How to Decorate a Classroom for Fall

Fun with fall leaves

September means the beginning of school and the beginning of the fall season. Make your classroom a cozy, fun place to be by decorating it to celebrate fall. This article will inspire you to incorporate fall art activities into your lesson plans to create a fun, educational project that can also be used to decorate you classroom for the fall season.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Maple leaves and other fall foliage
• Crayons or oil pastels
• Paper
• Pencils

1. Review your lesson plans. Add hands-on, creative activities to your lessons while keeping the projects educational. For example, a science lesson on photosynthesis can be an excuse to gather fall foliage. Then to press it between pieces of wax paper to hang on the windows.

2. Involve the students. While there are many beautiful fall decorations at teacher and craft stores, it is often more fun to create your own. Letting the students decorate the classroom themselves encourages ownership of the room, and makes them feel more like a family.

3. Use natural materials. Autumn is all about the trees. Use colorful fall leaves, nuts and pine cones to make wreaths, swags and other decorations. Create a tree on the wall out of butcher paper, and attach real fall leaves and pine cones to it. Place leaves under paper and have the children rub crayons over them to create a paper leaf. Cut them out and hang them from the ceiling for leaves that will last!

4. Use words as decoration. Find out what the season means to your students. Encourage them to write fall poems, and hang them on a bulletin board. Have them write stories about fall, and put them in the classroom library.

5. Use pumpkins. Place real, tiny pumpkins on each student's desk with their name written on the pumpkin in permanent marker. During math, have the students estimate the height, circumference, number of seeds and weight of various sized pumpkins, and give a prize to the student who was right. Then, open up the pumpkins and count by tens to figure out how many seeds are in them. Clean and bake the seeds for a classroom treat, or use them to create fall artwork.

Tips & Warnings

• Ask for parent volunteers for those projects that may require extra help, such as ironing leaves between wax paper.

• Use an outdoor field trip as an opportunity to collect natural materials for your fall art projects.

• Keep hot irons away from children!

• Be culturally sensitive when decorating for fall holidays.

Resources

• Fall Craft Ideas for Kids