Fall-Themed Literacy Activities

I had some fall literacy activities in my leaf reading and writing activities post, but I wanted to include a few more with a more general fall theme if you’re into that. See also my roundup of printable fall books for kids for some easy reading and coloring activities.

KidSparkz has a great collection of free fall printables for literacy, math and more. Of particular interest to us right now are the printable alphabet flashcards and number cards, which could be used to decorate a bulletin board, spell out kids’ names or for other activities.

Speaking of alphabets, you can also get a full alphabet (upper and lower case) on apples, apples with objects that start with each letter for matching, and lots of other fun apple themed early literacy activities from Make Take Teach. Learn about how to use them at that link, and purchase the set from Teachers Pay Teachers.

Play with rhyming words with a fall theme with the printable rhyming acorns activity from Mrs. Jones’ Creation Station. Each half of an acorn shows a picture and they pair up with another picture of something that rhymes, like jet and net, pig and wig.

Help kids learn their letters with this adorable feed the scarecrow activity from ABCs of Literacy. The printable (free when you enter your email) includes the scarecrow face and upper case and lowercase letters on straw shapes. Just add the face to a paper bag and you can practice letter recognition by saying a letter and having the child feed the right one to the scarecrow (or use it for the first or last letter in a word for an extra challenge).

The fall find it writing center from The Kindergarten Connection is a great one to use in the classroom. You hide images of different fall things around the room, and kids color them in as they find them. The hidden images include the word written out, and kids can read it out loud when they find each item.

Kids can practice their handwriting skills with these fall handwriting pages from The Natural Homeschool. Each word has a picture and the words are written on the lines beside the picture so kids can trace them or write the words on the lines below.

If you need even more little printable books for kids to read, check out I See Fall from Fun-a-Day. This fun little book includes different things kids might see in the fall, like leaves, apples, pumpkins, sunflowers, acorns and scarecrows. Kids can color the objects and, in one version, they can write in the word see in each sentence.

Fall Math Activities

10 Cute Coloring Pages for Fall

A Gross Motor Movement Game for Fall

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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