5 Fall Activities To Keep Your Kids Entertained

The ghosts and pumpkins have been put away and all that's left in the candy bowl is a box of Dots, a couple of Mary Janes, and a single Twizzler stick. Halloween is over my friends. There is still 3 weeks until Thanksgiving and the mayhem we all know as the Christmas season.

Now that the sugar high is gone what is there to do to keep your kids entertained? Try these ideas to keep your kids entertained in those tween weeks between holidays.

Family Raking
Kids do not know the difference between feeling accomplished in doing a task and being used as an unpaid slave. You need to get those leaves off the ground anyways—why not get some child labor help in the process? First, get them totally hyped by letting them jump into the leaf pile. Then make a contest on who can fill a bag of leaves the quickest. The reality, is they won't really impact your workload, but you will be able to spend time with them all day.

{mosnooad}Pine Cone Family
If you have a big collection of pine cones in your yard, you can create a nice seasonal mantle piece or window display with your kids. Collect pine cones and assign different sizes to each member of your family. Each member of your family then decorates their pine cone counterpart with yarn, buttons, paint, and glue. Then take a piece of wood (a 2X4 would work) and fire extra long nails from the bottom through the top. The nails should poke out from the wood perpendicular from the plane. Skewer the pine cone family with the nails and voila! You now have a pine cone family that you created together.

Make Thank You Cards
You know your kids will get presents from family and friends. Why not use this downtime to create homemade thank you cards in advance? Handmade cards from kids can be a very meaningful thing to receive as a giver of gifts. Get some inexpensive card envelopes from the store (check the clearance aisle. Sometimes it is cheaper to buy clearance cards and only use the envelopes than to buy new envelopes outright.) Then cut construction paper to size and outfit your kids with markers, crayons, stickers, and rubber stamps. Have them cover the paper with their designs. Now cut smaller size plain paper and glue those on top so that the decorated border is still visible. That is the space your kid will use for the message. Store in a safe place and wait for Christmas morning. Now that these are taken care of, you won't need to be bothered when you play your new PS3.

Football Watching
I cannot stress enough the importance of brainwashing your kids at an early age to watch football. It doesn't matter if it is college or the NFL, kids should associate the smell of fall with the taste of buffalo wings and the sounds of John Madden. Failure in this task will result in them growing up not being as obsessed with this great sport as you and I. And with at least 2 games on Saturday and 3 games on Sunday, it is an activity that does not require good weather or long term commitments.

Leaf Collecting
Before you slave drive your kids into bagging all the leaves, make sure you take some time to choose some nice ones and create a leaf book with them. They will probably love the act of gluing them more than the act of looking at them but it will give you an opportunity to teach them about the trees in your yard and nature in general. Personal Note: This nature thing is not really my deal but I hear some people find it actually enjoyable.

With these activities, your kids can be entertained for hours during these autumn weeks. Anyone else have any good activities for the kids?