Fall is here and it’s time to get cozy, y’all! And is there anything cozier than sweet little woodland animals?? There’s just something about the cozy little critters like foxes, owls, and hedgehogs that screams “FALL!” Not to mention the colors are SO Fall, it’s just perfect!
So of course we love to include themes in our homeschool time with resources like our Fall Animals theme! This Woodland Animals theme is a perfect way to help children combine important Math and Literacy practice with this festive time of year. Below you’ll find tons of activities and tips!
Table of Contents – CLICK to jump ahead!
Fall Theme Sensory Bin
One of the easiest ways to add excitement and hands-on learning to your preschool week is with a themed sensory bin. So many of the activities in our Fall Animals Preschool pack incorporate a sensory bin, so it’s best to knock out the preparation early on! Our Fall sensory bin is always a hit—it’s simple to put together and offers tons of playful learning opportunities! Here’s how I like to set ours up!
FIRST, gather your materials. I like to use a plastic storage bin with a lid so I can cover and store the bin once it’s prepared. Choose your filler, like the dry oats we use in ours. Something about the oats really makes all the Fall colors in our Fall Animals theme POP and gives children a very unique texture to experience. Once you’ve chosen your filler, fill your storage bin as much as you feel comfortable with (knowing each individual child can handle working with different amounts of materials).
NEXT, grab some extra Fall themed items like plastic apples and pumpkins, faux leaves, colorful pompoms, etc. These items make the perfect backdrop for the printable items in our preschool Fall pack! Scatter them throughout your sensory bin filler and watch the theme really come to life!
FINALLY, choose a space that you feel comfortable using the sensory bin with your child. I tuck ours away in our homeschool room with the rest of our Preschool manipulatives, and keep our sensory bin blanket nearby for when it’s time to get to work. The rule with our bins – everything stays on the blanket! This makes clean up SO much easier.
READY, SET, PLAY!!! When your sensory bin is not being used for the printable activities in our Fall Animals Preschool theme, allow children to explore freely! Watch them scoop, pour, dig, and more! I love taking our bin our when I need a little extra quiet time for homeschooling an older child, or honestly if I just need an extra minute to sip my hot coffee!
Preschool Fall Animals Theme Overview
This Fall Animals Preschool theme is sure to give your little learners TONS of fun practice! Children will have 15 center-style activities to choose from – 5 Math, 5 Literacy and 5 Fine Motor centers. In addition, I’ve included book recommendations for 5 woodland animals picture books and links to their read aloud videos on YouTube!
To use these printables, you can follow the PRE-MADE lesson plans for a week full of fun! Each of the 5 pre-planned days your students will have 1 read aloud, 1 Math activity, 1 Literacy activity, and 1 Fine Motor activity to work on. This is a great pace for little learners! But if you’d like to spread the activities out or rearrange them according your own child’s needs, simply print our provided Build-Your-Own Plans page and make your own plans!
PS See how we use this theme in our Preschool scope and sequence by grabbing our FREE Preschool Curriculum Map below!
Math Activities
This set of printables has 5 fun Fall Animals Preschool theme activities for practicing early Math skills. Children will practice number formation, number identification, counting, colors, and shapes. Our Preschool activities always include the use of small manipulatives for added fine motor skills practice!
One of my favorite Woodland Animals Math activities is the activity shown above! “Find and Feed” activities are such a fun way to take an important skills, like number identification in this case, and make it feel more like a game! And of course using a sweet little Fall critter, like the raccoon in this activity, is a great way to extend your Fall theme!
To complete this activity, children choose a tree stump card. They’ll identify the number on their tree stump and “feed” that number to the raccoon. I like to scatter the numbers in our Fall sensory bin to combine extra fine motor skills practice with our Math practice.
Want to extend the fun? Instead of having children choose tree stump number cards, start with the number 1 and encourage children to “find and feed” the raccoon its numbers in sequential order. You can even practice number order forwards and backwards! This activity gives children a HUGE leg up on an extremely important Math skill they’ll encounter for years to come!
Literacy Activities
In addition to the Math centers, this set includes 5 early Fall Animals Preschool Literacy activities! Children will practice skills like letter identification, letter formation, beginning sounds, and handwriting practice with woodland animals vocabulary words!
One of my favorite Literacy activities from our woodland animals theme is the one shown above. I love resources that practice multiple things at once, and that’s exactly what these beginning sounds strips do! These happy little woodland animal strips are so helpful for a identifying beginning sounds. To use, children identify the animal on the left side of the strip and its beginning sound. Then, they use clothespins to clip all the pictures that have the correct letter on them.
Using clothespins and “clip card” style activities is such a fun way to engage the little muscles in our littlest learners hands. The act of squeezing the clothespins to open and close them works those muscles hard, and even helps very young children practice the motion of cutting with scissors WITHOUT having to practice with sharp scissors if they aren’t quite ready for them yet!
Fine Motor Activities
When working with little learners, strengthening fine motor skills is a must! Our 5 Fall Animals theme fine motor activities will have your children working hard and having TONS of fun! They will practice matching using clothespins, mold using play dough, trace using manipulatives, match animals, and so much more!
My favorite thing to include in all of our Preschool Curriculum themes is a set of themed play dough prompt cards to match that week’s theme. It’s always so much fun to see kiddos find new excitement in their good ‘ole play dough when paired with bright pictures to build!
Just a tip – laminate each of your play dough cards or pop them in sheet protectors to give them the glossy cover that keeps the play dough from sticking!
And… I lesson planned FOR YOU!
This set of activities (and all of the other 45+ sets in our FULL Preschool Curriculum) include a full week of print and go visual lesson plans! It shows you exactly which books and printables to use each day for a 5-day school week, making lesson planning an absolute breeze!
Want to build your own? Or maybe your kiddos are ready for some of the activities but not all of them? That’s great! Use the included Build Your Own lesson plans page! These thematic centers were designed with growing learners ages 2.5 to 5 years old in mind, so this lesson planning page allows you to choose which activities your child is ready for right now!
Ready to learn with your toddlers or Preschoolers ALL MONTH LONG?! You can save TONS when you grab this set of centers in our September Preschool Curriculum! The bundle includes over 4 engaging September themes (like Fall, farm, and more!), complete with a week of lesson plans for each! You’ll also get 25 NO PREP Fall themed fine motor skills worksheets and crafts, and 38 NO PREP Math and Literacy worksheets for extended practice!
Let’s hang out!
I hope this post helped you get a better look at our Fall Animals theme Preschool activities! Got questions? Let me know! I’d love to chat and get to know you better! You can find us below in some of our favorite places to hang out. Can’t wait to chat with you about your Preschooler’s learning journey!
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