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Paper Fidgets and Games to Make for Kids

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These paper fidgets and brain teaser games are great to have on hand for road trips or when kids say they are bored. Older kids can make the projects themselves and then play with them, or you can take care of the setup and just let them play.

The hexaflexagon (instructions from Chaotically Yours) is a fun flippy floppy folding shape that can be used as a fidget. It’s made with a single piece of paper cut into strips, folded, and glued. There are videos as well as text instructions in the post if you need help figuring out how to make it. Using different patterns on the paper makes it extra fun to play with.

This magic paper art cube from Hello Wonderful is kind of like a puzzle in how it fits together. It’s a bunch of little cubes that are joined together and can be folded and stacked in different ways to make different images show on the faces. And while they have provided printables you can color and cut out to attach to the cubes, you can also just follow those size templates and draw anything you like to include on the puzzle.

Here’s another one with cubes but it’s actually more of a puzzle that can be solved. There are different puzzle options available to print and assemble from What Do We Do All Day, but the concept is the same whether you’re using numbers or patterns: try to line up the cubes so that no one number or pattern is visible on more than one face at the same time (so no matter which way you turn them, you’ll see each number or pattern exactly once). It’s a challenging brain teaser, but the solution is also in the blog post should you need it.

Looking for more fun paper crafts? Check out this post full of things to make out of paper (for kids and adults) from The Craft Patch Blog.

Learning Activities with Fidget Spinners

Multiplying and Dividing Decimals Printable Games

 

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Fall Literacy Activities

Bring on the fall leaves, pumpkins and apples as we help little ones learn to recognize letters and get ready for reading with these fall literacy activities.

Practice letter recognition by feeding the scarecrow straw with the letters of the alphabet with this printable activity from ABCs of Literacy. It includes both uppercase and lowercase letters so you can practice with either or match them as you “feed” the scarecrow.

Match the letters on fall leaves with the letters on the worksheet to play leafy letter match from The Kindergarten Connection. Kids can color in the leaves they find or cover them with dot markers.

Or do the same thing with this free pumpkin color the alphabet activity using lowercase letters. It’s from The Kinder Life on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Work on sight word recognition with this pumpkin sight words printable activity from The Connet Connection on Teachers Pay Teachers. This free download lets kids practice their sight words while they hunt for a black cat.

Help kids learn to spell their names with this apple printable activity from Books and Giggles. Kids can find each of the letters in their name on apples, put them together to spell their name, then count the number of letters in their name.

Twisty Noodle has a fall words printable coloring page where kids can trace the letters for fall words: acorn, leaf, apple and pumpkin.

Little printable books are so fun for early readers to read and color. I See Fall is a free printable book from Fun a Day that includes six fall items: acorns, sunflowers, pumpkins, leaves, scarecrows and apples. You have the option of printing it will all the words on each page (I see pumpkins, for example) or with the word see missing so kids can practice writing it in on their own.

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