Six Fall Activities for children in Arabic

Teaching about the four seasons in Arabic is a great way to engage children into learning meaningful Arabic vocabulary and phrases/sentences, and to connect them to the natural world! I recently had the pleasure to run a “Fall in Arabic” Meetup for the local homeschooling community so I am sharing with you my six Fall activities for children in Arabic! We had a lovely time walhamdulillah and the children, ranging from around 3 to 8 years old, were eager to participate in the Arabic activities I had planned, even if it was our first meetup! It made my heart so happy to see them repeating Arabic words, listening to the stories and playing in Arabic!

Did you know? At Arabic Seeds, we develop themed Arabic units to helps educators, parents and Arabic teachers to teach Arabic to children. Among these units, we provide 4 seasonal Arabic units: the Fall Unit based on our printable story “Fall’s Treasures”, the Winter Unit based on our story “With grandpa and grandma in the mountains”, the Spring Unit based on our “I love spring” story, and the Summer Unit based on our story “Five Senses at the Beach”. Learn more about our membership here.

I used resources from our Fall’s Treasures Unit (accessible to members of our membership here) and below is my outline for this session explaining you the activities we did. Note that these are only suggestions and that you can ran a teaching session differently. At the end of this article, I also suggest other activities that I didn’t have time to do in one session. A unit certainly needs different teaching sessions to take the most of it and have the children retain more!

TABLE OF CONTENT:

1. Fall Arabic Story Read-aloud and Flashcards Matching Activity

For this activity, you will need:

• the printed out “Fall’s Treasures” Arabic Story, in Arabic-only or Arabic-English. Available for Arabic Seeds members here.
• the matching printable Fall Flashcards, in Arabic-only or Arabic-English. Available for members here. Note that a few flashcards included in our Fall flashcards file contain words not included in the story. Keep these cards for the second activity about Fall Colours explained after this one.
• a basket (optional),
• some fall decor items or real fall items (optional).

I started the session with reading aloud the short Arabic story “Fall’s Treasures” كُنوزُ الخَريف. Stories bring a meaningful and engaging context to the learning, that’s why we include them in our themed Arabic units. Since many of the children present at the meetup were not Arabic-speakers at all or did not have an Arab background, I decided to read the story in both Arabic and English (we provide the printable file of the story in both the Arabic-only and Arabic-English versions so that you can choose), while emphasizing on key Arabic vocabulary words throughout the read aloud.

After that, I distributed among the children the Fall Flashcards relevant to the key words of the story (see the picture above) as well as some fall decor items like acorns, leaves, mushrooms and pinecones.

Finally I re-read out loud the short story and asked the children to put in the basket the relevant flashcards or items as I was reading. The goal was to engage the learners into listening attentively to the story and the key vocabulary words and into participating in a more hands-on manner. The pictures below show you examples of matched story pages and flashcards.

2. Connecting to a Quranic Verse

Since the young learners at the meetup were muslim children, I took a moment to read them the following verse to see if they could find some Arabic words they had heard in the previous story and flashcards.

One of the children said that this verse meant that Allah knows everything, Allahumma baarik.

3. “Fall Colours in Arabic” Flashcards Sorting Activity

For this activity, you will need:

• the whole set of the Fall Flashcards as well as the colourful circles included in the file,
• some fall decor items or real fall items (optional).

I first placed on the table the 4 coloured circles representing the Fall colours (red أَحْمَرُ, orange بُرْتُقالِيٌّ, yellow أَصْفَرُ، and brown بُنِّيٌّ). Then, I distributed the Fall Flashcards and decor items among the children and asked them to take turn sorting them by colours. I was also asking them to repeat after me the name on the card and its corresponding colour. The first activity (story read-aloud and flashcards matching) revolved around listening to the language, now this activity makes the learners practice their speaking skill using key words they already heard from the first activity.

4. Fall Treasures Scavenger Hunt (with Fall Arabic Freebie)

For this activity, you will need:

• the FREE printable Fall Scavenger Hunt List that you can get for free on our page here.
• pencils to check off items on the list
• a basket (optional)

Fall is all about getting outside and enjoying the beauty of the fall colours – ما شاء الله! So, like in the story, out we were to find our own real Fall’s Treasures! This activity is great after the two first focused activities, now our young learners can practice Arabic while moving and exploring!

As we were gathering Fall items in a common basket, I was individually checking in with the children as they were coming to the basket: I was asking them what they had found and what was missing (repeating again key Arabic words). In the end, we all gathered around the basket and talked about our beautiful Fall treasures, walhamdulillah!

