Simple Fall Family Celebrations

Creating simple fall family celebrations with your kids can build a strong sense of unity and create lifelong relationships between siblings. They share something with each other that nobody else does. They have memories of family celebrations with one another that are unique to them.

These family celebrations can center around milestones, holidays, seasons, the start of a school year, birthdays…whatever. As long as you have them. Kids mark their years by recurring events like these.

They are the memories upon which childhood is built.

And, for the record, I’m not talking about big, elaborate celebrations every day of the week. A unique family ritual could be as simple as celebrating the first day of fall with a trip to the apple orchard or the pumpkin patch. You can pull it into your homeschool by building the themes around preschool autumn themes that excite your little kids, while bringing a sense of nostalgia to your older ones.

Halloween is coming up this week, and it’ll be our toddler’s first time going out to trick or treat with the rest of the family. He got a little taste of what that’s like this past weekend when we went to an event at a local shopping center. He was shocked to see fistfuls of candy being dropped into his plastic pumpkin in exchange for a silly smile and some simple words. He’s going to have a blast.

As it’s a fun family night, and we enjoy getting outside with our neighbors, family, and friends, we let the kids gather as much candy as they want. But, since we’re pretty intentional about keeping artificial colors and flavors out of the kids’ diets, we work out a special deal with them — they turn in their candy when they get home, and enjoy a treat basket from us, filled with all natural substitutions, a special new toy, and hot spiced cider and pumpkin spice donuts.

Then, we all curl up in the family room in our pajamas for a “slumber party” and movie marathon. While we have some of our favorites on DVD, we love to discover new titles that may be streaming on Netflix.

This year, the first choice goes to the toddler to celebrate his first-ever trick or treat, and I’m pretty sure he’ll choose {to the disgust of the bigger kids} Barney’s Halloween Party.

They’ll suffer through, though they’ll probably sing their new favorite song, Weird Al Yankovic’s “Barney’s On Fire” while Isaac enjoys his show.

Some of the other shows we’ll stream during our Halloween family slumber party include Spooky Buddies and Curious George: A Halloween Boo Fest.

What are some of your favorite ways to celebrate fall with your family?

I’m thrilled to be a member of the Netflix Stream Team, sharing with you all the great ways we use Netflix to enhance our home and homeschool, and as always, all thoughts are my own – we only share programs we truly believe in.