Favourite Activity Trays for Autumn

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Have you seen our activities this autumn season? I would usually round it up into tray activities for archiving and easier reference. Below are the details of each activity trays that we’ve been enjoying for the past months.

Cork Painting

Our last year’s cork painting activity turned out so good that I wanted to work on this project with the kids again once the leaves start to change. Vito and I tried it for a few days just for practise and here’s the outcome.

Pinecone Counting

Oh this was fun! We collected these pinecones from weeks ago and I decided to use them as a counting tool. I created a pinetree printout so we can plot the cones in it as we count. Learn more how we use these here (don’t forget to download a copy of the printout too!).

Autumn Counting Clipcards

Vito loves clipcards, so I added this in our shelf. I made these cards last year and you can purchase it from here, Autumn Themed Early Learning Math Activities Printable Pack.

Autumn Nature Finds

We love bringing home objects from mother nature! I allotted a basket just for these nature finds and I placed this basket on the top of the shelf so it can be easily accessed. Along with it, I also placed our fact cards so Mavi can read them to Vito whenever they’re exploring the objects. The autumn fact cards can be purchased from here, Autumn Themed Early Learning Literacy Pack.

Life Cycle of an Apple

We haven’t reach this far yet, but it will be similar to the ones we had last year (Life Cycle of an Apple Preschool Unit). We’ll read this book (How Do Apples Grow?), work on the apple layered puzzle and discuss the process as we use our cards.

Beginning Letter Sound of Autumn Objects

Identifying the beginning letters of autumn objects using these homemade cards which you can get here, Autumn Themed Early Learning Literacy Pack, and the Montessori moveable alphabet. This activity is similar to this (B4FIAR: Jesse Bear What Will You Wear) when we rowed Jesse Bear.

Sticker Activities

In times where I’m busy, stickers are always to the rescue! Simple yet fun activity that will engage your kids for long periods of time. The peeling off the sticky tape allows the child to practise hand-eye coordination and concentration too. I bought these fall foam stickers in a craft store and you can find them here too. I placed this tray on top of the shelf as well so Vito can easily access it.

Fruits and Vegetables

Another activity that we will be doing is to talk about fruits and vegetables since autumn is a harvest season for most fruits and vegetables. We worked on this last year and and it was a big success. The figures are from Learning Resources and you can get the fruit and vegetable cards here.

On related activities, see our activities for Fruits and Vegetables on Toddlers here, Exploring Fruits for Toddlers, and the one we did last year, Montessori Inspired Vegetables for Kids.

Leaf Prints

We did a an entire leaf unit last year and both of the boys enjoyed it. I’m not sure yet if we will go deeper into our leaf study this month like last year but surely we will make a lot of leaf prints!