4 Fall Montessori Homeschool Activities for Preschool and Early Elementary

Sorting Tray

• Small basket or tray that can be carried by the child
• 3 bowls or similar containers
• Fall filler material that can be sorted by color or object type
• Optional: tweezers or tongs for moving the materials

Children love to sort objects. For this activity you will need three different objects that come in a set. Vase filler from a local craft store works beautifully. If you prefer, take your child on a nature walk and collect items such as different colored leaves, acorns, pinecones, twigs, or feathers. Assorted nuts work well too.

Show your child how to sort the materials, then allow them to try independently.

You can increase the challenge by using three different sizes of twigs and asking the child to sort by size. This is a natural opportunity to introduce comparative language: "big, bigger, biggest," "small, smaller, smallest," "thin and thick," or "short and tall."

Smelling Jars

• Small basket or tray
• 6 or more clear glass or plastic spice containers
• 3 or more spices
• Optional: blindfold

Scents have a powerful effect on memory. Certain smells can evoke memories that are decades old. Select aromas that remind your family of autumn: cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, dried oranges, pumpkin spice, celery seed (think Thanksgiving stuffing), or even crumbled dried leaves from the yard.

For each spice selected, fill two jars with enough material to provide a clear scent. With three spices, you will have six jars total.

Invite your child to join you at a table or on the floor. Using a three-finger grip, take each jar out and line them horizontally from left to right. Starting with the far left jar, look at each spice together, name it, note its characteristics, and hold the jar beneath your nose to inhale the aroma generously. Ask: what does this scent remind you of?

Mix the two sets of jars into random order. Put the blindfold on yourself and demonstrate matching the jars by scent alone. Remove the blindfold and check your work aloud.

Offer the blindfold to your child, mix the jars again, and invite your child to match the scents. When finished, have your child check their own work by looking to see whether the spices in each matched pair look the same. An alternate version is to identify each scent by name while blindfolded.

Corn Dissection

• Small basket or tray
• Indian corn (there is an amazing variety available)
• Tweezers
• Magnifying glass

When introducing the ear of corn, encourage your child to carefully examine and appreciate it before beginning. The magnifying glass allows the child to see all of the beautiful details up close.

Demonstrate how to remove a kernel of corn from the cob, then allow your child to use the tweezers to remove the kernels independently.

Older children can keep an observation journal, draw pictures of what they see, and write about their observations.

Pumpkin Washing

• Small basket or tray
• Pumpkin
• Scrub brush
• Bowl (water can be poured in once at the workspace)
• Small towel for drying

Children enjoy water works, and pumpkin washing is a wonderful addition to the fall homeschool shelf. Using a scrub brush, show your child how to wash the pumpkin, taking extra care to clean the crevices. Then show them how to dry it thoroughly.

When your child is finished, demonstrate how to clean up and put everything neatly away. Caring for the environment is as much a part of the Montessori lesson as the activity itself.