Fun ways to celebrate fall with your families!
Each year, our preschoolers and families join us for our fall festival. It is a time where the families can get to know each other a little better and the children can show their parents (or other caregivers) all around our preschool environment. I thought I would share with you some photos of our games and activities that we explored this year…
Welcoming Families
We use all of our spaces around my preschool to host the Fall Festival. I find it works best to spread things out so there is lots of room for play and exploration. To kick off our festival, we always provide a “map” or checklist of things the families can do together. As soon as the families arrive, we greet them, hand them a checklist, and off they go…
Enjoying a Pitch-in
The parents brought food in for this event. I think my parents have figured out by now that I am not a good cook so if they want something creative, healthy, or filling to eat – they bring it along and add it to our snack room (prek classroom)…
The families can sit, eat and visit in the snack room. However, it was such a beautiful fall day, that many of our students preferred to take their snacks outside to eat.
Games and Activities
The families could take their time and visit each area set up for play as they chose. Now let me take you on a little tour of our games and activities in action around the preschool.
The Spider Web
Let’s start with the Spider Web…
To make our spider web, I simply wrapped a long, very long, length of string all around the trees in our outdoor play scape. I wrapped the string as low as I could get it but just as a side note, as the children climb over and under the spider web, they will step on it and as they do, the web will begin to slope lower and lower to the ground. So don’t start too low! I generally wrap the string knee high to begin with…
Our spider web is almost always the favorite part of our fall festival. Toddlers and preschoolers find their way through the web by going over or under it…
The Mummy Wrap
Next up is the Mummy Wrap. For any child that wants to wrap up a parent or any parent that wants to wrap up a child, this will keep them busy for a little while…
Pumpkin Play Dough
Head on down to our outdoor classroom for some pumpkin play dough…
Geo Pumpkins
Some Geo Pumpkin Pinning…
Sensory Exploration
And some corn seed sensory play…
Pumpkin Bowling
Then back outside for pumpkin bowling:Â Roll a pumpkin down the lane to knock over our pumpkin seed pins!
Tic-Tac-Toe
In our game room we had Pumpkin Tic-Tac-Toe: No X’s and O’s here – we had orange and white pumpkins!
Pumpkin Plinko
Drop the pumpkin down the plinko board and see what number it lands on!
Monster Mystery
Are you brave enough to stick your hand inside each tub to feel and guess the parts of our mystery monster?
Scare-a-Scary
Stack the ghosts up…
And knock them down with our corn seed-filled pumpkin balloons…
Scary Scarecrow says “Howl like a wolf!” or “Clap 3 Times” or “Walk Backwards” and more…
Tickets and Prizes
After you play each game, grab a ticket for a prize at our prize station. You can decorate your own bag to keep your tickets and prizes in…
And last, but not least…
Fall Bingo
Prize Station
Now back up to the prize station. The children turned in their tickets to collect candy or small trinkets for prizes before heading home. I actually used the honor system for this and let parents monitor how much candy or trinkets they preferred their child to collect…
Along with turning in tickets, everyone was invited to pick a prize-filled pumpkin from the pumpkin patch…
You can pop the pumpkin right away to get to your prize or wait until you get home…
Enjoying time spent with Families!
That wraps up our Fall Festival for 2016. It was a beautiful fall day to spend with students and their families all enjoying a fun day of play!
