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!

My brother went through a phase where he was obsessed with maps. He loved to look at maps and he would draw maps of places real and imagined. He even drew maps that followed our route when we’d go to visit our grandparents in another state!

I assume there are still kids who go through map phases, and kids with an interest in history and how things got to be the way they are. Both kinds of kids will enjoy the book Borders: Understanding the Lines that Unite and Separate Us by Karim Ressouni-Demigneux, with illustrations by Karine Maincent.

The book describes how the original borders were natural, such as oceans, rivers, mountains and deserts, and while some of those borders are still in use today, many borders are human made, decided by treaties or carved out by colonizers. It covers the history of people congregating in one place and how city-states evolved into empires, how maps are drawn and how human conflicts can reshape borders.

There are stories about walls that reinforce borders, how borders work in the air and at sea, how people cross borders with passports or as refugees and how climate change is altering the borders of some countries.

You’ll also learn some fun border facts like the fact that if you stand in the middle of the bridge over the Zambezi River you can be in four countries at once because that’s where the borders of Botswana, Zambia, Namibia and Zimbabwe meet. Or how there is only one border crossing between India and Pakistan that’s closed each night in an elaborate ceremony.

The book talks about time zones, border towns and places where countries and parts of countries are inside other countries and places where borders are less important such as the European Union.

While there are serious subjects in the book, it’s still a fun read that’s sure to interest those kids around ages 8-12 who like travel, maps and weird but true facts.

About the book: 72 pages, hardcover, published 2026 by Blue Dot Kids Press. Suggested retail price $21.95.

Have you read?

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