35+ Cute Fall Poems for Kids (Short Rhyming Verses!)

35 cute fall poems for kids — short rhyming verses, silly leaf rhymes, and pumpkin-and-harvest stanzas for elementary readers to read aloud.

Every poem on this page is original to Kaveesh Mommy, written for children to read, clap, and recite — no poem is reprinted from another source.

Fall is the easiest season to write a poem about and the hardest one to get kids to sit still for. The leaves are doing something genuinely spectacular outside the window, and the inside of a classroom wants everyone at a desk. Fall poems for kids work best when they are short, rhythmic, and about something a child can see from wherever they are sitting — a leaf landing on a head, an acorn in a pocket, a pumpkin on a porch. The short autumn rhymes for kids below are built that way: four to eight lines, a clear rhyme, and one image you can point at.

This collection gathers 35 original fall poems for kids in three parts: twelve short rhyming fall poems for elementary readers, twelve funny and silly autumn leaf rhymes, and eleven cute pumpkin and harvest stanzas. Every poem has a Context Matrix, so you always know who it is for and when to say it.

Who is this post for:

• Elementary teachers building a fall poetry unit or a shared-reading wall
• Parents and homeschool families who want one short poem for the car or the dinner table
• Kids in grades 1–5 who like poems about their own life: sweaters, buses, leaves, pumpkins
• Anyone who needs a poem to recite at a harvest party, a fall festival, or a co-op class

TL;DR — the quick version

• 35 original poems: 12 short rhymed verses, 12 silly leaf rhymes, 11 pumpkin and harvest stanzas
• Every poem is 4–8 lines — short enough to memorize in one sitting and recite out loud
• Real fall details are woven in: why leaves change color, why oak leaves hang on, how forgotten acorns become trees, why a pumpkin needs a bee
• In a hurry? Try #1 for a welcome, #13 for a giggle, and #35 for the end of the season

Table of Contents

• short rhyming fall poems for elementary
• funny & silly autumn leaf rhymes for children
• cute pumpkin and harvest stanzas for kids
• Top 3 to Read Aloud First
• Frequently Asked Questions

Top 3 to Read Aloud First

short rhyming fall poems for elementary

Short rhymed poems are the most reliable reading practice a young student can get, because the rhyme tells them what sound is coming before they get there. Poetry is unusually good at this: it grows vocabulary, gives children a reason to play with sounds and letters, and builds memory, which is exactly why the National Literacy Trust counts poetry as an early language and literacy tool. These twelve short fall poems for elementary students run four to eight lines, each with one clear rhyme pattern and one thing you can point at out the window.

1. Fall Is Here (Welcome Poem)

What it does: It introduces the entire season in one action a child can copy with their hand.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–3; the first week of a fall unit
• ⏳ The Timing: The first genuinely crisp morning
• 📍 The Medium: Read aloud once, then everyone drops a “leaf” (their hand) on “plop”
• 💡 Why this works: A physical cue on the last line gives children something to wait for
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “autumn is a beautiful season” with one leaf and one sound

2. Sweater Weather (Weather Poem)

What it does: It ties the season to what a child actually wears and drinks.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–4; weather and clothing units
• ⏳ The Timing: The week the first sweaters come out
• 📍 The Medium: Chanted with a mug-mime and a nose-tap
• 💡 Why this works: Repeated first words make the poem easy to join in on the second pass
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “fall is my favorite season” with a sweater and a cold nose

3. Acorns in My Pocket (Counting Rhyme)

What it does: It turns collecting acorns into counting practice with a punchline.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–3; counting and nature-collection fans
• ⏳ The Timing: After a recess spent collecting
• 📍 The Medium: Count on fingers, rattle a real pocket on the fourth line
• 💡 Why this works: Counting objects the child is physically carrying sticks better than counting pictures
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “acorns are seeds” with a pocket that holds a forest

