Fall Math Activities For the Classroom

Adding a seasonal spin to classroom learning makes it a little more fun for everyone, so here are some fall math activities to get younger kids engaged in learning the basics.

Make fun fall shapes like an apple, a scarecrow and an acorn using snap cubes, then count the number of each color used in the design. Get the pattern cards from 123 Homeschool 4 Me and kids will get practice following instructions, sorting colors and counting.

Or use cubes to practice one-to-one correspondence with a pumpkin twist with this pumpkin stacking towers activity from Fun Learning for Kids. Here kids match the number of cubes in each stack to the number on the pumpkin. There are printable options with numerals and dots that kids can use to practice addition while they build their towers.

These apple counting printables from Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds are another way to practice one-to-one correspondence while learning to count to 10. Kids can use red pompoms or buttons to cover up each apple on the tree as they count them.

The Keeper of the Memories has a printable pumpkin seed counting clip card activity where kids can count the number of seeds in the pumpkin and clip a clothespin to the correct answer (numbers 0 to 10 are included).

Need some independent math games for first and second graders to do when they complete their work early? Check out this free download from Missing Tooth Grins on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Work on skip counting by twos with these cute apple puzzle printables from Royal Baloo. Just print, cut (and laminate if you want) and kids can reassemble them with the numbers as a guide.

Kindergarten Worksheets and Games has a great collection of fall themed math worksheets, including writing the words for numbers, telling time, greater than and less than, counting by ones, twos and fives, addition and subtraction and more. And they’re all free.

Growing Up Ladybug and How to Become a Butterfly are both by Stepanka Sekaninova and illustrated by Linh Dao, and they came out at the same time and are on similar themes, so let’s look at them together.

Growing Up Ladybug is narrated by Mariella, a seven-spot ladybug. She talks about the parts of a ladybug, where they live, different kinds of ladybugs, why humans love them, their defenses against predators and the life cycle of a ladybug.

The drawings are cute if not always scientifically accurate, it’s not in such a way that’s likely to confuse kids (who probably already know that ladybug mamas don’t push their larval babies around in strollers, for instance.

It’s a good general description of the life cycle of a lady bug and why we like having them around.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Similarly, How to Become a Butterfly covers the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with caterpillars eating burning nettle leaves. (Here Amanda is the narrator.) The book talks about a few of the more than 18,000 daytime butterflies in the world as well as other creatures that live in the meadow (there’s that ladybug again, along with crickets, bees and other bugs).

It also covers some of the enemies of caterpillars like wasps and spiders, and the defenses that caterpillars use to try to prevent being eaten. It illustrates how caterpillars grow and change as they molt and prepare to pupate, and what a caterpillar looks like before and while it is forming its chrysalis. And while the book uses the word metamorphasis it doesn’t really talk about what happens between the caterpillar forming a chrysalis and the butterfly hatching.

This butterfly is a peacock butterfly, and once it hatches the book covers the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle. It also talks about nocturnal moths (though it says nocturnal butterflies are “usually called moths” when moths are actually a different species) and what butterflies do at night.

I’m maybe a little hard on this book because my daughter is a butterfly expert from way back, but it is still cute and good for the very basic basics of the butterfly life cycle.

Both books would be fun additions to your bookshelf for younger kids starting to learn about different animals or who have an interest in insects.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Have you read?

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