Fall Fun Schooling Week

Fall is finally here! Well according to the calendar that is. Unfortunately, I'm not sure the weather is in agreement. Today, in the Deep South, the temperature registered in at 103 degrees (and that's not including the heat index!). I am so beyond ready for cooler weather!

I really enjoy doing crafts and fun seasonal activities with my children. I've struggled over the years to find a balance between the must be done nitty gritty homeschool and all the fun schooling that I want to do. To help me find a balance that enables me to incorporate those fun crafts and acuities; every few weeks I schedule a fun school week. 

Typically my fun school weeks coincide with the seasons changing and holidays. Since the calendar officially hit fall last week, that's when I scheduled our fall fun school week; even if it is hotter than blue blazes!

Mostly, the fun schooling activities are just for the little ones, but sometimes the bigger kids get in on the fun. I try to organize at least one seasonal/holiday activity for the older children as well, but mostly their core academics take up the majority of their school time. 

When I was making our academic calendar for the year, it was really hard to schedule in appointments. Sadly, this particular fun school week included an out-of-town appointment that I did not know about when I did my planning. When we have these out-of-town appointments, that means no school days. Of course this hardly effects the children, it's dear old mom that has to rearrange and cram extra lessons and activities into a shorter amount of days. Thankfully, we did manage to get everything done, but it certainly was a challenge to say the least.

I like to incorporate a themed sensory box for our fun school weeks. For our fall fun schooling week sensory box I included pinto beans, faux fall leaves, brown, orange, and yellow yarn strips as well as a wooden scooper and a small tin pail.

All the little ones love the sensory box and they will play in it for quite a while, without fussing (mom win!!).

Our first project for the week was a fall leaf wreathe. I had one of the big kids collect a bunch of leaves from outside which the children glued onto a paper plate with the middle cut out. Honestly, if I had to do this project again I think we'd use fake leaves. because once the real leaves dried they made a major mess!

Next we made leaf rubbings. This projects was a bit difficult for my two little bitty ones and they needed some help to be able to color over the leaves.

I always like to incorporate a 'snack-tivity'. This particular week's fun snack was s'more mix. A super easy snack, including only three ingredients: honey graham cereal, mini marshmallows, and milk chocolate morsels. 

I allowed each of the children to pour a portion of the ingredients into a large bowl.

Of course they thought this was loads of fun, but Titus and Lydia were far more interested in eating their snack mix instead of actually making it, lol.

Then we had a leaf resist painting. I taped large leaves onto construction paper, the kids painted around the leaf, and then we removed the leaf to show a pretty outline of a leaf.

I let the children choose their paint colors but kept it to fall colors. I was pleasantly surprised at how well these paintings turned out, lol.

Last the children made torn paper fall leaves. I found a free template of a leaf and printed it off onto white card stock and then the children glued torn pieces of construction paper onto their leaf. You could easily cut out the leaves if you so fancied.

And that's what we did for our fall fun schooling week. Nothing overly complicated, just some fun and simple activities to help us ring in the new season.

We haven't officially started our fall storybooks yet so we didn't do them this week, but trust me we have plenty of those coming in the very near future. 

Fall is such a fun time to enjoy seasonal crafts. The children had a blast and I'm glad we were able to get everything I had planned worked into our busy schedule! Sheesh, I don't know about y'all but fall is our busiest time of the year. It seems we have something planned every weekend and even events planned during the week. But, I love every minute of it and look forward to the crazy busy memory making opportunities every year ~ even if it does take a masters degree in juggling to keep this large crew rolling forward, lol! 

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer