Outdoor Learning Magazine – Autumn Ideas for EYFS, KS1 & KS2
Looking for practical outdoor learning autumn ideas for your setting or school?
Our Muddy Puddle Teacher® Outdoor Learning Magazine – Autumn Edition is packed with simple, curriculum-friendly inspiration to help teachers take learning outdoors throughout the autumn term.
Designed for Early Years, KS1 and KS2, this edition is full of low-cost ideas using natural resources and everyday outdoor-learning equipment including leaves, sticks, conkers, acorns, pebbles, ropes, bamboo canes, hoops, cones, chalk and chalk pens.
Download the free magazine now.
Autumn Outdoor Learning Made Simple
Autumn gives children an incredible range of natural resources to investigate, count, sort, build with, talk about and create with.
Instead of taking worksheets outside, we encourage children to use their whole bodies, talk through their thinking and interact with the world around them.
Inside the Autumn Outdoor Learning Magazine, you’ll discover ideas for:
- Outdoor maths
- Outdoor literacy
- Autumn storytelling
- Oracy and communication
- Nature-based science
- Creative outdoor play
- Loose parts learning
- Seasonal investigations
- Physical and active learning
- Cross-curricular autumn activities
Discover more free magazine editions – English Outdoors
Autumn Maths Outdoors
Turn the playground, field or outdoor provision into a giant maths classroom.
Children can:
Make giant number lines
Lay bamboo canes on the ground and use conkers, acorns or pebbles as counters.
Create multiplication grids
Use bamboo sticks to construct large grids before placing natural objects into each section.
Sort autumn treasures
Collect leaves, sticks, stones, conkers and acorns and sort them by:
- Size
- Colour
- Shape
- Texture
- Length
- Quantity
Make shapes with ropes
Use colourful ropes to create large 2D shapes and explore sides, corners, symmetry and angles.
Older children can even investigate perimeter, area and fractions outdoors.
Create repeating patterns
Use autumn treasures to build repeating patterns such as:
🍂 conker – leaf – conker – leaf
or
🌰🌰🍁 🌰🌰🍁
The possibilities are endless.
Download the free magazine now.
Outdoor Literacy & Storytelling This Autumn
Autumn is also a wonderful season for inspiring talk, storytelling and creative writing.
Children could use ropes to create a giant story pathway, moving physically through the beginning, problem, events and ending.
Lay hoops along the pathway and ask children to add natural objects, clay models or drawings to represent different parts of their story.
Use chalk to add storytelling prompts such as:
Once upon a time…
Suddenly…
After that…
Unfortunately…
Finally…
Children can then orally rehearse their stories before returning indoors to write.
At The Muddy Puddle Teacher®, we love using the process:
Make it → Play it → Say it → Write it
because children often have much more to write when they have experienced their ideas first.
Use Autumn Leaves Across the Curriculum
Those piles of autumn leaves are a completely free learning resource.
Try using them for:
- Counting
- Comparing
- Ordering
- Symmetry
- Colour investigations
- Leaf identification
- Transient art
- Letter formation
- Number formation
- Story scenes
- Measuring
- Pattern making
- Sorting and classification
Children could even create giant characters from leaves before adding descriptions around them using chalk.
Autumn Loose Parts Play
Loose parts allow children to decide what an object will become.
A stick might become:
- A wand
- A bridge
- A fishing rod
- A number line
- A story character
- A measuring tool
- Part of a den
Combine natural autumn materials with ropes, bamboo, hoops and containers and allow children time to explore.
Adults can then dip into the play, introduce vocabulary, ask questions and gently extend children’s thinking.
Download the free magazine now.
Outdoor Learning for Early Years
For Early Years practitioners, autumn is the perfect opportunity to strengthen your outdoor provision.
Create opportunities for children to:
- Transport natural materials
- Fill and empty containers
- Make autumn potions
- Create mud kitchen recipes
- Build dens
- Make transient artwork
- Retell familiar stories
- Sort natural treasures
- Explore seasonal change
- Develop gross motor skills
The goal isn’t to recreate the indoor classroom outside.
Instead, give children opportunities to move, explore, talk, investigate and play.
Autumn Ideas for KS1
KS1 children might:
- Build giant phoneme frames using bamboo
- Spell words with sticks and stones
- Create number bonds using hoops
- Make story maps across the playground
- Sort leaves scientifically
- Measure sticks
- Build habitats
- Create outdoor timelines
- Make characters from clay and natural materials
These simple activities can support English, maths, science, geography, history and art without relying on printed worksheets.
Autumn Ideas for KS2
Outdoor learning doesn’t stop after Early Years or KS1.
KS2 children can use the outdoors for increasingly sophisticated learning.
Try:
- Giant multiplication grids
- Fraction investigations
- Measuring perimeter and area
- Creating historical timelines using bamboo
- Mapping geographical features
- Building models of scientific concepts
- Creating persuasive speeches outdoors
- Drama and role play
- Vocabulary trails
- Collaborative problem-solving challenges
The resources can stay simple while the learning becomes increasingly complex.
What Do You Need?
You don’t need expensive outdoor-learning equipment.
Our favourite resources include:
- Bamboo canes
- Colourful ropes
- Hoops
- Cones
- Chalk
- Chalk pens
- Clay
- Leaves
- Sticks
- Conkers
- Acorns
- Pebbles
A small collection of reusable resources can support hundreds of different curriculum objectives throughout the year.
Why Take Learning Outdoors in Autumn?
Outdoor learning can give children opportunities to:
- Move while learning
- Develop communication and vocabulary
- Collaborate
- Solve problems
- Build confidence
- Explore creativity
- Experience concepts practically
- Connect learning to the real world
Autumn provides an ever-changing outdoor environment filled with opportunities for curiosity and discovery.
Get the Outdoor Learning Autumn Magazine
Ready for more ideas?
Download the free magazine now.
Whether you work in Early Years, KS1 or KS2, you’ll find simple ways to take more of your curriculum outdoors without creating additional workload.
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Take the curriculum outdoors.
Less printing. More playing. More talking. More doing.
