fall Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

Fall Shadow Matching Activity

February 27, 2024 By Deirdre

This fall shadow-matching activity focuses on objects associated with fall holidays and changes in nature. It will be fun to match the silhouettes to their word card. The cards could be placed in a center to explore in pairs or on their own. If your children are non-readers, you would need to read the words to them.

Getting the Fall Shadow Matching Activity

The Fall Shadow Matching Activity is a PDF. Once you have downloaded, the set you will need to open it with a PDF reader like Acrobat Reader.

First, you will need to download the set.

Fall Shadow Matching Game Download

Second, if you don’t have Acrobat Reader you will need to download it. The algorithm page is an Acrobat Reader PDF file.

Third, you must go to your download file and open the page. You may be asked if you want the file to open right after downloading it. You won’t have to hunt for it in your download file if you are.

Making the Matching Cards Reusable

If you plan on using the pages over and over again, you may want to laminate them. Below I have suggested products that you may want to use to cover them.

The links below are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. My Amazon Picks

Scotch Brand PRO Thermal Laminator, Never Jam…$54.68~~$128.93~~ (11154)

Scotch Thermal Laminating Pouches, 100 Count-P…$15.98~~$24.68~~ (63556)

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Extending Shadow Matching Activity

It would be so much fun to go on a nature hike and gather fall objects. Once your children have gathered a few objects, you take them inside. Flashlights can be used to illuminate each object that was gathered. That will cause a shadow to appear on the wall behind each object.

More Fun Activities to Explore

Fall Tangrams

Fall Tree Counting and Skip Counting Puzzles

Fall-Themed Printable Tangram Puzzles

October 12, 2018 By Deirdre

Your children will have fun exploring shapes and using them to create fall-themed tangram puzzles. The puzzles invite your children to slide, flip, and rotate shapes to get them in the correct position. Children that are used to seeing shapes lined up in a row will get to see them in new ways.

Before your children explore the tangram puzzles, you may want to read them a book about tangrams and tangram puzzles. Below you will find several of my favorite books that feature tangrams.

Links below are affiliate links.

Getting Ready to Use the Tangram Puzzle

You can download the Fall-Themed Tangram Patterns and open them with Acrobat Reader. This set was designed to be printed out onto a color printer.

Then you will need to decide what your children will use as tangrams. You could give a set of plastic tangrams to use or you could make your own.

How to Make Your Own Tangrams

You can print out the tangram puzzle from the tangram puzzle set onto fall-themed scrapbook paper. If you use paper with a design on both sides, their puzzles with have a fun mixture of blocks. You may need to trim the paper to get in just the right size to go through your printer.
Once you have printed out the puzzles, you can cut out each of the individual shapes. If your children are able, you can have them cut out the shapes.

If you like this fall shape activity, here are some more shape activities you will love.

Fox in Socks Tangram Puzzles

Exploring Giant Homemade Tangrams

Halloween Tangram Math Activity

Fall Tree Counting and Skip Counting Puzzles

September 16, 2018 By Deirdre

A friend recently shared a picture of one of her preschoolers working on one of the Community Helper Vehicle puzzles I created. One of her students was placing the pieces on an oil drip pan. She shared with me that she placed magnetic tape on the back of each of the pieces so they would stick to the pan. That inspired me to create three sets of number counting and skip counting puzzles that have fall themes.

You will find that each of the sets contains a 1-10 puzzle, an 11-20 puzzle, a skip counting by 2’s puzzle, and counting by 5’s puzzles. Today’s set of puzzles features a tree with fall-colored leaves. You will find one of the remaining sets has a Halloween theme and the other has a Veterans Day theme.

Downloading the Counting and Skip Counting Puzzles

You can download the Fall Tree Counting and Skip Counting Puzzles onto your computer and open them in Acrobat Reader. While you could print them out in black and white, I would recommend printing them out in color.

Links below are affiliate links.

You will probably want to print them out onto Neenah Exact Index, 110 lb, 8.5 x 11 Inches, 250 Sheets, White, 94 Brightness. Your puzzle sections will last longer on the thick paper with the plastic laminated on it.

