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This post has been co-written with Ben Wolfson, a full-time educator and assistant principal in the USA.
All kindergarten students love to play pretend, and being a secret spy is high on their list of games to play! These secret code words are a great way to tap into this excitement while helping students to learn common kindergarten words to do with fall and to get excited about the season.
Letter recognition and decoding words (or sounding them out) are both essential skills for a kindergartener to manage. Being able to recognize all 26 letters helps them to build both reading and writing skills, while learning how to build words from those individual letters will make them more confident spellers and decoders as they move through the year.
How To Prepare Fall Secret Code Words
For this activity you will need:
Paper
Printer
Writing tools
Optional: laminator and dry erase markers
If you don’t have the materials needed, don’t sweat! You can get it delivered to your doorstep really quickly with Amazon Prime. You can get a 30-day free trial here.
Getting this exciting independent fall literacy center ready couldn’t be easier. You can either print one full set for the class and have students “write the room” and collect all 20 words, or print a smaller set for each student to work through at their own pace. If you’re planning on having students create their own messages, you should print one page and cut out and enlarge the decoding grid. This can be laminated and placed in an easily visible communal space. I go through more detail below on how you could use these cards.
Teaching Fall Vocabulary Words For Kindergarten
This fun fall literacy game introduces 20 common fall words and their correct spellings, from CVC favorites like “hay” to compound words like “sunflower”. The basic concept is that students look at the pictures in the bottom right of the image, and use the decoding table to work out which letter. However, there are a few other ways to use these secret code words in your classroom:
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Start with the answers – for those students who are just learning how the sounds of each letter makes up words, you can give them the answers and have them match them to each page. This way, they will automatically correct any spelling errors as they know what answers are possible.
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Create their own – to extend this task and provide additional spelling and decoding words work, have students create their own words using the pictures. These could be their sight words, first names of other students or labels for common classroom objects. For an extra challenge, try writing a few of the words in your morning message using the secret code! You can also have students create their own themed alphabet code to use in subsequent seasons and holidays; however, your students will always come back to these kindergarten words to do with fall as a firm favorite.
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Put them into practice – learning fall vocabulary words for kindergarten is a fun activity, but the research shows that students won’t retain the spelling or the vocabulary if they don’t get to use them in their own experiences. Firstly, encourage them to use these new fall vocabulary words by putting them up in the creative play centers around your room and construct activities where they will use them. Then you can ask students to make sentences that use the words and their correct spelling as part of their fall writing journals.
Decoding Words for Fall
This game is also available as digital Boom Cards which can be used with Seesaw, Google Classroom and other distance learning platforms. Grab these Internet task cards here.
If you’re looking for more Fall activities, check out my pack of 10 Scarecrow Themed Literacy and Math Centers or Fall Leaves and Acorns Themed Literacy and Math Centers.
Other Fall Printables You’ll Love:
1) Fall Printable Worksheets Pack – 50-page pack for your little one to practice letter recognition, writing, counting, tracing, coloring and so much more.
2) Fall Leaves Number Sorting – Sort out the leaves and find which numbered tree they came from to practice number recognition, reading number words, and count with ten frames.
3) Fall Leaves Pick and Cover Letters – Pick a letter card then find and cover it on the playing mat.
4) Count and Compare Acorns – Your child will count and compare the groups of acorns to help the squirrel chose the bigger one.
5) Acorn Tracing Lines – Practice fine motor skills with these 4 different acorn-themed worksheets to help the squirrel grab the acorn!
6) Scarecrow Sums to 10 – So quick to set up in just a few minutes, you can sit back and relax while your preschooler or kindergartener has fun learning to solve simple sums to 10.
7) Scarecrow Number Tracing Strips – Combine fine motor practice with early math skills in this scarecrow-themed game to practice writing numbers 1 to 10.
8) Scarecrow Arrange By Size – Develop early math skills with these 3 scarecrow-themed image sets to arrange from smallest to biggest.
Educational Tools For Your Classroom:
Browse My Most Popular Literacy Activites:
1) Valentines Alphabet Clip Strips – Kids will choose among 5 different letters on the strip to identify the matching ones.
2) Alphabet Beginning Sound Coloring Pages – Watch your child become more familiar with each letter of the alphabet as they practice coloring in the objects with that beginning sound.
3) Tommy Turkey’s Alphabet Pie – This turkey-themed letter recognition activity is so simple to prep and makes a great file folder game!
4) Pirate Alphabet Playdough Mats – Just print out the playing mats and ask your child to form the letters out using the playdough provided.
5) Farm Alphabet Find and Cover Letters – Work on letter recognition any time of the year!
6) Werewolf Spin and Cover – Kids will race to find all the letters on their mat this Halloween.
7) Bunny Burrows Game – Fun game for small groups or circle time where students will catch a bunny and say out the sound.
8) Letter-saurus Fossil Digging – Dinosaur lovers will enjoy being a pretend paleontologist and finding all the letters.
9) Alphabet Handwriting Worksheets – Practice lowercase and capital letters with these print-and-go pages.
10) Rainy Day Alphabet – 1 printable, many ways to use.
