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This post has been co-written with Ben Wolfson, a full-time educator and assistant principal in the USA.
Theming your classroom instruction and decorations around the different seasons is an easy way to keep your kindergarten classroom looking and feeling fresh all year round. Picking fall as your first theme gives you a few months with a dedicated color palette of greens, reds and yellows, and plenty of hands-on experiences from collecting leaves as they change colors to field trips to the local apple orchards. You can also put a little fall into your academic stations, and this apple and leaf alphabet match game fits perfectly with the season.
Letter Case Matching
One of the key skills in kindergarten is to help students master the alphabet, and be able to recognize letters in both their capital and lowercase forms. The key to embedding this knowledge is repetition, and the key to keeping kindergarteners motivated through repetitive tasks is by making them into a game. This apple letter matching game is a great way for them to practice a few letters at a time, or as a review game once you’ve covered the whole alphabet.
Preparing Your Apple Letter Matching Game
For this activity you will need:
Paper
Printer
Other tools for extension activities below: pencils, playdough, tape or wooden pegs etc
Optional: Laminator
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Further Teaching for Fall Theme Letter Matching
In this apple and leaf alphabet match game, students use apples and leafs to match capital to lowercase letters. All the apples and leaves look the same which can make it a little tricky as you add more letters into the mix, but your students will quickly master the activity. To keep this apple letter matching activity fresh all season long, try some of these extension activities:
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Go apple “picking” – you might not live in a part of the world with a readily accessible apple orchard nearby. Never fear! Bring in a small potted plant or large branch and tape the apples all over. Students then take it in turns to pick up a leaf from the pile and hunt for the apple that matches it. Make it a memorable experience by giving out slices of different apples as they match capital to lowercase letters.
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Pick up a pencil or playdough – once students start to master this fall theme letter matching game, you can use it as a tool for helping them with their letter creation. Have a bank of tracing pages and lined paper ready, and students pick an apple (or a leaf) to practice their writing. Make it a fun challenge by burying the leaves and apples in your sandbox and have students dig for them as a way of picking which letters to work on next. If your students are not quite ready to start writing yet, make it a playdough letter formation station instead!
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Play memory – finally, you’ll see a dramatic increase in engagement and success in your kindergarten classroom whenever you turn your academic centers into games. Memory is a great tool for helping students to match capital to lowercase letters and this apple and leaf alphabet match lends itself perfectly to that game. Simply lay out all the apples and leaves that you want to play with (making sure you have all the correct matches!) and have students take turns to turn over an apple and leaf. For extra letter recognition practice, have them read the name and sound of the letter they turn over, even if it’s not a match.