A few notes:

• You can also decide to do the scavenger hunt before the Fall Colours Sorting activity explained above so that you can use items found by the children in the sorting activity. That’s even more fun!
• If your area has mushrooms, make sure you tell your children/students about safety and not touching mushrooms when we don’t know if they are toxic or not.
• What if in your area you don’t have natural fall items? Some of the items on the list, like the mushrooms and the different tree nuts, were not available in our area, but I had brought a few store-bought items to make up for that. A short discussion can also be open with the children about the nuts and where they could find them (maybe they have them in their pantry or can find them at the store with their parents, then taste them and name them in Arabic at home, if they are not allergic to nuts.).

5. Squirrel Movements Activity in Arabic

Squirrels are one of the cute symbols of the Fall season as they gather their nuts and other food for winter. We included a squirrel in our fall story as well as in the scavenger hunt list, and now we are introducing a fun and short Squirrel Movements Activity in Arabic. A Movements Activity (a form of kinesthetic learning), while tapping into the children’s natural need to move, is great to expose learners to some useful Arabic Action Verbs and short sentences. Children also have a lot of imagination and love to pretend play so this activity was a hit during the meetup!

Tell the kids that you are now pretending to be squirrels, like the little squirrel at the end of the story!

Here is an example of basic Arabic actions verbs and short sentences that you can say. Ask the children to do them with you, as you do them yourself.

! أَنا سِنْجابٌ I am a squirrel!

! أَقْفِزُ أَقْفِزُ أَقْفِزُ I jump, jump, jump!

! أَجْري I run!

! أَقْفِزُ أَقْفِزُ أَقْفِزُ I jump I jump I jump!

! أَتَسَلَّقُ الْأَشْجارَ I climb on the trees!

 ! أَجْري. I run!

…آكُلُ جَوْزاً مممم I eat a walnut! yumm…

!شَبِعْتُ وَ الْحَمْدُ لله I am full, alhamdulillAh! (thanks God!)

… حانَ وَقْتُ النّوْمِ It’s time to sleep…

Note that you can use a movements activity with any topic or unit you are covering, it’s very versatile, just change the words as needed. It is also great to get some of the children’s energy out between more attention-demanding, table-work or sitting activities.

6. Pumpkin Pie Arabic Story and Pretend Play

For this activity, you will need:

• the Pumpkin Pie short text included in our Fall Unit for members here,
• 3 pumpkins of small, medium, and big sizes (I chose to print out some pumpkins instead of bringing real pumpkins, especially because I don’t like to play with food and didn’t want to run the risk of getting them smashed during the activity since pumpkins can be fragile) Find the printable I created and used in the fall unit along with the Pumpkin Pie story.
• a mixing bowl and a big spoon or kitchen whisk (optional)
• a real pie to eat (optional)

At the end of the squirrel activity, we were sitting down and pretending to be sleepy squirrels. We came back to a calmer state so now is a good time for a short and sweet Arabic story! I also told the children I had a little surprise مُفاجَأَة for them after this last activity 😉. This simple pumpkin story is about a family going to a farm to pick up a small, a medium, and a big pumpkin. They then return home and prepare a delicious pumpkin pie that they eat.

Like for the first story, I read it in both Arabic and English, emphasizing on key Arabic vocabulary words. I then re-read the story asking the children to take turn in picking up the (paper) pumpkins and “mixing” them up in the mixing bowl with a big wooden spoon and a whisker. Again the kids were eager to participate in this pretend-play activity, والحمد لله! I then got out the surprise, which was real fruit pies for us to share and eat!

What a lovely way to end a meetup, والحمد لله! In shaa Allah إن شاء الله, they keep a good memory of their Arabic meetup! (PS: even in our winter unit, the characters of the story have hot chocolate and pancakes at the end… I think I should keep the food-sharing idea if I run a “Winter in Arabic” meetup 😉)

7. Other Activities’ Suggestions

• Make a Fall craft. For example, write الخريف (fall) in the middle of a sheet and have the children draw, paint, glue Fall elements and colours. There are many other Fall Craft ideas on the internet.
• For reading and writing practice re-using the key words of the story and flashcards, use the following resources of our Fall unit: the Fall Letters & Words Arabic Worksheets, the Fall Crosswords, and the Fall Reading Puzzles.
• Make a pumpkin or apple pie (apples are also a fall season’s fruit)
• Use our Fall unit’s online games and watch the unit’s videos.

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And all the good comes from Allah! Thank you for reading!

If you have any other suggestions to share with other educators, please comment below!

– Emilie, founder of Arabic Seeds.

If you are not a member of the Arabic Seeds Membership, learn all the details about it (content, reviews, FAQs, pricing) in this page here.

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