Autumn is a beautiful season in North America, full of brightly turning colors in the wind, bonfires in the cool evenings, apple picking by the bushels, caramel sauce, pumpkin pies, fresh vegetable soups made from your own backyard garden, canning supplies, pickles, jams and jellies, and a celebration the harvest by sharing our abundance with others.

We remember our veterans and all our deceased family and friends, really, on Veterans Day - those who died for us and those who benefited from their protection. The continent sees Harvest Festivals and Halloween fetes early in the season, and lots of local traditions as well. Schools hold Fall festivals with carnivals and cakewalks, entertainment and prizes. I always loved those as a kid. Our Native American cousins celebrate with wonderful Pow Wows around the full moons of these months - Harvest Moon, Hunters Moon,  Beaver Moon, and Cold Moon; it's all about apreciation, sharing, and fun. A song from the Disney film Pocahontas lauds All the Colors of the Wind and autumn is it.

In October, we see farmers harvesting crops late into the night with the help of artificial lighting. From the highway, the scenes look like adventures colonizing the moon. The crops go into many fairs and festivals - Buckeye Lake's (Ohio) Corn Festival, the Circleville Pumpkin Show, Marion's Popcorn Festival, Reynoldsburg's Tomato Festival,  

Considering all the harvesting of the autumn season, if you don't want to celebrate Halloween with witches and ghouls, there are a number of other possibilities that are fun. If you want to celebrate Harvest and Halloween, these coloring pages can help with both concepts, too.

The scarecrow is familiar to many that have seen them on farms. This coloring sheet scarecrow above can be used for either Harvest or Halloween. It can also be used from a Wizard of Oz Party. Kids and adults can dress as their favorite characters for a party in a place decorated as Oz. It would be fun if someone could portray the Gatekeeper of Oz accurately.

Some folks put on a mini Renn Fest in local community centers or church halls and a scarecrow would fit with that theme as well (they did grow some crops in the Renaissance). Scarecrow is a multi-tasker.

Below, we have an image of a castle, which could go with a Renn Fest theme party, and one of a Native American wigwam or teepee, which can be used in several autumn themes - kids might dress as Native Americans for costume parties, or color the page for Thanksgiving.

This is a coloring sheet that can be modified to be presented as an invitation to a party. It has a more Halloween-ish theme to it, but pretty benign. There are bats as well as pumpkins on some farms. I think only very young children might be frightened of the masks, which look live the comedy-drama symbol. OF course, some children are afraid of clowns.

Unless this on is applied as a place mat for a party theme involving The Children of the Corn, this ear of corn can be a fun image to color at most autumn parties. Kids can come up with their own colors - neon green Martian corn might be fun. They can use their imaginations.

If you hold a local Corn Festival, you can use the outline drawing as a fun handout.

A slice of pumpkin pie can be used as a coloring page in many celebrations in autumn. It's a simple image and  fun to color. Kids might ask  how a pie is made and what goes into to whipped cream, so it might become an education tool as well.

This is probably a sheaf of wheat or oats ands children may not know what it is. The coloring sheet can be used to educated kids in a fun way about growing harvesting crops and understanding the symbols fo the United States. This is another image that can be sued for a number of celebrations.

Have you ever hosted a Charlie Brown Great Pumpkin Party? That's a fun one for kids, expecially of you have a pumpkin patch in your backyard for outdoor as well as indoor activities.

The coloring sheet above can be used for Harvest Festivals, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and other celebrations. Kids can draw a face on the pumpkin, if they wish.

This page can be used with either paints or crayons, or can be adorned with past and glitter - whatever you have around. Kids can color the moon any hue they wish and add characters to the drawing. Some will draw a moon base colony on the surface, with rocket ships. Others will draw moon monsters. Some might draw ub a whole city, while others will make the moon of green cheese and add mice.

The moon coloring sheet can be used for educational purposes as well, from discussing harvest fesitvals, pow ows, and moon phases, to talking about NASA space missions and the International Space Station.

NASA provides many public domain images on its pages that children might enjoy. The moon image offered above, and many NASA images, can be tied in with the large body of literary works and legendary tales surrounding the moon, from Goodnight Moon to First Men in the Moon to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

The moon offers endless possibilities.