4. The Raking Song (Chore Rhyme)

What it does: It admits the truth about raking — you will do it twice, because of the jumping.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–4; chores and family-helper themes
• ⏳ The Timing: While raking, or as a chant during a classroom “clean-up rake”
• 📍 The Medium: Say it with real raking motions, three strokes per line
• 💡 Why this works: Naming the funny part of a chore makes the chore easier to start
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “helping around the house is important” with an honest jump in the middle

5. Geese Go Over (Nature Rhyme)

What it does: It makes a V of geese something to count, lose, and miss.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–4; bird and migration units
• ⏳ The Timing: Any clear fall evening when geese pass over
• 📍 The Medium: Read aloud outside, looking up
• 💡 Why this works: The counting failure is the joke, and it teaches that migration is a long trip
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “birds fly south for the winter” with a goodbye you can hear

6. Apples in a Row (Counting Rhyme)

What it does: It counts backward from five with a real action attached to every subtraction.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–3; counting back, subtraction readiness
• ⏳ The Timing: After an orchard trip or an apple-themed read-aloud
• 📍 The Medium: Five fingers up, fold one per verse
• 💡 Why this works: Watching a number disappear from your own hand makes subtraction concrete
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces a math worksheet with a basket of apples that empties

7. October Morning (School-Morning Rhyme)

What it does: It captures the small sensory details of a school morning that children recognize instantly.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 2–5; sensory-detail and imagery lessons
• ⏳ The Timing: A cold, dewy October morning
• 📍 The Medium: A journal entry, or a poem to copy for handwriting practice
• 💡 Why this works: “Smells like a pencil” is a comparison children can verify for themselves
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “the morning was cold” with dew diamonds and pearly sky

8. The Squirrel’s Shopping List (Autumn Prep Rhyme)

What it does: It explains, in eight lines, how a whole forest can come from one forgetful squirrel.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–4; animals preparing for winter
• ⏳ The Timing: Any week in which the squirrels are visibly frantic
• 📍 The Medium: Read aloud, then go outside and look for buried acorns
• 💡 Why this works: Squirrels really do scatter-hoard and forget, and the forgotten acorns really do sprout
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “squirrels store nuts for winter” with the reason forests spread

9. Fog on the Field (Morning Weather Rhyme)

What it does: It uses fog to teach children how to describe something by what it hides.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 2–5; descriptive writing and weather
• ⏳ The Timing: A foggy fall morning
• 📍 The Medium: Read it slowly, then ask what else the fog could hide
• 💡 Why this works: Fog is the easiest weather to describe with similes, and children can see the result
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “it was foggy” with cows that turned into ghosts

10. A Poem in Your Pocket (Reciting Rhyme)

What it does: It gives a child a reason to memorize a poem — because it makes a good companion.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 2–5; poetry memorization and recitation
• ⏳ The Timing: The first week of a poetry unit
• 📍 The Medium: Written on a strip of paper, folded, and kept in a real pocket
• 💡 Why this works: Memorizing is easier when the child believes it is worth carrying around
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “we are going to memorize a poem” with a poem that fits in a pocket

11. Cider and Cinnamon (Sensory Rhyme)

What it does: It ends a small verse with a line worth copying into a journal.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 2–5; sensory poems and fall-festival themes
• ⏳ The Timing: A farm stand, a bonfire, or a cool morning
• 📍 The Medium: A pin, a journal page, or a line on a card
• 💡 Why this works: Hot-and-cold contrast is the easiest sensory pairing for children to write their own version of
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “fall is the coziest season” with a bag of doughnuts and leaves in your hair

