25+ Fun Leaf Theme Activities for a Fall Unit Study

Kids love everything about leaves!  The beautiful colors, the graceful way they fall to the ground, the fun crunching sound they make when they are stepped on, and the amazing feeling of jumping into them!  Leaves are just SO MUCH FUN!  And what could possibly be even more fun than looking at leaves and playing in them?  Leaf themed activities!  I have an awesome list of all of our favorite math, literacy, arts and crafts, STEM, fine motor skill, and sensory leaf themed activities for you!  You will be amazed at just how simple it is to incorporate these activities into your learning and create a wonderful Autumn Leaf Unit Study this fall!

Why Should I Use Leaf Themed Activities?

There are many benefits to using leaf themed activities with preschoolers!

Encourage Creativity:  There are endless possibilities for being creative when it comes to leaf themed activities!  Kids can make a leaf puppet, a leaf person, leaf decorations, or whatever else they can dream up in their imagination!  You will love watching them express their creativity and create all kinds of unique leaf creations.

Plant Exploration:  There is so much to learn from leaves!  It is fascinating to watch how they fall off of trees, change color, and then decompose right in front of our eyes.  Observing leaves opens up so many opportunities to talk to preschoolers about trees, plants, and nature!

Build on Prior Knowledge:  Leaves are one of those things that almost every kid has prior experience with.  No matter if they have seen them on trees, helped rake them, jumped in a pile of leaves, or seen them in a book, there are so many ways that kids could have previously experienced leaves.  Building on that prior knowledge can easily help to develop vocabulary and language skills in preschoolers and help them make connections to their real world experiences!

25+ Activities For A Fun Fall Leaf Unit Study

Leaf Themed Art Activities

Creating art with leaves is one of our favorite fall activities!  There is no shortage of leaves in the fall, and so many fun and unique ways to use them to create beautiful masterpieces.  Even if you don’t have a lot of leaves near you, you can still easily create leaf themed artwork to decorate your home or classroom this fall!

1. Fall Leaf Puppet Craft for Preschoolers

Get ready for some dramatic play!  This Fall Leaf Puppet Craft for Preschoolers is an adorable craft that is not only fun to make, but also fun to play with afterwards!  Kids will love bringing leaves to life with this activity.

2. Easy, Fun Fall Leaf Salt Painting for Kids

This Easy, Fun Fall Leaf Salt Painting for Kids is another great fall craft for kids!  It’s so simple and easy to draw a leaf, trace it in glue, add salt, and then paint.  Check out the blog post to see just how easy it is!  My favorite part about this activity is there is so much room for creativity and each leaf your child makes will truly be a unique piece of artwork!

3. Leaf Turkeys:  Easy Leaf Turkey Craft for Preschoolers

Looking for a Thanksgiving themed leaf craft?  You’ve come to the right place!  Leaf Turkeys:  Easy Leaf Turkey Craft for Preschoolers are a wonderful way to stretch your leaf themed activities out all the way to the end of November!  These adorable turkeys are sure to be the talk of your Thanksgiving meal!

4. Paper Plate Wreath Craft for Preschoolers

Wreaths are one of the easiest and best ways to add a little fall beauty inside your home!  It doesn’t get much more simple than this Paper Plate Wreath Craft for Preschoolers.  You can use real or artificial leaves to create this adorable leaf wreath!

5. Fall Fingerprint Tree Craft for Preschool

Kids love sticking their fingers in paint!  So, next time you are ready to paint, why not make it a fingerprinting activity?  This Fall Fingerprint Tree Craft for Preschool is super fun to make and is a great keepsake for parents since it captures small and adorable finger prints in a craft!

6. Make a Super Easy Fall Tree Craft for Preschoolers

Do you have a piece of paper?  Great!  Do you have some glue?  Awesome!  Now, head outside, grab some sticks and leaves and you are ready to Make a Super Easy Fall Tree Craft for Preschoolers!  Kids will love incorporating their nature finds into this fall tree craft!

