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

When my daughter was younger I would spend a lot of time trying to come up with activities she could do in the car on long road trips and things to entertain her when we were waiting at restaurants and things that didn’t involve screens.

But it turns out there are a lot of great activities you can do with just a piece of paper and a pen.

What Do We Do All Day has a great collection of pen and paper games, including some that can be done with just one person, though they’re all more fun if you have at least two.

There are some classics on here like hangman and dots and boxes, but there are also quite a few I hadn’t heard of before.

I don’t want to spoil the whole list for you because you should definitely click over there and look around, but I will share about the one that you see pictured above.

This game is called Bridges, and you start by making the big random shape and the dividing it into a bunch of sections (the post says 30-50 sections is ideal but I think this one is smaller than that).

Each player gets their own color marker and you take turns drawing bridges from one space to another, crossing a third. Once there’s a bridge, no other bridges can start, end or cross in those spaces. Keep going until no more bridges can be built, and the person who makes the last bridge wins.

Check out the post over at What We Do All Day for more great ideas for no or almost-no prep games you can play with your kids or that kids can play together. I’d love to know if you have a favorite paper and pen game, whether it’s on this list or a different one.

[Photo: What We Do All Day]

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