12. Goodbye to the Garden (End-of-Season Rhyme)

What it does: It teaches that an ending can be a rest instead of a loss.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–4; gardening families and life-cycle units
• ⏳ The Timing: The last harvest, before the first hard frost
• 📍 The Medium: Read it standing in the garden, then pull the vines together
• 💡 Why this works: Children accept seasonal endings better when an adult names them as normal
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “the garden died” with soil that is tired and resting

funny & silly autumn leaf rhymes for children

Leaves get their color from chemistry that is genuinely strange: as the nights lengthen, chlorophyll production stops and breaks down, which unmasks the yellow and orange carotenoids that were there all along — while the reds and purples of anthocyanins are not unmasked at all but newly made in fall, apparently as a sunscreen that protects the leaf while it ships its nitrogen back into the branches (Harvard Forest). A leaf, in other words, is doing something dramatic right up until it lets go. These twelve silly autumn leaf rhymes for kids are written for the part when it lands on somebody’s head.

13. The Leaf That Landed on My Head (Silly Leaf Rhyme)

What it does: It turns a random leaf into a joke every child wants to reenact.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–4; silly-verse fans
• ⏳ The Timing: Leaf-fall season, inside or out
• 📍 The Medium: Read aloud with a leaf balanced on your head if you have one
• 💡 Why this works: The poem gives children a permission slip for a small, harmless absurdity
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “we saw the leaves fall” with a leaf that becomes a crown

14. Leaf Pile Rules (Silly Rules Rhyme)

What it does: It packages the actual physics of leaf-pile fun as a list of rules nobody asked for.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–4; classroom rules and procedural writing
• ⏳ The Timing: Before a leaf-pile recess or a yard clean-up
• 📍 The Medium: Said as a chant, one rule per finger
• 💡 Why this works: Children love a rule list where they can predict the silly one
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “make good choices” with six rules that end in jumping

15. I Tried to Save a Leaf (Quiet Silly Rhyme)

What it does: It starts silly and lands somewhere a little wiser, which is what keeps a poem in a child’s memory.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 2–5; journals, collections, and pressed-leaf projects
• ⏳ The Timing: After a leaf-pressing activity
• 📍 The Medium: Written next to an actual pressed leaf in a notebook
• 💡 Why this works: The turn from funny to true on the last two lines is what children quote back
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “keep your special leaf forever” with a leaf that says hello

16. The Oak That Would Not Let Go (Stubborn-Leaf Rhyme)

What it does: It gives a personality to a real botanical oddity children can check on all winter.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 2–5; tree identification and observation
• ⏳ The Timing: Late fall, when other trees are already bare
• 📍 The Medium: Read it looking at an oak, then revisit it in December
• 💡 Why this works: Many oaks and beeches keep some leaves through winter, so the poem can be tested outside
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “the leaves all fall in autumn” with one oak that is stubbornly late

17. One Leaf Left (Last-Leaf Rhyme)

What it does: It makes the last leaf of the season into a stubborn little character.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–4; observation and personification
• ⏳ The Timing: The week the tree finally goes bare
• 📍 The Medium: Chanted outside, pointing at the last leaf if there still is one
• 💡 Why this works: “Still summer — oh, please” gives children an attitude to perform
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “all the leaves have fallen” with one leaf that had to be talked into it

18. Leaf Blower vs. Me (Yard-Work Rhyme)

What it does: It takes the most boring yard chore and gives it a losing side.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–4; yard-work families and sound lessons
• ⏳ The Timing: Any raking or blowing day
• 📍 The Medium: Read aloud, then watch what the leaves actually do
• 💡 Why this works: The leaves genuinely win — they drift back, which is why the joke lands
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “raking is hard work” with a yard war the leaves win

19. The Sneaky Leaf (Indoor Leaf Rhyme)

What it does: It explains the mystery of the leaves that keep appearing indoors.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–4; everyone who has ever swept a floor in October
• ⏳ The Timing: Clean-up time, or right after a leaf-pile recess
• 📍 The Medium: Said while sweeping, with a leaf hunt after
• 💡 Why this works: Every child has watched this happen and never had words for it
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “wipe your feet” with a leaf that sneaks in anyway

20. Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf, Where Did You Go? (Seasonal-Ending Rhyme)

