Cheap & Free Things to Do in Fall for Families

Finding cheap & free things to do in the fall makes it easy for families to enjoy the season without worrying about expenses. Whether it's exploring the fall colors, crafting at home, running through a corn maze, or participating in an annual event, autumn offers countless opportunities for budget-friendly fun.

Kids and adults will love this collection of affordable ideas to help your family create cherished memories this Fall season, all while keeping your wallet happy. Plus the free Fall bucket list will help you keep track of all the fun fall activities you want to try with your kids this year. Look through the list to find the perfect new fall traditions to start this year with your family.

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Best Things to Do in Fall on a Budget with Kids

Frugal & Fun Fall Things to Do with kids & familes that are budget-friendly. Get 25 cheap & free fall activity ideas your whole family can enjoy together. Plus a free printable Fall Bucket list. Enjoy a mix of fall activities at home and in your community to help start your new fall family traditions.

Fall is a great time to enjoy the cooler weather and the many fall activities with your entire family. The best part is you don't have to spend tons of money. There are plenty of cheap and free things to do in the fall that both kids and adults can enjoy doing together.

Let's get you ready to start new family traditions this fall. Start by grabbing this Free Printable Fall Bucket list. It's filled with 44 Fun things to do in the Fall with kids.

Get ready for fall with a free printable Fall Bucket List for Kids & Families. Fun things to do this fall at home and in your community. Plus Halloween activities to keep you busy all September and October.

Read through the list below to get inspired with the best fall activities on a budget.

Find even more ideas in 60 Fun Fall Activities for Kids in 2025

1. Take a Fall Hike

A free thing to do in Fall is taking a fall hike with kids through the fall leaves. Enjoy looking at the colorful leaves and hearing the crunchy leaves beneath your feet.

Head to your local park, hiking trail, or National Parks to look at the colorful leaves changing throughout the park. Leaf-watching is the perfect free fall tradition to start this year.

Have the kids listen to the crunchy leaves beneath their feet and see how many different types of fall leaves and colors they can find.

Check out our favorite National Parks that will have breathtaking views of the fall colors.

2. Make a Fall Craft

Head out on a fall hike to collect leaves to create this fun fall craft and Halloween craft.

Have the kids make a leaf collage with the colorful leaves you've gathered on your fall hike. They can glue them and other small items, such as acorns to construction paper as a fun at-home art project.

3. Make Leaf Rubbings

This is another fun at-home art project with items you find on your nature walk. Place one of the fall leaves you gathered under a piece of white paper and rub over it with a pencil. You'll see the outline of your leaf appear.

4. Go Apple Picking

Kids apple picking is a cheap thing to do in the fall the whole family will enjoy doing together.

Head to your local Apple Orchards or U-Pick apples and enjoy an afternoon of apple picking with your kids.

5. Make Apple Desserts

A fun fall snack is no bake Apple Slice Cookies. After you go fall apple picking make this easy snack with sliced apples, peanut butter and chocolate chips for kids and adults.

When you get home with your bags of apples, make an apple pie or taffy apples. If you need a quick snack, make these no-bake apple cookies a healthy snack with sliced-up apples.

6. Wine Tasting & Apple Cider Tasting

Find a local winery that has wine tastings for adults and apple cider tastings for kids. Often, you'll find these at apple-picking farms, local fall festivals, or farmers' markets.

7. Go Pumpkin Picking

Head to your local pumpkin patch to pick out the perfect pumpkin for your family. Just Google the best pumpkin patches in your area to find the closest location and check the price.

8. Carve Pumpkins

A fun thing to do this fall is carve pumpkin with kids. A traditional Halloween activity.

Visit your local pumpkin patches to find the best pumpkin. Then bring it home to carve into fun Halloween shapes. We like to use pumpkin carving stencils to help guide us while we are carving.

9. Roast Pumpkin Seeds

Save the pumpkin seeds when you carve your pumpkins to roast when you're done. They're the perfect fall snack!

10. Visit a Local Farmer's Market

Check out the local fall fruit and vegetables you can pick up on a walk through your local farmer's market.

11. Enjoy a Fall Picnic

A free & fun thing to do this fall is go on a fall picnic. Layout a picnic blanket and pack food to eat while enjoying the fall foilage.

Head to a local park or playground with the kids and the picnic food you packed from home. Enjoy an afternoon running around the park and having a picnic lunch.

12. Visit a Fall Festival

See if there are local fall festivals or Harvest festivals you can visit in your area. A quick Google search will show you the best places to go.

Many will have free live music or live entertainment, a petting zoo, and tons of activities to entertain your family members.

13. Visit a Corn Maze

Running through a corn maze is a fun things to do in fall with your kids.

Find a local farm that has set up a corn maze for your kids to run through and explore.

14. Play the Pumpkin Tic Tac Toe Game

Create a DIY Pumpkin Tic Tac Toe game with small pumpkin in two different colors and paninter's tape to make the tic tac toe board. An easy Fall game for kids.

On a flat table or poster board, use painter's tape to create a fall tic-tac-toe board. Then use small white and orange pumpkins as the pieces for each player. It's a traditional game with a fun Halloween twist.

15. Go on a Hayride

Often, the local park districts or towns will host wagon rides with a fall theme. Bundle up with a blanket, hot chocolate, and pumpkin-spiced lattes for a ride around the park.

Be ready for the Holidays with the Ultimate 2025 Christmas Planner. 62 organizational pages like Gift lists, calendars, Christmas budget, To Do List, Christmas meal planner, party planner, holiday games and more. Everything you need to be ready for the Christmas Season.

16. Watch a Halloween Movie

Check your streaming services to see what Halloween movies are available to watch. Or check out a movie from your local library for free. Here are some family-friendly Halloween movie ideas.

