10 Fun Fall Yard And Landscaping Activities For Kids

The leaves are doing their job of leaving the trees for the fall season, and this time of year presents a great opportunity to get moving and have some outdoor fun with your children. With their brightly colored hues and interesting shapes, those youngsters who enjoy arts and crafts could consider the weekend morning or afternoon task of raking leaves in their front yard and backyard the perfect opportunity to gather some of the season’s brightest and boldest leaves for fun arts and crafts projects like leaf pressing and wreath making while the leaves are at their best to collect.

Making mounds of leaves while raking can also be loads of fun; if you have more than one world, they can engage in a friendly competition to see just who can create the tallest heap! Once the piles are all gathered, another fun game to play is racing to see who can bag up all of their leaves the quickest.

The winner gets bragging rights–and maybe an extra special sweet treat once the family fun transitions from outside back indoors for a well-deserved meal–but if a strong fall wind should pass and send those gathering leaves flying that’s almost the perfect excuse to start the leaf gathering all over again and keep the games going for another round or two!

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If you think fun in the family garden is only to be had during the spring and summer seasons, think again. Fall is the perfect time of year to plant many types of seeds (including onions, garlic, shallots, certain vegetables like carrots and cauliflower, and several types of leafy greens), and a trip with the kids to the local plant store for just the right planting seeds could be just what the doctor ordered to beat any cases or weekend boredom.

If the idea of planting flowers sounds like more of a fun family exercise, you’ll be happy to know that many favorite winter flowers (think violas, poppies, evening primrose, calendulas and more) can be planted now. Every good gardener needs the right equipment, so this gardening project is a great excuse to go shopping for kid-friendly buckets, shovels, gloves and boots for the job at hand. Once the actual planting commences and your helpers get their hands dirty in the soil, the fun will follow!

Fall nights have all the makings of a memorable evening counting the stars with your little angels. For a picture-perfect memory in the making, embrace the family D-I-Y project that the moment calls for and upgrade your yard’s lighting by hanging some outdoor lights. Everyone can get in on the action from the very beginning as you make a family trip to your local Walmart, Home Depot or specialty store to explore all the festive outdoor lighting options.

The kids will get a kick out of seeing just how creative they can get with string lighting, lanterns, spotlights and chandeliers… there are no limits to what you can create in terms of achieving fun backyard lighting that are not only fun to put up, but also fun to gather around and admire under the season’s beautiful night sky.

Did you know that the fall season is considered the best time of year to rid your lawn or garden of certain types of pesky weeds–including crabgrass, dandelion weed and Creeping Charlie’s? If you have youngsters with a penchant for pulling things and using their hands, you might consider letting them try their hand in the yard pulling these pesky plants.

This fun chore is sure to be a confidence builder for any little gardener in training who can muster up their strength and yank out all those unwanted weeds. Once all the weeds have been successfully removed, the fun can continue by turning over the soil. Also known as tilling the soil, this process helps to manage and thwart the growth of weeds by uncovering them at the root.

Whereas younger kids will enjoy getting down on all fours and scavenging the garden for any unwanted weeds to yank out, you may want to delegate the soil turnover duties to an older child who can safely manage and operate a small garden tiller.

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Water play offers some of the best fun to be had during the summer season, and that doesn’t have to come to an end with the arrival of fall. A good rule of thumb when it comes to figuring out just how long to keep watering your grass is until the ground freezes over, or drops of an average nightly temperature of the low 30s. Early morning (before 10 a.m.) or in the late afternoon (between 4 and 6 p.m.) are considered the best times of the day to water the lawn, although with the cooler fall temperatures in place you’ll find that a good watering once or twice a week may just do the trick.

Some of the best childhood memories to make are those centered around the joy of unwrapping the hose from its mount, turning on the hose, dragging it over to your favorite watering spot in the driveway or backyard, and pressing the hose’s nozzle to release the water’s spray. Operating a water sprinkler can also be loads of fun for a child interested in gadgets you can set on a timer. Once that’s done, all that’s left is to gather front and center with the kids to enjoy a cool fall evening at home.

If you’ve been toying with the idea of setting up a bird feeder, experts say that the fall is a perfect time of year to do so! As our little bird friends begin their migration starting in the fall season and well into the winter, you can use this time for some interactive show-and-tell learning with the children, with nature as the main attraction.

In terms of being able to view the various breeds of birds with your child, who will delight in shopping for just the right bird feeder and setting it up in your background with carefully selected worms, nuts and seeds to attract lots of visitors, the balmier fall-weather months may prove to be more conducive to spending a bit of time in your backyard with the curious kiddies than the colder winter months.

Be sure to take time to explain to them how the oil-packed and nutrient-rich seeds and suets selected for the feeder help to sustain this precious wildlife, some species of which could be facing extinction, for their long journeys south.

Some of the most popular landscaping trees available for planting are also most partial to the fall season as their favorite time of year to be planted, so if your yard could use a bit of an upgrade and you want to make some great memories with your child, you may want to give this fun activity a go.

Cooler soil temperatures and increased rainfall make the fall season the peak time to transplant a seedling (also referred to as saplings), and the fun could commence with a visit to your local nursery with your child after you’ve scanned the yard together and selected the best spot for the planting project. Once the tree is planted, the family can select a name and institute a family tradition of taking an annual photo with the tree to record its growth over the years.

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Composting with the kids is not only a great way to teach them about the cycle of life, but it also provides a valuable lesson in just how waste can be used to infuse new life into lackluster soil, which can ultimately give life to a host of lush green plants and colorful florals. If done effectively, composting can significantly reduce the need to use chemical fertilizers, and the process of how food breaks down and is given new purpose and new life as viable fertilizer is the perfect hands-on science experiment that your ever-curious, as well as a crafty little student, could be seeking this fall season.

Make a trip to the local hardware store for an outdoor composting container for the house. You’ll want to scour the yard to identify the perfect spot in the yard, because once the food waste starts to decompose it may create a momentary albeit somewhat unpleasant smell. To get a bird’s eye view of the composting process and create those teachable moments that your child will carry with them for years to come, fill several mason jars with various materials and watch the decomposition process happen in front of their very eyes!

That beautifully laid-out garden path paved with decorative stones doesn’t have to remain your dream landscaping project for yet another year. Once you and your helper have identified just the right location for your garden path, you can flex your individual creative muscles as well as exercise the art of collaboration by working with you and possibly other siblings to determine the style and size of the stones used, as well as how the stones will be laid to create the pathway.

Any plants or weeds that hinder the creation of a clear and defined path will need to be removed, an important step that sounds just perfect for a fall morning just before or after you make that trip to the store for the stones. Whereas older children are probably best suited to handling delicate stones that may be a bit on the larger end, younger children will enjoy the no-less important pre-step of getting their hands dirty to clear away any debris and materials that are in the way.

Trimming the lawn and surrounding hedges is a great way for older children you may be seeking to make a bit of extra money around the neighborhood doing gardening work in the neighborhood. Introduce your children to the world of entrepreneurship by helping them to gain the exposure and experience they need to create and run their very own side business.

Practice makes perfect, so dust off those spare garden hedging tools and lawn mower and let your teenager take over these gardening duties at home so they’ll be ready to take on a few clients of their own in no time! If you have any tried-and-true tricks for getting your cumbersome hedges cut just right or trimming that lawn to the right height with crisp and clean lines, be sure to pass those on to your teen as they practice–they will thank you for the quality time and helpful tips down the road.