7. Fall Tree Toilet Paper Roll Crafts for Kids

We always have an abundance of toilet paper rolls in my house.  If you do too, you have to try Fall Tree Toilet Paper Roll Crafts for Kids!  This is an easy way to create colorful fall trees using an unconventional painting utensil!

8. Fall Melted Bead Suncatchers Craft for Kids

Suncatchers are a great way to capture the beauty of sunlight inside your home!  Fall Melted Bead Suncatchers Craft for Kids are fun to make and are awesome for fine motor skills.  If you’re like me and have a large stash of beads at your house, then you probably already have all of the materials that you need to create this suncatcher craft!

9. Fall Theme Mable Painting Activity for Kids

Marbles are another unconventional painting utensil that make amazing artwork!  Kids will love rolling and shaking marbles to create some beautiful leaves this fall!  This Fun Fall Theme Marble Painting Activity for Kids is a unique painting experience for kids that will produce some one of a kind leaf paintings this fall!

10. Fall Coffee Filter Crafts for Preschoolers

DIY garland is another fun way to decorate your house this fall!  Fall Coffee Filter Crafts for Preschoolers are another easy craft that requires very few materials (most of which you probably already have lying around your house!).  Decorate a mantle, playroom, or classroom with this DIY fall garland!

11. Salt Paint Fall Tree Activities for Preschoolers

Another cool salt painting activity to do this fall is Salt Paint Fall Tree Activities for Preschoolers.  Creating a salt paint tree is just as fun as making amazing salt painting leaves!  Kids will be mesmerized as the salt soaks up the paint and creates a beautiful, colorful work of art!

12. Beautiful Pom Pom and Felt Fall Garland

Beautiful Pom Pom and Felt Fall Garland is the perfect way to get your preschoolers involved in making decorations for your home or school!  If you have never made pom poms before, prepare to be amazed by how simple and fun it is!  Kids will love being involved in making this garland!

13. Making Creepy Crawly Crafts with Leaves

Who doesn’t love an adorable creepy crawly craft?  You are going to have so much fun Making Creepy Crawly Crafts with Leaves!  This craft is especially good for fine motor skills and allows lots of opportunity for creativity to shine.  These creepy crawlies are sure to put a smile on your face!

Leaf Themed Math Activities

Leaves are one of those amazing natural math manipulatives that nature gives us every year!  My kids love going outside and collecting leaves.  Once we have a huge stockpile, we love to sort, organize, and count them!  They are perfect for working on all of our math skills and kids love them since they are crunchy, colorful, and best of all- picked just by them!  Check out all of our math activities that you can use leaves as manipulatives for, or just use to go along with your leaf themed unit this fall!

1. Hands-on Fall Leaf Patterns for Preschoolers

Making patterns is super fun, especially with leaves!  Hands-on Fall Leaf Patterns for Preschoolers can be done with real or fake leaves and is an awesome hands-on way to practice pattern making with your kids!

2. Fall Leaf Graphing Activity and Printable

One of our favorite things to do after we go on a fall nature walk and collect leaves is to do a graphing activity!  This Fall Leaf Graphing Activity and Printable makes graphing fun and interactive for kids.  This is also a wonderful way to introduce math vocabulary terms such as greatest, least, same, and total!

3. Free Printable Sock Monkey Counting Cards

There is just something so cute and adorable about sock monkeys!  My preschoolers love them!  These Free Printable Sock Monkey Counting Cards have a fun fall theme and are great for counting practice.  Use them as posters, make a book, or use them for a one to one correspondence activity.  There are so many fun possibilities!

4. Subtracting with Ten-Frames:  Leaf Theme

Learning to subtract can be tricky, but ten frames are a great tool to help make the skill a little easier!  Subtracting with Ten-Frames:  Leaf Theme is an awesome math activity that will make subtraction feel like a breeze for your little ones this fall!