What it does: It answers the “where do the leaves go” question with the true answer children rarely hear.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–4; decomposition and soil units
• ⏳ The Timing: After the last leaves have fallen
• 📍 The Medium: Read aloud, then dig a handful of leaf litter and look at it
• 💡 Why this works: Fallen leaves break down and return nutrients to the soil, so “down to grow” is accurate
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “leaves die” with leaves that went somewhere with a purpose

21. My Dog’s Favorite Season (Pet Rhyme)

What it does: It brings a family pet into the season, which is an instant hook for young readers.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–4; pet owners and animal-lovers
• ⏳ The Timing: Any fall day with a dog in the house
• 📍 The Medium: Read it to the dog, honestly
• 💡 Why this works: Children love a poem where an animal has a personality and an opinion
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “my dog likes fall” with a fur coat full of stolen leaves

22. Leaf in My Sock (Very Silly Rhyme)

What it does: It is pure silliness with a completely real feeling at the center of it.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–4; giggle breaks and silly poetry units
• ⏳ The Timing: When the room needs a laugh that ends quickly
• 📍 The Medium: Read aloud with a hop on the fifth line
• 💡 Why this works: Everybody has had something in a shoe, so the silliness is verifiable
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “check your shoes” with a leaf that will not explain itself

23. Rake and Jump (Call-and-Response Rhyme)

What it does: It gives a whole group one shared action, timed to the last word.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–4; group recitation and shared reading
• ⏳ The Timing: Recess, PE warm-ups, or a fall festival
• 📍 The Medium: Everyone shouts the capital word together
• 💡 Why this works: A built-in shout keeps every child in the poem, even the shy ones
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “let’s all participate” with a word the whole room yells

24. Leaf Parade (Closing Leaf Rhyme)

What it does: It ends the section by making the wind and rain into a marching band.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–4; music, movement, and weather
• ⏳ The Timing: A windy afternoon with leaves moving across the yard
• 📍 The Medium: Children line up and march while reciting it
• 💡 Why this works: Wind genuinely moves the leaves in lines, so the parade is happening already
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “the wind blows the leaves” with a parade that needs marchers

cute pumpkin and harvest stanzas for kids

The pumpkin a child carries is a fruit with a slow backstory. It is a pepo — a kind of berry with a hard rind — that grows on a sprawling vine, and it needs pollinators to set fruit, which is a polite way of saying that without the bees there would be no jack-o’-lanterns at all. Pumpkins are also famously high in beta-carotene, the pigment that makes the flesh orange and gets converted into vitamin A in the body (University of Illinois Extension). These eleven cute pumpkin and harvest poems for kids follow the season from seed to porch.

25. Little Pumpkin, Round and Bright (Pumpkin Rhyme)

What it does: It celebrates a pumpkin without asking it to be anything but a pumpkin.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–3; pumpkin units and porch displays
• ⏳ The Timing: When the pumpkins arrive on the porch
• 📍 The Medium: Read to an actual pumpkin, which is how children prefer it
• 💡 Why this works: Pumpkins genuinely start green and turn orange as they ripen
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “pumpkins are orange” with a pumpkin that earned its color

26. Pumpkin on the Vine (Life-Cycle Rhyme)

What it does: It compresses an entire growing season into eight lines a child can recite in order.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–4; plant life-cycle units
• ⏳ The Timing: When the class plants something, or when the pumpkins show up
• 📍 The Medium: Said with a hand motion per line: seed, sprout, vine, bee, pumpkin
• 💡 Why this works: A pumpkin flower has to be visited by a bee before fruit will set — the bee is load-bearing
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces a life-cycle diagram with a poem that ends in the moon

27. Counting Pumpkins at the Farm Stand (Counting Rhyme)

What it does: It makes a farm stand into a counting lesson with a choice at the end.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–3; counting and comparing
• ⏳ The Timing: A pumpkin patch or farm-stand visit
• 📍 The Medium: Count on fingers, then pick a real favorite
• 💡 Why this works: Describing differences (bumpy, smooth, tall, small) is early comparison language
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “pumpkins come in many sizes” with the one you actually choose

