Fall is the perfect time to get outside for learning. In the fall you can build unit studies around things that are typical parts of the season like leaves, history, culture, and cooking. This fall you can encourage your child to learn and connect to the world around them with these fun fall unit study ideas.
Fun Fall Unit Study Ideas for Homeschoolers
Fall Leaves
Fall leaves are a major part of the season. For those that live in areas where the leaves fall as the weather turns cooler, you can take advantage of the leaves in your neighborhood to teach your child. Take the time to learn about why the leaves change colors, what lives in the fallen leaves over the winter, and start an experiment where you place leaves in a container or pile and watch how they decompose over the winter.
You can use leaves to do leaf printing art projects or practice different methods of preserving the leaves like pressing, waxing, and drying to see how preservation helps keep them fresher longer. This is a great introduction to food preservation.
For younger kids, you can use fall leaves to talk about colors and shades of colors, Learn about how to match different leaves to the trees they belong to, and use them as manipulatives for basic math. Seeing young kids love fallen colorful leaves and capturing their attention and interest is amazingly easy.
Weather Station
Fall is a great time to learn about the weather, As the temperatures drop and rains come to many areas you get wild swings from one direction to the other often on the very same day. When we lived in Idaho, there was a joke about the weather. “If it’s raining now, wait five minutes and it will change.”
These changes in the weather can make setting up a weather station and building a unit study around it more than worth the time.
Have your children track the weather in your own backyard. Track weather patterns on the news. Spend time studying historical weather events that have happened in the fall like hurricanes and tornadoes. When using the fall weather to teach a bit of history, start with local history and work your way out for the biggest impact on your child’s understanding.
Get more fall activity ideas here
Culture and Food
Fall is a great time to study culture and food. My kids loved using food in our homeschool, so encourage a love of learning the easy way: eat your way through school.
There are holidays starting like Día de Los Muertos. Even if you do not celebrate Halloween, this can be a learning experience of other cultures. Obviously, you’ll need to take caution with younger students.
With your older students, you can study the meaning behind the holiday, how it was adopted when the culture became predominantly Christian, and the traditions surrounding the holiday.
With Thanksgiving fast approaching you can use food as a great way to study history and cultures this fall. Have your child study an area around the world or a historical event and find a dish to make from this time or place. This will make it easy for your child to make a fun new dish to bring to your family dinner and give them a great starting point to proudly show off their knowledge to nosy family members that may be questioning your choice to homeschool.
Some fun fall unit study ideas centered on Thanksgiving include:
- Pilgrims & First Thanksgiving Activities
- Thanksgiving Books for Kids
- Eat Your Way through Thanksgiving School
- Homemade Butter
Free Fall Unit Study Ideas & Printables
To help you get started, we have FREE Fall Printables that go along with the Fall Activities for Kids {Unit Study} & Free Fall Printables so enter your first name and primary email & you’ll get both freebies.
Add Even More Unit Studies to Your Homeschool!
I’m super excited to link arms with several other bloggers to provide you with more unit studies for your homeschooling lesson plans! Now that you’ve read all about Fall Unit Study Ideas, hop over to With the Huddlestons and check out their unit study and free resource.
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