22 Awesome Fall Sensory Activities
10. Blindfold the kiddies and have them reach them into Guess Bags filled with fall finds, like The Pleasantest Thing did. Wonderful for developing tactile discrimination. Love this one, simply hide some fall items into brown bags and have your kid guess without looking!
11. Use black beans and Halloween inspired toys to make a go to sensory bin. You will get a lot of use out of this bin throughout the month and more!
12. Make “pumpkin cake” in A Jeweled Rose’s Pumpkin Scented Cloud Dough. It’s only 4 ingredients: cooking oil, flour, pumpkin spice (for scent), and paint powder, which is optional. Use it if you want the bright orange color!
13. Put up strings in your hallway or in between close walls, crisscrossing them all of the place. Pretend it’s a spider web and have your kid crawl through, which is great for motor planning and body awareness!
14. Explore Fall Seeds with tweezers, magnify glasses, and petri dishes from Teach Preschool.
15. Roast a pumpkin and use to mix in with pancakes, waffles, or oatmeal. Canned pumpkin works fine though, too! Pumpkin is a unique flavor that kids often enjoy. This pumpkin waffle recipe (can also be adapted for pancakes) has been a favorite in my house for years, its so good we make it all year round!
16. Make the Pinterest sensation: Pumpkin, Sweet Potato, and Banana Bread, for another way to cook with pumpkin. This is seriously so good and can be made into mini muffins for picky eaters that need less texture exposure.
17. Make Dry Leaf Confetti and use it to make some fun fall crafts, from Cute and Peculiar. All you do is literally dry out the leaves and crinkle them up. Talk about a tactile experience!
18. Bake and eat apple chips. Talk about how the texture and taste of the apple changes before and after cooking. These are soooo easy!
19. Create Acorn Paintings with recycled containers, it will be hard to avoid getting messy with this activity. Kids will get deep pressure from shaking the containers up to make their art! Get more proprioceptive activities here.
20. Create a simple fall themed obstacle course! Make a simple circuit of climbing through a string spider web (see above), jumping in leaves, and hopping in sack.
21. Pretend the kids are squirrels and assemble a Fall Sensory Bin that they dig through while playing outside, from The Pleasantest Thing. Fill it with leaves and pine cones!
22. Make glow in the dark slime from A Jeweled Rose!
More Fall Sensory Activities For Kids
Still want more inspiration? Snag our Fall Sensory Activities Pack in our shop! It has 24 amazing sensory activities perfect for fall, with a planner to organize over 8 weeks! The activities in this pack are filled with lots of details so you have everything at your finger tips, and they’re different from the one’s shared in this post.
Have more ideas you’d like to share? Let me know in the comments!
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Alisha Grogan is a licensed occupational therapist and founder of Your Kid’s Table. She has over 20 years experience with expertise in sensory processing and feeding development in babies, toddlers, and children. Alisha also has 3 boys of her own at home. Learn more about her here.
Can you recommend activities for a 5yo child (and ultra picky eater – 2 items only) whose only joy is ripping the pages of books?
Hi Liesel,
I would definitely lean into the aspects of ripping paper that he likes and try to branch from there. Some of the more “destructive” focused activities that I recommend are turning it into a focused activity. So having designated paper for the task, rip a piece, crumple it up, and throw to a target. This adds a sequence and purpose to an otherwise non-purposeful action. The other one that is a big hit with some of my more destructive kids is breaking ice, so freezing ice sheets on plates, Tupperware bins, etc. and having kids shatter it, hit with hammers, break apart with tools, etc. For some kids, it really “scratches the itch” of breaking things, and helps them regulate. Hope this helps a bit!
Best,
Laura
Your Kid’s Table team member
Do you have any ideas for a child who doesn’t like dry things, like paper, or chalk dust? It’s really impacting her school work. She also is constantly wanting to use lotion on her hands.
Hey Katy,
Oh that sounds really challenging, especially during school! You might try out some sensory bins to help her with some of her tactile sensitives. It might also be helpful to send her to school with a small bottle of lotion or see if it’s possible for her to have access to a damp towel, so she can wipe off her hands while she’s working.
Best,
Andrea
I HATE chalk, there are chalk holders that help. Paper is tougher, but if they can wear close fitting gloves that might help? Or use a page protector and dry erase markers?
Agree with wipes and lotion- I prefer Aveeno because it absorbs quickly and doesn’t leave a residue on my hands (I can use thicker lotions on my feet, for example, but then I have to wash my hands… but that might not apply in your case…)
Good luck
great list
thanx for sharing
Thank you for visiting my blog. I’d love to include this link to a Science / Sensory post I’m working on if that is all right?
Oh my gosh, of course Susan, would love that! Let me know when it is going up and I will share on facebook and twitter!
thanks for the share, Jaime@FSPDT
Thanks for sharing these great ideas!
Great post, thanks for sharing!
Here are four more great links, that I wanted to pass along!
http://www.kcedventures.com/blog/leaves-and-seeds-kids-nature-activities
http://frogsandsnailsandpuppydogtails-jaime.blogspot.com/2012/09/trick-or-treat-sensory-noodles.html
http://www.parentsociety.com/toddler/fall-sensory-tub-for-toddlers/
http://fitkidsclub.blogspot.com/2012/09/clubhouse-season-changes-hello-fall.html
Great list! Thank you for posting!
Great list of activities!