The ultimate fall bucket list for kids & families

Fall bucket list - Over 100 ideas for kids, teens, families, and adults for the autumn season! Includes crafts, recipes, and lots of fun activities indoors and outdoors. Free printable.

Have you ever heard of a bucket list? I'm thinking that you probably have, thanks to the wonderful movie by the same name a few years ago (like eleven!), and its many incarnations all throughout social media.

Just in case you haven't, the bucket list is supposed to be a list of things you want to do "before you kick the bucket."

I've taken a little different spin on it, creating lists of things for families to do in the season that they're in, fun things to enjoy before the world moves on to something else, before life changes too much. You can get my winter bucket list, spring bucket list, and summer bucket list, all for families with kids, elsewhere on this site.

Now that fall is right around the corner, I am posting my fall bucket list.

As a full-time working mom and a professional mom blogger, I have to be really intentional about spending time with my kids. If I'm not intentional, our days and weeks would slip by, and I wouldn't have spent any real time with them.

I mean, we're in the same house, maybe even in the same room, but I'm writing on my blog or talking to their dad or working at my job, and they're watching tv or playing Legos or Barbies or Minecraft.

On their own.

If I'm not careful, my kids and I can lead these parallel lives, and I don't take the opportunity to pour into them at all. Like I said, I have to be intentional about it.

Hence the need for a bucket list for every season of the year. We can choose from the items on the list when we have little pockets of time or as opportunities come up. The lists give us a base, a starting point from which to make our time together fun and rewarding.

As an aside, I am super intentional about scheduling fun. I make sure we do something fun together, all four of us, every single week, no matter what. (Well, unless they go on a weekend trip. Then I plan something fun for just me and Joe.) I have it written into my planner, I save money for it out of every paycheck, and I almost always make it happen.

I have read studies that say children make incredible memories on vacation. We do take vacations, usually one big one per year with a couple of smaller weekends away.

But what if we can build those incredible memories in little bites sprinkled all throughout the year? Would that not add up in their little memory banks to a childhood well spent? I sure hope so.

Here's what's on the printable fall bucket list:

Take photos of fall foliage
Make apple cider
Go to a corn maze
Make an apple recipe
Hold an apple taste test
Go apple picking
Go pumpkin picking
Play backyard football
Make a Halloween costume
Go trick or treating
Make a jack-o-lantern
Paint pumpkins
Bake a pumpkin pie
Roast pumpkin seeds
Bake a pumpkin dessert with fresh pumpkin
Host your family for Thanksgiving
Visit a chocolate factory
Go on a hay ride
Rake leaves
Jump in leaf piles
Enjoy a foggy morning walk
Crunch leaves on an afternoon walk
Collect acorns
Make a fall wreath
Visit a haunted house
Go to the county fair
Take a fall foliage drive
Learn to crochet (This is the video I watched to get started.)
Make spaghetti squash casserole
Take family photos for your Christmas cards
Cook dinner in acorn squash bowls
Drink warm apple cider
Tailgate before a football game (This is how my husband won my heart!)
Make cheeseburger soup
Burn a new candle (Honeycrisp apple cider is my favorite favorite!)
Make candy apples
Make wormy apple snacks
Learn the history of Thanksgiving
Roast marshmallows
Make a gratitude jar
Create a craft with beautiful leaves
Eat corn on the cob
Visit a farm
Make beef stew
Hold a family game night - games for non-readers & games for teens & adults
Make tied edge fleece blankets
Play hopscotch
Paint rocks
Hide painted rocks
Go geocaching
Collect food for a food bank
Tell ghost stories
Plan ahead for Christmas and go shopping
Plan your next vacation
Buy your Advent calendar for this year (We love the LEGO ones!)
Stuff a scarecrow
Camp in the backyard
Go horseback riding
Make trail mix
Take your trail mix on a hike
Eat candy corn
Make a leaf scrapbook
Enjoy everything pumpkin spice
Visit a fall festival
Make chili
Build an obstacle course
Create a music video
Start a YouTube channel
Read in a hammock (this is the one we have and LOVE - plenty big enough for 3 kids at one time)
Eat dinner al fresco (you would know that means outside if you read Fancy Nancy)
Paint your faces
Try a new food
Start a rock collection
Do a random act of kindness
Visit a farmer's market
Sleep with the windows open
Visit a flea market
Make no bake cookies
Watch the sunrise
Watch the sunset
Ride a ferris wheel
Blow bubbles
Hunt for cloud animals
Fly paper airplanes
Go to a museum
Play frisbee
Play hide and seek outside
Visit the library
Make a homemade pizza
Grill a pizza
Go to a free concert
Go on a road trip
Listen to an audiobook
Outdoor scavenger hunt
Photo scavenger hunt
Make a map of the backyard
Glow stick hide & seek
Go to a petting zoo
Make a nature collage
Have a picnic
Make a fall scrapbook
Make applesauce and apple butter
Make cookies shaped like leaves
Go to a park
Build a campfire
Cook dinner over the campfire
Make s'mores
Go for a bike ride
Nerf gun battle
Go stargazing
Do some learning outside
Have a carnival at home
Visit the zoo
Have potato chowder
Learn something new
Make pine cone bird feeders
Make handprint turkeys
Organize a Trunk or Treat
HAVE FUN!

Grab the free Fall Bucket List for Kids printable below.

I hope you and your family enjoy my Fall Bucket List! I can't wait to hear about all the fun apple, pumpkin, and leaf-related things you'll do from the list!