Baldwin County welcomes fall — or autumn as some prefer to call it.

Children absolutely love the coolness and beautiful colors of fall. As leaves begin to change — especially popcorn trees in our area — squirrels bustle around for acorns and cooler air begins to creep in to lower temperatures, this season of change offers many teachable moments for families.

You have to take the time to observe the changes. It doesn’t take a lot of money or going far to observe changes to teach your young child life lessons and do family projects with what autumn has to offer.

Young children can take a nature walk just around the house outside. Point out nature items they can put in a bag such as fall leaves in many colors, nuts, acorns, pine cones and other items. Classifying leaves and seeds; sorting items from largest to smallest; and identifying colors and shapes are good readiness skills.

As you drive, walk and hike with your little ones point out the birds, ducks and geese gathering in flight as they migrate. You can see this happening on a daily basis around beautiful Mobile Bay and other areas. Tell your kids that migration means to move to a warmer environment as winter soon follows fall.

Feeding the birds with simple bread morsels brings in many different kinds of birds of colors and sizes for your child to observe. Point out to your young children how squirrels rush about to gather acorns and nuts. Have them observe the places the squirrels climb and rush to.

When we think of fall we think of apples used in all kinds of ways — such as apple sauce, apple butter and apple pie. In teaching young children, cut a big juicy red apple horizontally and show them the star in the middle.

Your young child will be fascinated by this as they scrape out the apple seeds to plant and then eat the apple to the core. As you plant apple seeds, include pumpkin seeds. Point out differences in the seeds as you plant them.  

A fun, simple excursion is to take a blanket and enjoy fall picnics in the favorable weather as you talk about what fall means with your young child. Simple listening and language skills are fostered in this way.

Roasted apples, pumpkin cookies and a cup of hot chocolate are a memory maker!

Beth Pinyerd lives in Daphne and serves as director of younger children at Faith Family Fellowship in Spanish Fort.

Her column appears every other week in the Daphne Bulletin and Spanish Fort Sun.