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

Did you know that October is Squirrel Awareness Month? I didn’t know we needed more awareness of these little creatures, but let’s take it as a sign to learn more about squirrels!

Let’s start with some fun facts via Kids Konnect: did you know there are five subfamilies and more that 280 species of squirrels? The smallest are pygmy squirrels and the largest, the Bhutan giant flying squirrel, can be longer that 4 feet (1.2 meters).

Tree squirrels can climb down trees so fast because their ankles can rotate 180 degrees, allowing them to grab the tree bark as they go down. While most squirrels don’t survive their first year of life, they can live five to 10 years in the wild and squirrels have been known to live up to 20 years in captivity!

Rhythms of Play has more fun facts and tips for observing squirrels if you want to add some real life nature to your nature study.

We always like to start these collections with life cycle and parts of the animal printables, so let’s grab the squirrel life cycle an parts of a squirrel worksheets from Montessori Nature. (It doesn’t look like these are free any more but they have a whole unit study on squirrels you can buy that includes life cycle and parts activities, characteristics of different kinds of squirrels, a printable poster, information about predators and more.)

Grab the squirrel lapbook printable (free with email address) from Homeschool Share to learn the parts of a squirrel, where they live, what they eat, whether they hibernate and more. There’s also a nut taste test printable, a place for making observations about squirrels, life cycle of an oak tree, games and more.

Simple Everyday Mom has some cute squirrel themed worksheets including tracing the letter s, labeling the parts of a squirrel and a letter s maze. She also has more activity pages with a squirrel theme, including matching, a more traditional maze and a counting and graphing activity.

Work on letter recognition with this squirrel and acorn game printable from Teaching Mama. I love the idea of hiding the letters in a fall themed sensory bin for kids to find, identify and match to the letter on the worksheet.

For older kids you can do this “if I were a squirrel” writing prompt from Lesson Planet.

And throw in a little counting with these squirrel and acorn tens frame printables from JDaniel4’s Mom, which you can use to count real acorns or any other little fall themed thing you have handy.

Have you read?

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