28. The Scarecrow’s Job (Farm Rhyme)

What it does: It gives a scarecrow a job description that does not match his name.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 2–5; farm units and irony
• ⏳ The Timing: Harvest season, or a farm field trip
• 📍 The Medium: Read aloud, then draw the scarecrow and his crow guests
• 💡 Why this works: Real crows quickly learn a scarecrow is harmless, so the joke is also true
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “scarecrows scare the birds away” with a scarecrow who hosts them

29. Hayride Bump (Fall Festival Rhyme)

What it does: It makes the ride itself the event, which is where children actually live.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–4; fall festivals and farm trips
• ⏳ The Timing: Before or after an actual hayride
• 📍 The Medium: Everyone bounces on the “bump” lines
• 💡 Why this works: Naming the bump as the best part tells children the poem noticed what they noticed
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “we went on a hayride” with three bumps and a sway

30. Corn Maze Turn (Maze Rhyme)

What it does: It catches the exact feeling of being lost on purpose.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–4; fall festival activities
• ⏳ The Timing: Before a corn maze visit, or as a classroom “maze” walk
• 📍 The Medium: Everyone turns left, right, and straight while reciting it
• 💡 Why this works: Direction words plus movement is how young children practice left and right
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “we got lost in the maze” with a dead end worth shouting about

31. Apple Orchard Basket (Orchard Rhyme)

What it does: It ends with the truest line about apple picking that any child has ever heard.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–4; orchard trips and sequencing
• ⏳ The Timing: Apple-picking season
• 📍 The Medium: Read aloud in the car on the way, or written on the bag
• 💡 Why this works: The order — low, then high, then dropped — gives a sequence to narrate
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “we picked apples” with the one that fell and won

32. Harvest Moon (Moon Rhyme)

What it does: It ties the sky to the harvest without explaining either one away.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 2–5; moon phases and seasonal sky watching
• ⏳ The Timing: A clear fall evening, especially around the harvest moon
• 📍 The Medium: Read outside at dusk, then look for it
• 💡 Why this works: The harvest moon really does rise orange and early, so the poem can be checked
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “the moon was pretty” with a pumpkin lit from inside

33. Thank You, Garden (Gratitude Stanza)

What it does: It teaches gratitude as a list of specific things rather than a general feeling.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–4; thankfulness and harvest themes
• ⏳ The Timing: The final harvest, or a Thanksgiving classroom activity
• 📍 The Medium: Written as a class poem, one line per child, then read all together
• 💡 Why this works: Concrete thanks — dirt on knees, a pumpkin that stayed — is easier to mean
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “be thankful for what you have” with a list of real produce

34. Pumpkin Seeds (Seed-Saving Rhyme)

What it does: It turns pumpkin carving into a science and math moment without announcing it.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–4; carving day and seed-saving
• ⏳ The Timing: The day you open a pumpkin
• 📍 The Medium: Said while scooping, with a real wet towel nearby
• 💡 Why this works: Hundreds of seeds in one fruit is a number children can verify with their own hands
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “pumpkins have seeds” with a jar of seeds waiting for spring

35. The Last Pumpkin (Closing Rhyme)

What it does: It gives the season a gentle ending that does not need a holiday to justify it.

🔍 The Context Matrix

• 👤 Who is this for? Grades 1–5; the end of a fall unit
• ⏳ The Timing: Late fall, after the first frost warnings
• 📍 The Medium: Read it on the porch, or as the last poem before a break
• 💡 Why this works: A scarf on a pumpkin is silly and tender at once, which is why children remember it
• 🚫 The Cliché it Avoids: Replaces “the fall season is ending” with one pumpkin that is staying anyway

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What are easy fall poems for kids to memorize?

