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Ideas for an Autumn Trail

Teacher author, Roisín, has shared some seasonal outdoor learning activity ideas that you could incorporate into an Autumn Trail activity around the school grounds.


An Autumn Trail is a lovely lesson for this time of year (provided you haven’t been hit too hard with storms – thanks Storm Agnes!). However, when things are a little drier and crunchier the children love being outdoors and exploring their surroundings.

Here’s a few simple things you could do to incorporate an Autumn Trail into your planning. 

Adopt a tree

Autumn is the ideal time for doing this as it can support follow on activities throughout the school year.

Work together to choose a tree around your school. If you have several trees around the school grounds, different groups or classes could adopt different trees.

For Autumn, get the children to complete a leaf rubbing and replicate the colour of the leaf at that time, e.g. a red leaf rubbing, an orange leaf rubbing, etc. Take a picture of the children under the tree in Autumn.

Collaboratively or independently, write a few sentences about what kind of tree it is, what it looks like, where it is, etc. A bark rubbing is also a nice one to do!

They will be able to visit the same tree each season and record any changes. If you take a picture of the children under the same tree each season you visit, a nice exercise to complete at the end of the year, is to look back at the changes that have happened to both the tree and indeed, the children!

This exercise makes a good link with the ‘Change and Continuity’ strand in History too and shows the children how they will be part of the history of the school. This could also be developed into a time capsule for a class in years to come to find! 

Click Next page for bird feeder ideas.

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Teachers’ Corner's school based guest authors share practical ideas and insights from their classrooms and schools.

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