The autumn season is, hands down, my favorite season of the year. The wonderfully cool temperatures, gorgeous colored leaves, and the return of many comfort food recipes to the front of my recipe book all remind me that fall is here…and winter isn’t terribly far behind.
The way I see it, autumn is a wonderful teaching time for children and families. It’s a great time to do activities together that might be overlooked or just not considered during other seasons of the year.
What do I mean by using this wonderful season as a time for teaching? These are just a few of the things we have done or plan to do each autumn. Of course, if your children are younger (toddler age) or older (teenagers), then you may want to tweak some of these ideas to fit your family.
1. Hiking together as a family – what a fantastic time to take a hike through God’s creation! The leaves are either floating gently down from the trees onto your head and around you as you walk or the leaves have already fallen and are crunching beneath your feet as you walk. Take this time to amble through the woods, finding interesting and new things – there are different scents and sights in the woods during this time of year than other times. Point these out to your children and talk about how God’s creation is amazing!
2. Bake and make comfort foods – this is a fun way to bless your family and others by making some delicious comfort foods in the kitchen together. Small children can learn about measuring and older children can continue to learn and hone their skills of reading a recipe, gathering ingredients, and measuring. Older children can learn how to use the mixer, the oven, and the stovetop or microwave. The end result is something delicious you can all enjoy knowing you created it together!
3. Rake some leaves – what better way to teach children that each season produces its own chores or responsibilities along with simple joys. Raking up leaves can be a family activity. Reward hard work with a few jumps into the pile of leaves!
4. Visit a fruit farm – these are such interesting places to visit during the autumn season. Pick out some pumpkins to draw funny faces on (that’s an art project for those of you who educate at home!), jump in the haymow, or pick some apples for apple crisp or baked apples. What’s the lesson here? Farms produce our food – talk about how that impacts your family and the foods you eat each day.
5. Create a “Blessings Tree” – Cut out autumn colored leaves with your children. Mom, you can create a tree trunk with some branches on a large piece of poster board or butcher paper and attach it to a wall in the house. Encourage your children to write out blessings on each leaf before attaching it to the tree. We’ve always found this to be an excellent way of remembering how blessed we are…even when we don’t feel like it sometimes. When we’re having an especially rough day, it’s a good reminder to look at the tree and pray our thanks to the Lord for all we have.
These are just a few of the ways our family enjoys the autumn season together.
The challenge: how are you using the autumn season to teach your children? How do you incorporate teachable moments into your day? Are your children aware of how the seasons change? What life lessons can you teach them using this time of the year?
All my best to you this autumn season!
Written by: Susan is a wife, mom, daughter, sister, and daughter of the one and only true King. She keeps busy home educating her two precious daughters, taking care of her husband and home, and writing at her blog, Busy ‘Lil Homemaker where she shares delicious recipes, homemaking tips, and her faith. Susan loves coffee, chocolate, and her family. In all her spare time she loves to piece quilts and sew simple things and spend time with loved ones. You can visit her at Busy Lil Homemaker.
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Sarah Mae says
Susan, can you tell me more about how you created the tree trunk-did you tape the branches, tie them? Do you have a picture somewhere? I love the idea, but I’m a craft reject, so any help would be…super helpful! Thanks! 🙂
Susan says
Hello Sarah Mae!
I pretty much take crafts as they come…so let me think…I drew a tree on a large piece of butcher paper (got that from my local school supply store) and colored in the trunk and branches (brown). My drawing isn’t the greatest, but it works ok…LOL. Then, we traced leaves with a template and wrote on them and stuck the leaves to the tree with tape. We need to get busy on ours for this year!! I don’t have a photo yet, but when I do, I’ll try to post it on my blog and let you know too. I am currently without computers at home, so unless I visit the library, I am not online. Hoping that will be remedied very soon! Blessings to you!
Jennifer R says
“Rake some leaves” 🙂 We set aside a few weeks every year just to do that, as we have several large oak trees on our property. We raked all day last Friday, looking out the window this morning, you’d never know it! Makes for GREAT pictures!!
Susan says
Excellent idea Jennifer!
Anonymous says
LOVE IT! I totally believe in building a home not only inside your home but through the adventures you take outside your house.
I have 3 under 3 and we’ve done tweaked versions of all these and thought I’d share for other’s who may have younger ones (toddler aged).
Recently we have been taking shorter walks around our neighborhood collecting leaves, rocks, and pine cones! We talk about colors, shapes, etc. We used the leaves for decoration and the rocks for our blessing basket were we write blessing on the rocks (Joshua 4:21-24), similar to your blessing tree. We also traced thier feet and then ‘practiced’ using scissors to make them a little more “leaf” like. I’m going to hang them with fishing wire from a real branch (also hung with fishing wire) so they look like they are falling off.
We have a huge yard too, Jennifer! We have lots of dayS racking and making “bonfires” with daddy!
My girls (almost 3.5 and almost 2) love dumping ingredients into a bowl and we just tweak regular recipes to be “fall” like- food coloring, cookies cutters, or just renaming things!
We also have started an annual Pumpkin Patch day with our Sunday School class were all the couples (and their children) meet at the local (~30min away) Pumpkin Patch for a day of pumpkin picking, watching pig races, petting animals, hay rides, giant slide, and picnicking together! Great teaching moments as a family (and building community as fellow Christ-followers)!
Thanks for the inspiration Susan!!!
Susan says
Hi Jules –
Wow, sounds like you and yours do up the autumn season beautifully! Thank you for the great ideas too!