Acorn Learning Activities

There are so many fun objects that can be used as inspiration for learning activities in the fall. We’ve covered apples and pumpkins; another favorite is acorns. The squirrels in our neighborhood have been super busy so it must be time to talk about acorn learning activities.

Match uppercase and lower case letters on acorn halves with this cute printable from Playdough to Plato. You can do more letter recognition by feeding the squirrel the acorn letters from ABCs of Literacy. You could also use these letters for spelling sight words, in a sensory box or in lots of other ways.

Mrs. Merry has a super cute printable acorn creature you can print out for kids to build. Great cutting and pasting practice, too. Or make a more natural looking acorn with torn or cut construction paper and the printable from The Holly Dog Blog.

Seam Whisperer has super cute squirrel and acorn printable lacing cards, which are a great way to practice fine motor skills. (You’ll want to laminate them and/or print on cardstock to make them more stable for little hands.)

Check out this list of kids books about acorns from Homeschool Preschool.

Want to do activities with actual acorns? Head to the yard or the playground and gather up all you can find, then you can count them (Happy Toddler Playtime), paint them (Learn with Play at Home), stack acorn caps on top of an acorn (also Learn with Play at Home), make a wreath (Craftulate) and sort and observe your acorns at the science table (Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds).

Or you can make a whole sensory bin with acorns as the base, like this one from Learning and Exploring Through Play. Add wooden blocks or tree slices, little animals, real or fake leaves. So much fun to play with!

Johnny Appleseed Day is sometimes celebrated on Sept. 26 because that is John Chapman’s birthday, but even if you’re just doing an apple unit study for fall it’s a great time to talk about Johnny Appleseed.

And that’s the place to start, that Johnny Appleseed was a real person named John Chapman who was born in 1774 in what was then the province of Massachusetts Bay. He traveled west when he turned 18 and despite the image of him randomly tossing apple seeds everywhere, he was really a deliberate planter of apple tree nurseries, which he left in the care of others and checked on every year or two.

Learn a little more of his story with these cute coloring pages (though not entirely historically accurate, they’re still cute) from Homeschool of 1. They also have a Johnny Appleseed themed word search printable.

This pin of a Scholastic News page doesn’t link to a website, but it gives you some basic information and a true and false quiz you can use with kids.

Crystal & Co. has a cute apple themed counting mini book you can print and use with your Johnny Appleseed unit. They also have some coloring pages with a bit of handwriting practice. Or practice cutting with the Johnny Appleseed themed worksheets from 3 Boys and a Dog.

Make a Johnny Appleseed puppet to help tell the story with this craft with a free printable template from Simple Everyday Mom. You’ll also find some cute printable worksheets there to learn his story and put it in the correct order.

Color, cut out and assemble this Johnny Appleseed drawing from Homeschool Preschool. They also have an apple seed counting activity you can use for practicing one to one correspondence.

Tiaras and Tantrums has a free printable apple unit that includes Johnny Appleseed facts and coloring pages, as well as how to say apple in different languages, tracing apple vocabulary, art project ideas, science experiments and more.

And if you need more apple themed activities to go with your Johnny Appleseed celebrations, check out my posts on apple crafts and apple learning activities.

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