Fall Harvest Theme Preschool Activities
School is in…and so is the harvest! Fall is a great time of year to visit a local garden or farm to dig for potatoes, pull up carrots, or pick cherry tomatoes from the vine. Weigh-in on these harvest activities to add some hands-on fun to your harvest theme.
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Harvest activities provide lots of opportunity for exploring hands-on. Kids can touch bristly leaves and stalks, and cut open fresh tomatoes to see the seeds inside.
If a field trip is not an option in your area, or you want to extend the harvest theme, try planting a few seeds or plants in large pots.
Many vegetables such as tomatoes and yellow beans grow well in containers.
Cherry tomatoes are ripening on a tomato plant. Look closely to pick out the red and green tomatoes.
Children’s names were etched into a pumpkin or zucchini early in the season........and the letters grew with the gourd!
Promote early math skills with counting and sorting, measuring and weighing.
- Sort fruit and vegetables by color, size, and shape.
- Measure by length.
- Compare weights of different types of produce.
Wrap a few tomatoes in newspaper or brown paper.
Place them in a convenient location where kids can easily unwrap and check them.
Observe them until they ripen to a bright red, then wash and enjoy in a salad, or on their own at snack time.
Fall Harvest Theme - ABC Method
Activity + Book + Craft
A - Activities
1. Pick fruit and vegetables at local farm or garden.
2. Music and Movement
(tune: Here we go Round the Mulberry Bush)
This is the way we dig the rows (make digging motions as if with a garden hoe).
This is the way we plant the seeds (walk up and down the "rows" sprinkling seeds).
This is the way the rain will fall (wiggle fingers like raindrops falling from the sky).
This is the way the sun will shine (raise arms, join hands to make a big circle overhead).
This is the way the garden grows (crouch low, slowly rise up until standing on tiptoe with arms reaching up to the sky).
3. Small Group
- Chop foods to prepare and serve homemade soup for snack or lunch. Can you spot the carrots and celery in the soup?
- Takeaway Game : place several vegetables on a tray; remove one item ; can you guess which item is missing?
- Blindfold Game: guess which fruit or vegetable you are holding
B - Book
Cows are in the Corn by James Young
Up We Grow!: A Year in the Life of a Small Local Farm by Deborah Hodge
Sesame Street Down on the Farm
C - Craft
More harvest theme activities from kid-friendly bloggers
Harvesting in the Carrot Patch / Powerful Mothering
Harvest Sensory Bin / Little Bins for Little Hands
Harvest Theme for Preschool and Kindergarten / The Preschool Toolbox
Harvest Preschool Activities: A Social Studies Lesson / The Educators Spin On It
Follow our Seasonal:Fall Pinterest board for amazing fall crafts and activities!