5. Free Printable Fall Leaves Counting Game for Preschoolers

Counting practice is always a favorite math activity in my classroom, and this Free Printable Fall Leaves Counting Game for Preschoolers is a super fun way to practice!  This activity requires very few materials and is super easy to set up, making it a staple in my classroom math game rotation.

6. Printable Fall Leaves Counting Grid Games

Learning to count to 10?  20?  100?  This one activity has you covered no matter what!  Printable Fall Leaves Counting Grid Games are the perfect way to easily differentiate learning this fall.  No matter what your preschooler’s counting goal is, you can easily work on it with this activity.  You can even work on addition and subtraction with this activity- just check out the post for all of our ideas of how to use this activity in your home or classroom.

7. Fall Leaves Tangram Activity

Another super fun way to use those leaves your children love collecting outside!  This Fall Leaves Tangram Activity is such an easy way to practice shapes and work on building objects with shapes.  Simply draw your shapes onto the leaves, cut them out, and get to assembling- it’s that easy!

8. Free Fall Colors Printable Activities for Preschoolers

What’s better than one fall color leaf activity?  THREE fall leaf activities!  Free Fall Colors Printable Activities for Preschoolers are one of the easiest ways to work on colors with your preschoolers.  Use the three activities in centers, as partner activities, or even as an independent activity.  There are so many options for using them with your kids!

More Leaf Themed Math Activities

• Work on more counting skills this fall with Fall Leaf Number Towers.
• This Fall Leaves Counting Center is another great grab and go activity.
• Kids will love putting together these Fall Leaf Counting Puzzles.

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Leaf Themed Literacy Activities

Fall leaves are a super fun theme to use when you are teaching about the letters of the alphabet and their sounds!  Bright and colorful leaf activities are eye-catching and grab the attention of little learners!  When the air starts to feel a little chilly and the leaves start falling, it’s a perfect time to grab a fall themed book and pair it with one of these great fall themed literacy activities!

1. Fall Leaves Alphabet Matching Activity

Letter identification is one of the first literacy skills we work on with our preschoolers.  This Fall Leaves Alphabet Matching Activity is a fun and easy way to practice letters.  Kids will love finding the matching letter to the leaf on the tree and watching the tree come to life with leaves as they find all of the matches!

2. Fall Leaves CVC Word Building Mat

Word building mats are fabulous for CVC practice.  There are so many different ways to use them, and after you print this Fall Leaves CVC Word Building Mat you just need to gather a few simple materials you probably have around your home or classroom already and you will be ready to go!

3. CVC Word Families Board Game Fall Themed

We love board games in my house!  Games teach so many skills like taking turns, being a team player, and even how to handle not winning.  This CVC Word Families Board Game Fall Themed not only helps to practice all the skills I just mentioned, but it’s also amazing for working on CVC words!  I love learning games because they really take the pressure off of reading and make it super fun for kids!

4. Fall Word Work:  Free CVC Word Building Printable

I have another adorable CVC word building mat for you!  My preschoolers love squirrels just as much as they love leaves, so I figured, why not combine two of their favorite fall things?!   Fall Word Work:  Free CVC Word Building Printable is the perfect combination for leaves, squirrels, and literacy practice!  Kids will get so much literacy practice as they find the correct letters, identify the sounds, and then order them to create the CVC word.  You can even use the cute leaf letters for other literacy activities as well!  (I love activities that can be used in multiple ways!!)

More Leaf Themed Literacy Activities

• Practice name recognition with this Leaf Letter Name Activity.
• What child doesn’t love helping to rake leaves?  Why not practice letters at the same time with this Fall Alphabet Rake Activity.
• Work on upper and lowercase letter recognition with Leaf Clip Cards.
• This Fall Leaf Letter Match is great for practicing letters.