Deciding How Your Children will Explore the Puzzles

You can placeMaster Magnetics – B005HYDC68 Roll-N-Cut Flexible Magnetic Tape Refill – 1/16″ Thick x 1/2″ Wide x 15 feet. (1 roll), 07518on the back of the puzzle pieces and have your children place them in order on an WirthCo Funnel King 94482 Drip Tray – Metal Oil Drain Pan, Oil Tray, Heavy Duty, 17 1/2” x 25 3/4”, 6 Quart Capacity, cookie sheet or the side of a file cabinet.
Children can arrange the pieces so that they in order on a table top.
You can glue pieces from a sheet of felt on the back of each puzzle piece. Then you children can place the puzzle pieces in order on a flannel board.

If you like this printable math activity set, here are some more you will love:

Subtraction Treasure Chest Match

Color, Count and Graph Pumpkin Activity

Roll, Write and Count Mats

Ocean Themed LEGO Counting Mats

Leaf Themed Ten Frames

Here are the supplies I recommend you use for this activity:

Fall-Themed Free Ten Frame Addition Worksheets

September 4, 2018 By Deirdre

This free set of ten frame addition worksheets invites your children to work on addition facts that have a sum of ten. Children will enjoy filling the leaf outlines in each section of the frame with an object that matches the color of the leaf in that section. This activity will give your children a way to work on building addition sentences with objects. It will also give them the opportunity to explore how ten frames work.

You may want to read a book that features adding in it before starting this activity. Below you will find some of my favorite children’s books about addition.

Getting Copies of the Ten Frame Addition Worksheets

This set of Leaf-Themed Ten Frame Activity was designed to be printed out on a color printer. Each page includes two of the same ten frames. You can use one frame to demonstrate how to add to ten or have your children work in pairs.

Great Objects to Use on the Ten Frame Activity Worksheets

Pom-poms
Buttons
Plastic Pumpkins
Orange and Brown Counter
Orange and Brown Beads

Exploring the Ten Frame Activity Worksheets

Children will start by placing correct colored objects in each section of the frame. Then they can figure out how many orange objects they used. The orange objects will equal the missing addend in each sentence.

Then they can look for the other tens frame that uses the same addends. It will give kids an opportunity to see its turn around fact or a member of its fact family.

If you like this math worksheet, here are some more you will like.

Squirrel and Acorn Ten Frame Activity

Apple Addition and Subtraction Mats

Elf on a Shelf Number Activities

Caterpillar Addition Worksheets

Indian Corn Roll and Cover Addition

Adding with Two-Color Counters

Falling Leaves Sensory Activity for Kids

September 30, 2016 By Deirdre

While I was brainstorming leaf themed activities to share with you this week, I remembered a sensory activity on Fun at Home with Kids. This falling leaves sensory activity is loosely based on it. One big difference is that I did the lacing with yarn.

Putting This Sensory Activity Together

Supplies
Scissors
Brown Yarn
Rectangular Laundry Basket

Leaves Made from the Following: construction paper, melt, origami paper

Constructing the Sensory Activity

Adding the Trunk and Some Branches

There really isn’t a right or wrong way to create the tree in the laundry basket. You just decided which side would be the trunk. Then you can string a long piece of yarn from one end of the basket to the other. Sometimes the yarn can be wrapped around a top rung of the basket and other times it can go down to a low rung. Other times you can string the yarn across to a side of the basket on the other end to create side branches.

You will keep wrapping until you run out of yarn. You can start a new long piece of yarn after tying off the first one or stop.

Adding More Branches

You will find it easier to add small branches by creating them with short pieces of string. You may decide to tie the beginning of the yarn to end of the string after creating a branch.

Creating the Trunk

You will take a long piece of yarn and weave it up and down across the strings making up the trunk. You will want to tie the end of the yarn to the first string before you start. When you have finished, you will tie the end of the yarn to the last string in the trunk.

If you want a narrow trunk, you can pull the string tightly was you weave.

Ideas for a Sensory Activity

Here are some different sensory activity ideas you can do with your tree basket:

Drop the leaves through the tree one by one.
Place leaves at the bottom of the tree. Then shake the basket. Children can watch the leaves falling down after the hit the tree.
Children can create a design with the leaves on top of the yarn tree. If the leaves fall through, they can reach through and pick them up. Balancing the leaves can be tricky, but is worth the challenge.

This is part of an early learning activities series inspired by I Can Teach My Child called Toddler Time. Although my son is no longer a toddler, I will be joining I Can Teach My Child to share activities you can do with your young children this month. I will include ways of using activities with older children in most of my posts.

