fruits and Vegetables Vocabulary 3 Part Cards
Three-part cards are an excellent tool to help interactively learn new vocabulary and spelling. Classified cards can be used to enrich the child’s vocabulary, to develop reading, writing, and classification skills while broadening the child’s knowledge of the world. Create bilingual/multilingual cards for the students in your minority language with ease.
Food Preschool Pack - "I am a Chef"
Learning activity pack for preschool children aged 3-5. “I am a Chef” activity pack contains printables to create a wide range of hands-on experiences for young children. Students will practice one-to-one correspondence, letter formation, spelling, tracing, cutting, identifying sounds and sight words, widen their vocabulary, work on storytelling, practice fine motor skills and hand muscles, developing logical thinking, and so much more.
Native American Houses Information and Picture Cards, 3 Part Cards
This resource presents eleven types of houses built by Native American people across various geographical locations of North America.
Native American Musical Instruments - Preschool Picture Cards
This resource is great for preschool and kindergarten students for learning about the cultural aspects of Native American culture. It presents 16 different types of musical instruments with realistic and accurate clipart. Invite your students to match cards and trace labels. Bind labeled cards to make a picture book.
I Have, Who Has - Autumn ABC's - Editable
These I Have, Who Has fall themed cards are great for pre-k and k students. The cards with upper case and lower case letters help reinforce letter recognition skills in a fun and engaging way.
Learning to Count 0-10 Math Cards English & Spanish Fall Theme
Fall counting cards for one-to-one correspondence practice to Pre-K and Kindergarten students.
Learning to count from zero to ten for toddlers and young preschoolers
English and Spanish Cards
Hands-on match-up math activity with pegs featuring watercolor fall clipart
Cursive and print
Farm Pack for Preschool
Printable is made with hand-drawn watercolor clipart and has beautiful soft pastel tones.
These printables include 26 pages plus 2 pages with instructions.
Activities included: Silhouette activity, Preposition Cards, Vocabulary Cards, 3-Part Cards, Find the other half, Number Activity, Fine Motor pin poking activity, Colour Wheel activity.
Farm Babies Safari Toob 3 Part Cards Editable
Three-part cards with 11 examples of farm babies for the object-to-image matching activity.
The printable provides a set of cards with photographs of 11 different types of farm baby animals included in the Safari Farm Babies Toob – pony foal, donkey foal, horse foal, kit, kid, kitten, puppy, chicks, piglet, lamb, and calf.
Giant Magnetic Plant Life Cycle
Life Cycle of Plants Figure Butterfly Figurines Realistic Flower
Fall (Bright Baby Touch and Feel)
Pumpkin Circle: The Story of a Garden
Counting on Fall (Math in Nature, 1)
Touch and Feel Fall: Scholastic Early Learners (Touch and Feel)
Apples
Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn
Hello, World! How Do Apples Grow?
A Tree for All Seasons (Rise and Shine)
Apples for Everyone (Picture the Seasons)
Hello Autumn!
Nature Stories: Little Acorn: Padded Board Book
Melodie Naturals Fall Color Play Scarves - Set of 4 Vegan Playsilks - for Open-Ended Play, Creative Montessori and Waldorf Education and Homeschool
Tell Me, Tree: All About Trees for Kids
