A is for Acorn: Alphabet and Phonemic Awareness Activities

There is finally a slight chill in the air, but only until 10 am! It’s a perfect week to be learning about the changes we see in fall. For the past couple of weeks we have been collecting acorns as we go for walks and visit the park. The kids have loved searching for them and filling up their buckets, so now we are using them for different reading, math, science, art, and sensory learning activities.

These are a couple of the reading activities we did with acorns.

Letter Recognition

We used our acorns to do our do-a-dot letter practice page. It is a review week for us, so they chose any previous letter to practice. The kids really enjoy doing these pages, and they provide great fine motor and one-to-one correspondence practice, too.

We also used the acorns to spell out our names. Don’t you just love the look of focus on his sweet face?

Phonemic Awareness

Right now we are practicing the concept of word and learning how to identify and count the number of words in a sentence. I made this simple mat on a piece of fall theme paper. Then I modeled for the kids how to place the acorns above the boxes and then pull an acorn down one at a time into a box as we break the sentence apart.

The sentences we used for these activities were short, five words or less. Before using the acorns for each sentence we clapped once for each word as we all repeated the sentence together. This step really helped the kids be able to pull down the acorns on their own, as we are still just beginning our practice with this concept.

Here Lovey is practicing the sentence, “I love fall.” I knew she enjoyed (and learned from) the activity when I heard her clapping and repeating the sentences throughout the day.