The short ones with a strong rhyme and one repeated word. #1 (“Fall Is Here”) and #17 (“One Leaf Left”) take about two readings to memorize. If you want a poem a whole class can say together, use #23 (“Rake and Jump”), because the last word is shouted by everyone at once.

Q2. Why do leaves change color in the fall?

Because the green goes away and the hidden colors get their turn. As nights get longer, chlorophyll production slows and then stops, unmasking the yellow and orange carotenoids that were in the leaf all along. The reds and purples are different — they are anthocyanins that the tree newly makes in autumn, apparently to act as a sunscreen while it recovers nitrogen from the leaf before letting it go (Harvard Forest). Warm, sunny days followed by cool nights give the brightest reds.

Q3. Are these poems free to use in my classroom or at a fall festival?

Yes. Every poem on this page is original to Kaveesh Mommy and free to print, project, perform, or send home with students, with attribution to Kaveesh Mommy. The only request is that you do not resell the collection or claim the poems as your own.

Q4. How can poems help a struggling reader?

Poems are short, rhythmic, and predictable, which lowers the pressure of a whole page of text. Reciting poetry aloud builds vocabulary, gives children a reason to play with sounds and letters, and strengthens memory — the National Literacy Trust treats poetry as a core early language and literacy activity for exactly these reasons. For older students, the Academy of American Poets’ “Teach This Poem” series is a free, ready-made lesson format.

Q5. Are pumpkins fruit or vegetables?

Fruit, botanically. A pumpkin is a pepo — a berry with a hard rind — growing on a vine, and it needs pollinators like bees to set fruit at all. The orange flesh is loaded with beta-carotene, which the body converts to vitamin A, which is why the color is a nutritional clue rather than just a seasonal one (University of Illinois Extension).

Q6. My child says poems are boring. Where do I start?

Start with the silly ones. #22 (“Leaf in My Sock”) and #18 (“Leaf Blower vs. Me”) are funny enough to earn a second reading, and a second reading is all you need. Add a clap on the beat, or let them shout the last word, and a poem becomes a game instead of an assignment.

Q7. What is the shortest poem on this page?

#17 (“One Leaf Left”) and #18 (“Leaf Blower vs. Me”) are six lines — about fifteen seconds read aloud. #13 (“The Leaf That Landed on My Head”) is eight lines and takes about twenty seconds.

Q8. How many poems are on this page?

Thirty-five, in three sections: twelve short rhyming poems for elementary readers, twelve funny leaf rhymes, and eleven pumpkin and harvest stanzas. Every one is original, and every one is four to eight lines.

The Season That Runs Out the Door

The frustration behind this page is a classroom one. Fall is short. It arrives in a week of crisp mornings, turns spectacular for about ten days, and then it is dark at five and the leaves are somebody’s chore. Every year there is a window in the middle of it where the outside is doing something remarkable and the inside of the room is doing a worksheet.

A poem is the smallest thing you can hand a child in that window. Four lines about a leaf, said out loud twice, and suddenly recess has a subject and the walk home has a rhythm. Nobody needs a unit plan for that.

So take one. Say #1 on the first crisp morning, keep #13 in your pocket for the walk to the bus, and read #35 out loud when the last pumpkin is still on the porch and the field is already done. But read it while the leaves are still coming down, because this season does not wait, and the poems are better when the window is open.

Disclosure: this page is reader-supported. Every poem here is original to Kaveesh Mommy and free to read, print, and recite — no poem has been reprinted from another source.

References & Related Reading

• Harvard Forest (Harvard University) — “The Biological Significance of Leaf Color Change”
• NASA Earthdata — “Why Do Leaves Change Color?”
• U.S. Forest Service — “The Joy and Science of Fall Colors”
• University of Illinois Extension — “Pumpkins & More” (pumpkin growing, pollinators, nutrition)
• National Literacy Trust — “Poetry in the Early Years Foundation Stage” (PDF)
• Academy of American Poets — “Teach This Poem”