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Leaf Themed STEM Activities

Being outside during the fall is the perfect opportunity to get in some STEM exploration with leaves.  Kids are naturally curious about their environment and so much learning can take place just by going on a walk, gathering leaves, and examining them.  Check out these other amazing STEM leaf activities you can do to keep the exploration and learning going this fall!

1. Fall Math: Exploring Measurement with Leaves

Learning how to measure doesn’t get more fun than this!  This Fall Math: Exploring Measurement with Leaves is a fantastic way to introduce vocabulary words like short, long, bigger, smaller, and wide when you are first learning about measurement.  For older kids you can even introduce the concepts of perimeter, area, and using a ruler to measure. So many possibilities for learning!

More Leaf Themed STEM Activities

• Explore Leaf Veins in this science activity.
• Design and Create a Leaf Glider.
• Check out these fun STEM Plant Activities.
• Make an Autumn Leaf Investigation Table.
• Kids will love this Why Do Leaves Change Color Experiment.
• Who can Engineer a Freestanding Tree with Leaves?

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Leaf Themed Sensory Activities

My kids LOVE stomping on leaves and hearing the crunching sound that they make!  They also love feeling the smooth and bumpy contrasting textures of the leaves outside!  So many wonderful sensory experiences with leaves!  Here are some other great ways to make sensory learning experiences with a leaf theme!

4. Easy Homemade Fall Sensory Bottle for Preschool

A sensory bottle is just what you need this fall to help calm your preschooler if they are upset, entertain a child in the car, or provide an easy visual sensory experience for your toddler!  Confetti leaves, water, glue, and a plastic bottle are all you need to capture the beauty of the falling leaves in this Easy Homemade Fall Sensory Bottle for Preschool.  Check out the post below with all the details of how to assemble this fun sensory bottle!

5. Colors of Fall Sensory Bin for Preschoolers

Sensory bins (in my opinion) are one of the most amazing ways to create a well rounded sensory experience for preschoolers.  The best sensory bins have a variety of textures, sounds, and colors that all come together to stimulate kids’ senses!  This Colors of Fall Sensory Bin for Preschoolers has all of the components of an amazing sensory bin, is easy to assemble, and will provide your child with hours of sensory fun!

More Leaf Themed Sensory Activities

• Try this Leaf Rubbing sensory activity.
• Have a fun sensory experience and work on name recognition at the same time with this Leaf Name Sensory Bin.
• Make some Leaf Sensory Play Bags!
• If you’re feeling adventurous, you can try this Leaves & Oobleck Sensory Activity.

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Leaf Themed Fine Motor Skills Activities

Playing with leaves is one of those activities that is naturally good for fine motor skills!  Picking up leaves, tossing them in the air, raking them, and building a leaf pile are all great for strengthening the muscles in hands and fingers.  Here are some amazing leaf themed activities that will keep the fine motor skill development going even when you are indoors this fall!

3. Eco Friendly Fall Leaf Confetti Hole Punch Activity

I love any activity that is eco friendly, and I especially love an eco friendly activity that is also great for fine motor skills.  This Eco Friendly Fall Leaf Confetti Hole Punch Activity is an awesome way to work on fine motor skills and is the perfect fall activity for kids who love leaves!  Kids will love helping to create the confetti using a hole punch and it is so fun to watch what creative ideas they will come up for using the confetti!

More Flower Theme Motor Skills Activities

• This is a fun Leaf Threading fine motor skill activity!
• A simple Leaf Cutting Activity is great for fine motor skills.
• This Leaf Sweep will be a hit in any classroom or home.
• Lacing Cards provide another good opportunity for fine motor skill practice.
• Practice shapes and work on fine motor skills with Fall Leaf Shape Mats.

More Fall Unit Study Ideas:

Free Fall Printables to Try:

• Fall Gross Motor Dice for Brain Breaks
• Fall Animals Mini Eraser Counting Grids
• Fall Color Posters & I Spy
• Fall Number Tracing Worksheets
• Fall Scavenger Hunt