Fall is always exciting in my classroom! Students are excited and interested in all the changes that are occurring outside (not to mention that Halloween is just around the corner). I want to share with you some of my students’ favorite fall activities. Don’t forget to grab your FREE Fall Letter Dot It in this post and grab the Fall Math and Literacy Centers Unit HERE!
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A fall salt writing tray is a hands on way to practice letters, numbers and shapes. It’s super simple to set up too. I just grabbed some salt, dyed it orange, let it dry and put it on a tray. You can also use colored sand in your writing tray too. Students pick a leaf letter, write it in the tray and shake it to erase it.
You can find the trays HERE. A lacing set came in these beautiful wooden trays.
For my kinder teachers, do this activity with sight words instead of letters! Your students will be excited to write their sight words in the salt tray.
My bookshelf changes with each new theme. I just love to see students get excited when I put new books for the new theme on the shelf! It’s Pumpkin Time and Going on a Left Hunt are my favorite fall books to read at circle time.
My fall writing center has colorful fall themed paper, fall vocabulary cards, fall dot it markers and fall stickers. The vocabulary cards spark their memories and get kids talking, writing, and drawing about fall.
Letter dot it? Yes, please! My students love anything with dot-it markers. So I made this cute FREE Fall Letter Dot It with uppercase letters and one with lowercase letters for the library center. I also used it as a table time activity too.
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There are so many great compound words (scarecrow, sunflower, football) that relate to fall so I just had to create some Fall Compound Word Puzzles.
To help get my kids up and moving during centers, I created this Fall Syllable Sort with a movement spinner. Students pick a card, spin the spinner, move to count the number of syllables, and put the card in the corresponding pile.
Name collages are always a hit with my students! We make name collages with almost everything you can think of. Students crumbled up leaves to create their name collage. Grab these FREE editable name cards HERE.
2D Shape Pumpkin Patch Match gives students the opportunity to practice identifying 2D shapes and drawing them. Students pick a card, identify the shape and trace the corresponding shape on their board.
Fall number line up combines number identification, counting, matching and one-to-one correspondence all into one activity. First, students made a number line with the Fall Number Cards. Then they counted out and matched various math and fall manipulatives with the number.
We used real pumpkin seeds as counters to play Fall Cover Up. I put out boards with one ten frame for my younger students and boards with two ten frames for my older students.
In my library center, I added these Fall Trace the Number boards. Students traced the number with a dry-erase marker.
For my older students who needed more of a challenge, I put out Fall Fill in the Number boards.
If you have a small classroom, try using STEM drawers to hold the building materials and place the fall building props on top. Grab the STEM I Can Build Fall Posters here. The pumpkins are those candy corn pumpkins.
You can’t forget to add some fall props to your blocks center. I added tractors, fake leaves, pumpkins (orange pom poms), apples (red pom poms), fall books and hay bales (blocks covered in yellow paper.
In the discovery center, I added Fall STEM I Can Build challenge cards, cups, fake fall leaves and acorns! Check out the fall forest my little engineer created!
How inviting does this fall playdoh exploration look? Students made fall cookies with the fall cookie cutters and pressed the fake leaves into the playdoh creating leaf prints. They created all kinds of designs and sculptures using the acorns, pumpkin gems and leaf gems. I found those in the Target Dollar Spot a few years ago. It was a fun activity to strengthen those little fine hands and wrists. I always try to put a new play dough exploration out in my art center for every theme we do.
Where I live the wind is crazy in the fall. Students used straws to blow the paint just like the wind blows the leaves off the trees. It was a fun oral motor activity. Just make sure each student has his or her own straw to use. MAKE SURE YOU WATER DOWN THE PAINT or use liquid watercolor.
And it’s not fall unless you create fall hand (arm) print trees. Students used their fingers to make the leaves on their trees.
There are so many beautiful warm colors everywhere in the fall. Why not set up a fall color mixing experiment?! I put out red, orange, and yellow water, and students mixed colors on paper towels. Plus, it was a great fine motor activity too!
Beans, beans and more beans are in my sensory table in the fall. Students scooped, measured, poured, and picked up the beans to explore capacity. I also added pumpkin and leaf gems too. If you don’t have pumpkin gems, use pumpkin or candy corn mini erasers.
The science table can be set up in so many ways for fall! The science table above it set so students can explore the parts of a pumpkin. The picture below is set up to sort leaves by color and examine leaves. Both All About Pumpkins and All About Leaves are from my new Little Learners Science Curriculum.
If you are wondering… I did laminate the leaves! I think I would laminate everything if I could!
In the dramatic play center, we created a Pumpkin Patch (read all about how to set it up here). Students made most of the props for our pumpkin patch. They crumbled up paper to make the leaves on the tree, twisted paper to make the vines, painted the corn maze, created the hay bales for the stand out of boxes and made the pumpkins out of paper bags.
If you need Fall Books, I’ve got a list of my favorite fall books HERE.
If you want the favorite fall activities from this post, grab my Fall Math and Literacy Centers pack. It is loaded with tons of math and literacy centers all about fall, leaves, apples and pumpkins.
If you want to change your dramatic play center into a pumpkin patch, grab my Pumpkin Patch Dramatic Play pack. I did all the hard work for you. It has directions, printables and tons of classroom photos to help you set up your own pumpkin patch.
Grab some beautiful Fall, School, Halloween and Thanksgiving STEM I Can Build challenge posters (with real photographs) for the blocks, science and STEM center!
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