Three Last Minute Tennessee Fall Activities For An Under Two

Throughout the Fall and Winter, this traveling family is finally enjoying one of their fave locations. At home in the Tennessee Mountains. Enjoying our time at home has meant finding new activities to educate Alina during her homeschooling journey and enjoying the beauty in her back garden.

The fall is almost over and the winter months are about to wrap her frosty arms around East Tennessee. Even-though fall is almost over, there is still so much fun that nature can offer your little ones. Whether you live in East Tennessee or plan to visit just before the cold front comes in, here are Three activities to wrap up your fall festivities and make it extremely fun for your under-two.

Fall

last min fall activities

1. Leaf crunching & Leaf Angels

East Tennesee is one of the most beautiful, natural aesthetically pleasing locations in America, the fall time offers a variety of leaves and they’re not hard to find. Introduce your little one to the crunchy noises that leaves make when they are crushed under your feet or in your hands.

Living in the Tennessee mountains, I wanted to wrap up fall our family fall activities by giving Alína an up-close-and-personal look at the leaves on trees.
We Astrid by looking at the leaves and then crunching the crunchiest ones in our hands. This gave Alina the chance to begin learning the texture of different leaves throughout their life cycle.
When we found a leaf that wouldn’t crunch but was still really soft and fresh we saved those leaves for later sensory play. In the meantime, we spent roughly 20mins crunching our leaves and hearing the different crunch difference between our feet and our hands.

This was a great activity for Alina, not only did she learn to stamp and say practice repeatedly saying “crunch” as she crushed leaves, but she also had the cache to make leaf angels. We laid on our back garden and used our arms to flap and make, what we call, “birdie arms”.
Not only was this a great way to get her introduced to different sounds but it was the perfect activity before a long afternoon nap.

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2. Leaf & Hand Painting

Alína is only 20 months but one of the most important things to me is teaching her the sanctity of life and how all things are connected. Similar to our hands, each leaf has its unique print. As we walked through our back garden, I allowed Alina and marble to have some free play while gathering more non-crunchy, somewhat live leaves. The pretty the better. We came across some incredible leaves and took 3 inside to have some arts and crafts fun. We painted three leaves and did both of our hand prints next to our favorite leaves.

all u need for leaf painting ⟶

3.Thanksgiving Decorations

Living in the mountains during the fall means the leaves never leave your side. After constantly sweeping up an insane amount of leaves from the pool and the deck, I decided to make this into a last-minute holiday craft activity, just before decking the halls. I collected a fair amount of fresh and dried leaves and printed off a picture of a juicy turkey family from the internet. Being that Alina isn’t two and her fingers are her best friend the paint was edible but still incredibly messy! My OCD allowed me to have what looked like a million newspaper sheets on the floor, just to be extra sure that we wouldn’t run into anything crazy when the fun was over. Needless to say, the damage was minimal and the fun was unmeasurable! Before the leaves dry up, and frosty makes her appearance consider the above as some last-minute fall fun with your little one.

Before the leaves dry out...

Before the leaves dry up, and frosty makes her appearance consider the above as some last-minute fall fun with your little one.

Steph Bee