Autumn Activities & Lesson Ideas

Autumn offers amazing opportunities for learning, noticing the world around us changing. Whether you're a teacher, tutor or parent looking for fun, educational ideas, there are so many ways to make learning come alive this term. Read on for ideas to inspire both classroom and home learning this term.

Writing Inspired by Nature

Crunching leaves, cosy evenings and misty mornings - Autumn is full of sensory inspiration! After spending time outdoors gathering inspiration, children could:

• Write an Autumn Poem
• Write sentences to describe an Autumn picture
• Write a short story about Autumn using 2Create a Story

Cosy and Spooky Stories for Kids

Get into the spirit of the cosy season by curling up with a good book: promote reading for pleasure with Serial Mash, where children have access to over 250 eBooks. Included in these books are a range of seasonal and spooky reads, ideal for guided reading or bedtime stories:

🍁 For parents: Read a chapter together with your child on Serial Mash (or have it read to you with the audio narration) and then talk about the story together - what happened, how the characters are feeling, what they enjoyed about the story and what they think might happen next.

🍂 For teachers: use the questions and activities provided with each Serial Mash book to guide class discussions, or show the chapter on the board for a shared read.

Teachers, if you're looking for more books to add into your Autumn guided reading in class, take a look at the Resources on Popular Texts in Purple Mash. Some of the seasonal texts include:

• Funnybones
• The Owl Who Was Afraid Of The Dark
• Room on the Broom
• Fantastic Mr Fox

Autumn Art Projects

Children love the digital painting projects on Purple Mash, and there is a great a selection for Autumn. There are autumnal animals, such as a hedgehog or squirrel, nature-themed paint projects including autumn trees and leaves.

There are also paint projects for Autumn events like Halloween and Bonfire Night, and even foods you might eat in Autumn like a jacket potato!

Coding with a Seasonal Twist

Purple Mash is most well known for its coding programmes and there are some fun, autumn-themed activities that young coders might like to try.

Children could also animate their own Autumn scene with 2Animate - in fact, why not use our recording of our Live Lesson where classes can learn to animate a scene of the changing seasons:

Purple Mash users get access to all these brilliant tools and resources, and more - with Serial Mash as an extra add-on. If you'd like to try Purple Mash and explore the platform for yourself, just request a free trial through the button below.