Scarecrow Building Party: Activities for Fall Fun

Inside: Welcome fall with a scarecrow building party, where kids will enjoy several scarecrow activities that include dressing up and building scarecrows using a variety of materials.

Note: Some of the links in this post are Amazon affiliate links. If you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. The links are included to provide easy access to items I have personally chosen, purchased and used in my own classroom.

A New Holiday Tradition

This year, we weren’t allowed to have our annual Halloween party and parade, so it was time for a new tradition! Instead, we had a scarecrow building party, where we spent a fun-filled day doing some scarecrow activities that weren’t the least bit, “scary” and excluded no one.

Here are some ideas to get you started, in case you would like to try this event at your school for a Halloween or Thanksgiving alternative or a just fun way to welcome fall.

Dress Like a Scarecrow Activity

Prior to the event, send home a note inviting kids to come to school dressed as scarecrows, wearing plaid flannel shirts, straw hats, jeans or overalls.

Alternatively, you might read the book, The Scarecrow’s Hat, and invite kids to create their own hats by drawing one on card stock or using a template. Show them how to add “straw” hair to the bottom of their hats, made from yellow construction paper strips. When they are finished, staple them to sentence strips and fit them to their heads.

Draw a Scarecrow Activity

Begin the event with a directed drawing (this one is from Art for Kids Hub) to familiarize children with the parts of a scarecrow. This scarecrow activity will support them, later in the day, when they visit the centers and are invited to build scarecrows.

You can also use this opportunity to review the names of body parts, compare their bodies to a scarecrows, and teach them how to draw a person.

Scarecrow Activities and Building Centers

Set up scarecrow building centers that allow children to get creative and use a variety of materials to make scarecrows of all shapes and sizes. Here are 4 center ideas you might try:

Roll-a-Scarecrow:

Children roll a die and draw the one part of a scarecrow that matches the number. Play continues until all numbers have been rolled and the scarecrow is complete. Each child can play the game by themselves or with a partner.

Invite them to add details to their picture, once their scarecrow has been drawn.

Scarecrow Building Snack:

Give each child a small bag with food items they can use to build a scarecrow. Items that work well were vanilla wafers, Club crackers, pretzel sticks and squares, chocolate chips, raisins, and candy corn.

Once they have built their scarecrow, they can enjoy eating all the parts!

Team Building Scarecrow:

Assign each group that visits this center a different part of the scarecrow to create, such as head, body, legs, and arms. Provide a variety of art materials for them to choose from.

They will especially love using the zig zag scissors to create patches.

We had a few children who were absent, so when they return, they will make crows to sit upon the scarecrow’s shoulder.

Floor Scarecrows:

Place an assortment of materials in an open floor area and let children enjoy using them to create life-size scarecrows. Just look around your classroom for objects that kids might use for a scarecrow’s head, body, arms, legs, and facial features. Anything goes here!

Items that we used include wooden lines and curves (these come from Learning Without Tears), wood slice cushions, carpet remnants, lacing buttons, and scraps of fabric.

Scarecrow Games

While writing this, I thought of a fun relay game that my own kids played when they were little and I will definitely add this to our party fun for next year.

To prepare for the game, gather two sets of fairly identical scarecrow clothes (i.e. shirt, hat, boots, coat, etc.) and place them in two piles. Divide the class into two teams and line up each team in front of a pile.

To play, each member of the relay team must run to the clothes, put on and then take off each item of clothing, and then return to the end of the line. The first team, where each member has successfully “dressed as a scarecrow” is the winner.

Move Like a Scarecrow

We ended our scarecrow building day with some fun action songs that allowed the kids to move like a scarecrow. I’m a Little Scarecrow by Cheeky Monkey Club and The Scarecrow Song by The Learning Station were both a perfect way to end our day.

More Scarecrow Activities

We’ll build upon this day in November, at our Friendsgiving Event, when the children will meet The Friendly Scarecrow, learn 7 qualities of good friendship, and create Friendship Soup.

This event is also a new tradition for us, and was created as an alternative to some more traditional Thanksgiving activities that we had previously done.

And once winter comes, we will read The Lonely Scarecrow by Tim Preston, where the snow magically turns a scary scarecrow into a gentle snowman, and who knows, maybe we will then plan a snowman building party to welcome that season.

Scarecrow Building Made Easy

With the exception of having to shop for the snack, the rest of the scarecrow activities and centers were easy to throw together using materials I already had in the classroom. As I like to say for new things that work, “it’s a keeper,” as we will repeat and build upon this event for next year!

To make it easy for you too, I’ve put together these scarecrow activities into a Scarecrow Building Party Pack that includes more details on all the above ideas plus a few more centers that I’ll be trying next year.

UPDATE: These scarecrow activities were so much fun that I then went on to create a Snowman Building Party Pack for winter and a Bug Building Party Pack for spring. You can find the Party Pack Bundle HERE!

For more classroom event ideas, check out Classroom Holiday Party Ideas for Every Month of the Year.