Songs About Fall and Color Activity with Leaves

September 29, 2016 By Deirdre

This week I am sharing with you some activities with leaves. On Monday I shared with you an alphabet muffin tin game. Today I am sharing with you a shape and color game. Tomorrow I have a number-themed leaf game. The week will end with a sensory activity that uses paper leaves and a yarn tree.

Songs About Fall Leaves

Falling Leaves (sung to the tune of London Bridge)

All the leaves are falling down

Falling down, falling down.

All the leaves are falling down,

It is fall time.

They are yellow, red and brown,

Red and brown, red and brown.

They are yellow, red and brown.

It is fall time.

Take the leaves and crunch them up,

Crunch them up, crunch them up.

Take the leaves and crunch them up.

It is fall time.

The Dancing Leaves (sung to the tune of Clementine)

The dancing leaves

Are falling down

Orange, yellow, red and brown

They are dancing, they are dancing

They are dancing on the ground.

With their crispy and crunchy sound

They are the children’s delight.

Dancing, dancing all around

Bringing joy to everyone.

Activities Based on the Fall Songs About Leaves

Supplies

You will need to print out the Leaf Shape Work Mats to do the activities. There is on a mat for each color shared in the songs.

Then you will need to cut on triangles, squares, circles, and rectangles out of paper or fabric. You will need to cut each of the shapes out of red, orange, yellow, and brown.

You could use one of the following to make your shapes:

felt
colored cardboard
card stock
color foam

Activity

Your children will need to place the right shape into its matching area of a leaf. You can make it harder by having them match the right color and shape to each mat.

Letter Recognition Game with Free Leaf Printable

September 26, 2016 By Deirdre

This seems to be the fall of muffin tin learning activities here on JDaniel4’s Mom. I have shared an apple counting activity, a color matching activity, a skip counting activity, and a number recognition activity. Today I want to share with a you a fun letter recognition game I created to go along with Leaf Man the Virtual Book Club’s book of the week.

Some links below are affiliate links.

As Leaf Man is blown through the air, he sees a number of wonderful things created with leaves. Things like cows and turtles. Your children will loving turning the pages in this book to see what Leaf Man sees next.

Setting Up This Letter Recognition Game

I created tree with Wikki Stixs on a muffin tin. You could do the same or create design with the letter leaves in the cups of the tin. You could create a giant letter C by placing leaves in the top row. bottom row,and in a column down the left hand side of the tin.

The oak leaf tin letter circles are free to download. After printing it out, you will just need to cut out the letters.

Several Ways to Play This Letter Recognition Game

In each of my pictures you will see a version of the game that focuses on matching lowercase letters to uppercase letters. That is only one of many ways that you can play this game. Below you will find a list of other versions of this game.

Place the uppercase letter in the tin and have your children match the lowercase letters to the uppercase letters.
You can have your children work on the order of the letters in the alphabet by placing letters in alphabetical order. Leave some of the cups empty. Your children can fill in the missing letters.
A few of lowercase letters and there uppercase matches can be stacked in a cup. Your children can place where they want in the tin. When there match come up, they can place it over it buddy its muffin cup.

Here are the books coming up next in the Virtual Book Club. You may want to look for them at your local library ahead of time.

OCTOBER 3

Theme: Pumpkins

Featured Book: Five Little Pumpkinsby Dan Yaccarino. There is a fun new Pete the Cat: Five Little Pumpkins book out that would also be great for this week!

OCTOBER 10

Theme: Farms

Featured Book: Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle. Big Red BarnBig Red Barn is a great alternate read.

OCTOBER 17

Theme: Spiders

Featured Book: The The Very Busy Spiderby Eric Carle. Miss Spider’s Tea Partyis a cute book you could substitute for this week. It seems to be out of print, but used copies are very inexpensive and it is still likely to be available in libraries.

Letter Recognition Game with Free Letter Leaf Printable

Muffin Tin Skip Counting Sheets with a Leaf Theme

September 9, 2016 By Deirdre

Earlier this week I shared with you Apple Basket Muffin Tin Numbers. That printable set was designed to focus on one to one correspondence and number recognition. Today’s skip counting sheets build on those concepts and introduce two more basic math concepts. Skipping counting and patterns in my mind are two skills that walk hand in hand. Kids have to figure out just how many numbers they will count by looking for the patterns.

Skip Counting Sheets Visual Clues

I designed these skip counting sheets to give children a number of visual clues. You can choose to share the clues with your children or have them discover them by themselves.