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
Ghostbusters
Toy Story Tower of Terror
Hocus Pocus (Hocus Pocus 2 coming to Disney+ Sept. 30th)
Beetlejuice
Lego Star Wars Terrifying Tales – not a terrifying movie (:
The Adams Family
The Goonies

17. Bake Pumpkin Cookies

These Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cookies are a yummy fall dessert.

Make some yummy no-bake pumpkin cookies with the kids. With only three ingredients, this pumpkin cookie recipe is cheap and delicious.

18. Go on a Halloween Neighborhood Scavenger Hunt

Free Printable Halloween Scavenger Hunt for your Neighborhood.

When the Halloween decorations go up in your neighborhood, head out on a Halloween Scavenger Hunt. See how many items you can find, or race your neighbors and try to find them all.

Grab this free printable Halloween Scavenger Hunt.

In September, before the Halloween decorations go up, try this free printable Neighborhood Scavenger Hunt. Enjoy a local walk on a nice day.

19. You've Been Booed

Use this free printable You've Been Booed Halloween Sign to leave a fun surprise treat at your neighbors house this Halloween.

A fun Halloween tradition to do with your neighbors is the You’ve Been Booed game. Families fill a cute Halloween bag with candy and leave it on their friend’s porch with a You’ve Been BOOED tag.

The family who receives it passes it forward by creating a gift bag of their own to leave on another friend’s porch.

Grab this free printable You've Been Booed Sign

20. Bobbing for Apples

A fun thing to do in the fall is bobbing for apples. Kids will love the challenge of getting their apples out of the water with their teeth.

Use the rest of the apples from apple picking and do a family and friends contest of bobbing for apples in your backyard.

21. Decorate with Fall Decorations

Have the whole family help decorate the house for fall and halloween with items you already have at home. Or head to your local Dollar Tree for cute fall decor on a budget. Adding some pumpkin decor around the house will get the whole family excited about the fall season.

22. Apple Stamping Art Project

Easy & Fun Fall art project is apple stamping. just dip a sliced apple in paint and stamp on a piece of construction paper. Great fall craft after apple picking.

Create a fun art project with the kids by using apples as stamps. Cut the apples in half and dip the white side into the paint. Then touch the painted side to the paper to create an apple stamp.

23. Fall Bonfire & Telling Scary Stories

Have a bonfire in your backyard and roast marshmallows while telling spooky ghost stories. Let everyone make up a Halloween story to share with the group. It could be scary or end up being pretty funny to hear the stories your kids create.

24. Make DIY Halloween Costumes

Plan Halloween costumes with your kids and see if you can make them this year together.

25. Rake Fall Leaves & Jump In

Letting the kids jump in the fall leaves is the best Fall family tradition, Let the kids jump and throw the colorful leaves all over.

The falling leaves are the perfect opportunity to rake up the leaves and jump into the huge pile. It's a fall tradition your kids will not want to skip!

26. Countdown to Halloween

Fun Halloween Countdown Calendar printable for kids. A cute Halloween coloring page to help kids track the days until Halloween at home or as a classroom Halloween activity.

Help your kids get excited about Halloween by coloring every day a Halloween Countdown Calendar.

They'll know exactly how long it is until they can go trick-or-treating. Hang it on your refrigerator for the whole month of Halloween!

Free Printable Games for Halloween

Cheap & free printable halloween games to play at home or Halloween parties.

Halloween Bingo - 23 Halloween Bingo Cards & Calling Cards

23 Spooky Halloween Bingo Cards & Calling Cards for class parties & kids Halloween parties. These free printables are an easy Halloween game just print it out and play.

Halloween Would You Rather Questions - Funny Halloween Questions for Kids

30 Funny Would You Rather Halloween Questions for Kids. Play this fun party game at Halloween parties or in the classroom. Just grab your free printable questions and start playing today.

30 Halloween Coloring Pages - Color by Number Worksheets

30 Free printable Halloween Color by Number worksheets to help kids with number recognition and fine motor skills. 30 pages to use as a classroom activity or at Halloween parties.

Halloween This or That Questions - Spooktacular Conversation Starter

Fun Halloween This or That Game with Free printable would you rather questions using a Halloween theme. Kids, Teens and Adults will have fun playing this Halloween game at school, home or Halloween parties.

Halloween Charades Game - Word List

free printable Halloween Charades Word List to make playing a game of charades easy at Halloween parties.

18 Fun Printable Halloween Games

Kids will love playing these fun printable Halloween games at Hallowen parties, in the classroom and at home. The ready-to-go Halloween bundle just needs to be downloaded and printed. Then your set to play.

Play all Halloween season with these super fun Printable halloween Games. This fun halloween bundle has 18 different Halloween-themed games to play from Halloween Trivia to Scavenger Hunts, Roll & Color Skeleton, Word Scrambles, Mad Libs, and more.

The ready-to-go printable game bundle has everything you need to play. Just download, print, and play!

Fall Bucket List

Don't forget to grab your free printable Fall Bucket List to get your planning started!

Need an Autumn Escape?

Find our list of great places to go in the Midwest this fall with kids. Head to Michigan and Wisconsin to see the most spectacular fall foliage.

More Things to Do This Fall & Halloween

Visit our Holiday Page for the most up-to-date ideas.

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Cheap & Cute DIY Fall Decor Ideas with Dollar Tree Supplies

I hope this helped you find cheap things to do this fall with kids and make staying on a budget still fun and memorable in 2024.

If you enjoyed these Halloween ideas get more family fun activities, easy weeknight meals, family travel ideas, and household hacks by joining the Happy Mom Hacks community weekly newsletter.

Bonus, you’ll get our free printable Fall Bucket List to use at your next party or family game night.