Teaching Kids What Fall Feels and Smells Like

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A fall sensory activity is probably one of the easiest themes to put together because it can be as effortless as adding to your cart some of the bumpiest gourds that your grocery store stocks and walking through your yard to gather the colorful leaves that are found in your neighborhood before they blow away for the year. The simplicity is what makes this one. For mine, I did some leaf gathering, as well as supplemented with a few red craft leaves since we haven’t seen much of that color yet around our neck of the woods. Some Indian corn, cinnamon sticks, oak tree acorns, white mini-pumpkins, pine cones, and hay from the local garden center rounded out the collection.

A fall sensory basket with Indian corn, cinnamon sticks, oak tree acorns, white mini-pumpkins and pine cones and colorful leaves.
A fall sensory basket with Indian corn, cinnamon sticks, oak tree acorns, white mini-pumpkins and pine cones and colorful leaves.

My favorite part of the whole experience is just pausing the day, and breathing; I’m so glad I took the time to appreciate nature’s seasonal transition with my son, especially because the fall is such a short window of time compared to the other seasons, at least it feels that way to me in Texas. I sometimes find myself taking for granted that he is soaking up the season as much as I am. I love that this activity gave me the opportunity to explain things so he can have some context.

A great follow-up idea that I tried is to pull out a couple fall-themed books to read after they’ve spent some time exploring everything. We read We’re Going on a Leaf Hunt by Steve Metzger and Pick a Circle, Gather Squares: A Fall Harvest of Shapes by Felicia Sanzari Chernesky.

Another fall-themed, hands-on activity we like is a DIY play clay that takes minutes to make and is gluten-free and edible, should it come to that. This pumpkin pie play clay has a cozy, endearing aroma; it’s the perfect, squishy medium for cutting out shapes with fall cookie cutters, creative sculpting or, our personal favorite, a habitat for much-loved animal figurines.

This pumpkin pie play clay is an easy, do-it-yourself idea.
This pumpkin pie play clay is an easy way to teach about one of the classic scents of the fall season.

All you will need to whip up a batch is:

  • Pumpkin pie spice (however much smells good)
  • Pumpkin (about half a can)
  • Cornstarch

This recipe is a great solution for what to do with that usually-discarded second half of a can of pumpkin, since many pumpkin recipes only call for a cup.

First step, take off your rings! I then added pumpkin pie spice to a bowl of pumpkin and stirred well. It will smell pretty amazing at this point. Add about a tablespoon of cornstarch at a time, until it has the consistency of dough. I used a lot more cornstarch than I thought I would. Once it started to thicken up, I switched to kneading it on the counter top. It wasn’t long at all before it formed a ball that could fall out of a bowl itself when turn upside down, and wasn’t too sticky. If you think you’ve added too much cornstarch or it becomes crumbly, a little water should smooth things over. Because this is made with raw pumpkin I have stored it in the fridge; usually it will only keep for a few days, but we still find it well worth the effort.

How do you experience autumn with your family?

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Colleen
Colleen, an Illinois native, and her husband, Aaron, met in 2001 during their freshman year at Texas Christian University and have been charmed by both each other, and Fort Worth, ever since. What makes her smile is the heady aroma of that first cup of morning coffee, the opportunity to be creative, consuming mid-afternoon hunks of dark chocolate, seeing her sons smile, and feeling the down-to-the-bone joy that is motherhood. Outside of what seems like daily trips to Central Market or Trader Joe's, she is likely to also be found sitting crisscross on a colorful rug at a story time, strolling the Fort Worth Zoo or at home gardening the pots on her front porch, also known as her living room. Colleen is the sponsorship director for the FWMB. She helps local and national businesses connect with the FWMB readership and benefits local mamas by providing new information on products and services important to them. Contact Colleen at [email protected].

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