What are the visual clues?

The odd numbers all have the numbers on the left side of the leaf.

Yes, that means your children can find the even numbers on the left.

Your children will notice that the odd numbers have orange leaves.

They will also notice that the even numbers have yellow leaves.

Your children will see that every other column is made of the same type of leaf.

Finally, they will see that every other number in a row is the same.

Skip Counting Sheets and Supplies

Some of the links below are affiliate links.

You will need to download a copy of the Muffin Tin Skip Counting Sheets with a Leaf Theme for Kids . They were designed to fit into a muffin tin, but you can use them on a flat surface if you like. I liked the idea of keeping the counting objects contained.

You may be asking yourself why after drawing oak leaves I didn’t use acorns in this counting activity. While I have done acorn math activities in the past, I decided to avoid the whole are acorns safe discussion this time. If you want to use acorns with these skip counting sheets, please use them. There are a number of counting objects you can use for this activity. I went with small pom-poms.

We used homemade pinching chopsticks for the apple basket counting activity. You could use them for this activity or have your children make pincers with their thumbs and pointer finger.

Below you will find a list of other number and skip counting sheets and their themes.

Apple Muffin Tin Counting Numbers

Apple Basket Counting Numbers

Pumpkin Muffin Tin Counting Numbers

Second Grade Worksheets – Exploring a Number

October 13, 2015 By Deirdre

My son has learned so many different ways to write or illustrate numbers in second grade. I thought it would be a lot of fun to create Second Grade Worksheets- Exploring a Number that would display a few of those different ways. I also included a box for him to tell me if a number is even or odd. It came out so well that I thought I would share one of them with you.

Since it is October I placed lines through the inside of a pumpkin. These lines created spaces that could be used to display the various ways a number can be written. Each space is labeled with the way he needed to write each number.

Some of the ways can be done super-fast and don’t take up much room. Others take longer. My son had to think about how to fit those displays of a number in the space given. Thankfully we did this worksheet in pencil. Writing the selected number in tally marks had to been rethought out. The tally marks were too far apart and had to been drawn in closer together.

We worked on the following:

Tally marks
Number in words
Number
Base ten blocks
Expanded Notation
Even or Odd

After making a colored pumpkin worksheet I made four other second grade worksheets. There are three fall themes in the set. I made a black and white version of the pumpkin, turkey and leaf. Just for fun there is a colored version of the pumpkin and turkey. Many of you will want to print out a copy of the colored versions if you don’t need a number of them. If you need a lot of copies of these second grade worksheets, the black and white versions are available.

If your children are working on different ways to display numbers, please feel free to add a new section to the pumpkin.

Your children don’t have to work on the same number. You can have them pick out their own one or two digit number.

Here some other wonder second grade worksheets:

Autumn Math Worksheet from Living Life Learning

Scrabble Math Addition from the Measured Mom

Reviewing Skills from 3 Dinosaurs

Roll and Cover Indian Corn

Roll and Cover 3 Dice Ladybug Math

Addition Worksheets- Roll and Cover Indian Corn

September 23, 2015 By Deirdre

Roll and cover addition worksheets are a great way to work on number facts. Some sums can only made with specific numbers on dice. While there are some sums that can be made with several different number combinations. These Roll and Cover Indian Corn will have your children thinking about addition facts in a big way.

We used colorful buttons to cover a sum of the dice. You could have your children use pom-poms, dried beans or paper squares. By using each of these you can reuse the addition worksheets. If you don’t play on using them again, you could have your children use crayons or markers to cover a number.

At my house we both took turns rolling the dice and covering a number. You could easily have a child complete these addition worksheets on their own. They would be great to work on in a center or at your kitchen table at home.

While I mentioned doing the worksheet in pair, you could have your children work on them on their own. I really prefer having children work together. In a pair one child helps keep the other child honest. The child who is rolling finds the sum and shares it with the second student. The second student confirms that the answer is correct.

No matter how you choose to have the game played you need to decide on some rules. One rule you will need to explain is what happens when they don’t have a number to cover. You could have your children lose a turn or they could roll again. Both work. You just need to decide how you want to handle it.

The second thing you need to decide is if each player has their own addition worksheet to play on or if only one board will be used. The game will go longer if everyone has their own.

This set of addition worksheets also comes with a Indian corn sheet that focuses on adding three digit numbers. I hope you will enjoy them both.