Fun Ideas for Read Across America

February 16, 2026 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

Read Across America began as a celebration of Dr. Seuss, but if you want to go beyond Seuss in your celebrations, or you have older kids who aren’t into his books anymore, there are lots of things you can do.

Diary of a Not So Wimpy Teacher has a full week of free activities planned, including a STEM day, rock day, pajama day, tourist day and doughnut day. Kids could dress up for some of these, and they include a book (and a list of other books) to read as a class and other activities related to the theme. So fun!

Check out Your Thrifty Co-Teacher’s ideas for Read Across America in upper elementary that include things like reading buddies, book tastings (we’ll get back to that one in a minute), designing your own book jackets and more.

Erin Waters EDU has some more good ideas like exploring different genres of books, having a book fair by unique trait (such as books all by women or people of color or who write stories about aliens) or setting up a literary scavenger hunt.

There are lots more great ideas at Buzzing with Ms. B. I love the idea of having kids make bookmarks or doing a March Madness style bracket (or even just voting) to discover the kids’ favorite book. You could ask each child for their (one of several) favorite book they read last year, or use books you’ve read in the classroom.

Draw your own or grab one from Novel Effect.

And I mentioned book tastings above, which I know I’ve talked about before, but also check out this post from I Love First Grade about doing a “reading restaurant” that is a little bit the opposite of the way I’ve seen it done before because here the kids are “reserving” the kinds of books they’d like to read and the teacher picks out some books for them to sample, rather than having the kids report on a book. But either way would be fun.

Do you do anything special for Read Across America? I’d love to hear about it.

[Photo via Your Thrifty Co-Teacher]

10 Christmas Themed Young Adult Books

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Activities and Crafts for Johnny Appleseed Day

Johnny Appleseed Day is sometimes celebrated on Sept. 26 because that is John Chapman’s birthday, but even if you’re just doing an apple unit study for fall it’s a great time to talk about Johnny Appleseed.

And that’s the place to start, that Johnny Appleseed was a real person named John Chapman who was born in 1774 in what was then the province of Massachusetts Bay. He traveled west when he turned 18 and despite the image of him randomly tossing apple seeds everywhere, he was really a deliberate planter of apple tree nurseries, which he left in the care of others and checked on every year or two.

Learn a little more of his story with these cute coloring pages (though not entirely historically accurate, they’re still cute) from Homeschool of 1. They also have a Johnny Appleseed themed word search printable.

This pin of a Scholastic News page doesn’t link to a website, but it gives you some basic information and a true and false quiz you can use with kids.

Crystal & Co. has a cute apple themed counting mini book you can print and use with your Johnny Appleseed unit. They also have some coloring pages with a bit of handwriting practice. Or practice cutting with the Johnny Appleseed themed worksheets from 3 Boys and a Dog.

Make a Johnny Appleseed puppet to help tell the story with this craft with a free printable template from Simple Everyday Mom. You’ll also find some cute printable worksheets there to learn his story and put it in the correct order.

Color, cut out and assemble this Johnny Appleseed drawing from Homeschool Preschool. They also have an apple seed counting activity you can use for practicing one to one correspondence.

Tiaras and Tantrums has a free printable apple unit that includes Johnny Appleseed facts and coloring pages, as well as how to say apple in different languages, tracing apple vocabulary, art project ideas, science experiments and more.

And if you need more apple themed activities to go with your Johnny Appleseed celebrations, check out my posts on apple crafts and apple learning activities.

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