Easy Ways to Celebrate Fall Hat Month in Your Homeschool
Did you know that September is Fall Hat Month? In the South, September is still summer. By this time of year, though, I am ready to embrace fall and all of the beautiful and fun fall hats. Use these ideas to celebrate fall hat month in your homeschool this year!
Easy Ways to Celebrate Fall Hat Month
There are lots of fun (and educational!) ways to celebrate Fall Hat Month in your homeschool!
I love themed months like September because it is so easy to create a unit study based on the theme. For hat month, it’s easy to choose lots of age- and grade-appropriate activities (related to hats, of course!) covering various subjects. Here are some suggestions!
Unit Study Ideas for Children of All Ages
Below I’m sharing ideas for children of all ages. Take a look at the suggestions and choose the ones that work best for your children and your homeschool.
If you have children of multiple ages, do some activities for younger children and some for older children. Or do some activities for middle-to-upper elementary or high school ages and let your younger ones learn from your older ones!
And, to be honest, we know homeschool moms are well known for tweaking ideas to fit the needs of our children! So take the ideas suggested here (no matter the age/grade level it’s intended to fit) and adjust to meet your own needs!
Math
- Count all the hats in the house.
- Make graphs or charts of the hats in your house. Graph by types of hats, colors, etc.
- Use hats in math facts practice. (i.e. 4 hats times 3 is how many hats?)
- Set up a pretend store and let dolls, stuffed animals “buy” hats. Use pretend money! Practice paying and making change for the hats you buy and sell.
- Calculate the cost to make a hat. What materials will you need? How much will they cost? How much will you charge for labor? How much would you need to charge if you sold the hat in order to make a profit?
Art/Fine Motor Skills
- Make hats from newspaper or tissue paper.
- Or try Studying Art with Paper-mache Mary Cassatt Art Lesson and make paper-mache hats!
- Use the book Paper Hats: Color, Cut, & Assemble Kit for Kids to make all kinds of fun hats from a fancy shark hat to an alien hat to a dragon hat or chef hat.
- Or, if you have older elementary (or even high-school-age) children who want to make beautiful hats for younger siblings for dress-up parties, birthday parties, etc., try The Paper Hat Book: Super Hats for Super Kids. The featured hats are absolutely beautiful!
History
- Look up information about hats through the years! What kinds of hats were popular at various times in history? What were they called? Were they worn at particular times? (holidays, parties, for certain jobs, etc.)
Music
Very young children (and even slightly older ones) will enjoy singing some songs about hats!
To include hats in a study of the letter h, try The H Song (Uppercase) | Super Simple ABCs:
To enjoy a fun song about hats AND learn about opposites, learn The Opposites Song: Get Me a Hat | Super Simple Songs:
If you want a just-for-fun song about hats that young children will enjoy, try this one!
Reading/Language Arts/Writing
- Read books featuring hats. Many books prominently feature hats. Choose a few and read them with your children! I’ll share a few of my favorites
- Caps for Sale
is a classic book about hats! In fact, it’s one of the most popular picture books ever published. Read it as part of your Hat Month celebration!
- I Want My Hat Back is a beautiful picture book told entirely in dialogue. It was New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book, and you and your children are sure to enjoy it!
- Looking for a fun rhyming book? Try If You Have a Hat: A Silly Rhyming Picture Book.
- Whose Hat Is This? A Look at Hats Workers Wear is an interactive book with fun facts about hats worn by different kinds of workers.
- The Cat in the Hat is always a favorite! I can’t leave it off my hat-related book list.
- Another classic hat-related book is the Berenstain Bears Old Hat, New Hat.
- The Sandra Boynton board book, Blue Hat, Green Hat, is another not-to-be-missed book for young children!
- Caps for Sale
- Write sentences, short stories, or poems about hats or topics related to hats. (If you have young children who aren’t able to write their own stories or poems, let them dictate to you while you write for them.)
- What if you were a magician and were supposed to pull a rabbit out of a hat, but you realized (during your magic show) that you couldn’t find your hat?! What would you do?
- Would you rather have your favorite old hat or a brand new hat? Why?
- If you had to choose a hat to wear every single day for the rest of your life, what kind of hat would you choose? Why?
- Write a story or poem about an animal who finds a hat and doesn’t know what it is. What would the animal do with the hat?
- What if hats weren’t made for wearing? What if they had other uses? What would you do with your hat instead of wearing it? How else could your hat be used?
Cooking/Baking
- Make edible hats using a Reese’s Cup placed on top of a chocolate cookie.
- Or make this Cat in the Hat Pizza!
Field Trip Idea
- If there’s one in your area, visit a milliner! Call ahead of time to find out if they’ll give you (or your homeschool group) a tour.
For Junior High and High School:
- Sew/create your own hats! There are some wonderful patterns available for all kinds of hats!
- You might want to crochet a hat for your kitty.
- Or knit an animal hat for yourself.
- Or maybe even use these patterns to make turbans, head wraps, and caps.
- Read books about the history of hats and hat design.
- Watch period dramas together.
- Create a mock hat shop with a real budget and profit projections.
Do you celebrate Fall Hat Month? I really enjoy making our homeschool a bit more fun with themes like these. How do you celebrate? We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments!
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