Fall is just around the corner, and I for one am ready for some cooler weather! We don’t have a typical Fall season where I live in Arizona, but thanks to Dollar Tree and lots of strands of Fall colored leaves, I create my own. These free Fall themed vocabulary activities are a fun way for your students to practice working with synonyms to identify levels of intensity or shades of meaning. Activities like these make learning to use a thesaurus fun too!
Teaching kids to use a thesaurus is not as hard as it sounds, but it does take practice. Having several copies that partners can share is great, but a class set is even better. Dollar Tree almost always has thesauri. Each time I went I picked up a few more copies until I had a class set.
We used this whiteboard activity I made to drag and drop simple words in order of intensity.
To practice independently, students do the same with this cut and paste page.
More Fall Vocabulary Activities
Using paint sample cards is a great way to give kids a visual for the “shades of meaning”. We used shades of brown to make Fall acorns.
Rather than have my second graders think of words they could use, I wrote a list on the board for them to choose from. To avoid any frustration if they couldn’t think of or find a word in their thesaurus that had 3 levels of meaning, I was strategic in the words I chose. Only those I knew had multiple synonyms went on the list.
I used a die cut to make the leaves, but these little acorns are very simple to make. I drew out an acorn top then made a tracer for the bottom.
This easy activity makes a great addition to your Fall bulletin boards. We scattered ours around our Stellaluna book study projects and my class loved how it turned out! These booklets are from my Stellaluna Book Study and Literacy Centers unit. The Shades of Fall title lettering is included in that unit too.
If you teach with Stellaluna be sure to visit this post to see how I use this book to help turn my readers into comprehenders. Grab the free Stellaluna story summary page while you’re there!
I hope you’ve found some ideas and activities to add to your Fall vocabulary practice. If you like this post be sure to share with your teacher friends! Pin it on Pinterest or share on Facebook.
I love this idea! I went out immediately to find the paint chips to use them in my classroom 🙂
Do you have the Smartboard activity you used available? I can’t find it anywhere. Thanks!
Hi Samantha!
Unfortunately I don’t have that available anywhere. I’m unable to post it online due to the terms of use for the graphics I used. I hope your class enjoyed the activities!
It looks beautiful!
Can you post a picture of the whole bulletin??
Hi Karina! You can see the whole bulletin board in this post.