I have to admit I used to be the teacher that never stopped to have fun teaching lessons for different seasons or holidays. I always felt like it took away from what the focus was and I just didn’t have time for that. Don’t get me wrong, I still worked hard to make learning fun but I avoided holiday related activities at all costs. During a team meeting one year I voiced my concern and one of my teammates mentioned how those were the only activities he remembered doing in school. I reflected on my own thoughts and realized it may be another tool I could use to engage my students, especially those that were hard to get hooked. I started by creating activities that still fit into my academic lessons (either new skills or review) and realized that connecting lessons to seasons and holidays were game changers!
For Fall I started using this fall bulletin board, reading passage with comprehension questions, writing prompts, and math color by code activities. I dedicated a Friday into making our room look like fall and having my students help create our Fall Bulletin Board. They absolutely loved it and the engagement left me speechless. How could students complete these fall reading comprehension questions with no problems when they struggled on their daily work. I think it truly boiled down to their excitement and engagement. Parents donated fall treats like pumpkin and apple pie. We colored and decorated but most importantly they learned. They learned more with these activities than I ever imagined they would. This turned into me
creating similar activities for different grade levels.
When I started working with primary teachers, I fell in love with the book Spookley the Square Pumpkin. The teaching opportunities in this book were endless. It is a great book for character education, studying characters, learning about problems and solutions, along with recalling the events in the sequence they happened. Then we turned it into more activities where the students estimated the measurement of the size of a pumpkin, they predicted how many seeds it had, and they predicted the weight of the pumpkin. This was so much fun we took it even further and learned all about how pumpkins grow. This one book about pumpkins is now one of the activities I look forward to each year with students (and it can easily be adapted for all grade levels).
What are some other activities and topics my students have enjoyed during the fall? There are activities for every grade so scroll through them and plan to have some fun! Download the FREE color by code bat activities!
Thanksgiving Bulletin Board & Primary Activities Thanksgiving Activities Pack Intermediate
Candy Corn Math
Bat Passages (a great tie into Halloween) Bat Escape Room
Fall Poems
Turkey Writing Prompts Turkey Craft
Thanksgiving Passages (3rd-5th Grade) Veterans' Day Citing Text Evidence
Veterans' Day Primary Finding Text Evidence. Veterans' Day Pome
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