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, Â I was strategic in the words I chose. Â 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.
Hi,
This is great! I want to do this with my first graders. Where did you get the paint chips from? I’ve gone to Lowes and Home Depot and they both did not have the wide ones like you have in the picture.
Hi Ashley!
I actually got them several years ago at Home Depot.
Love this activity! Unfortunately I went to get the paint sample cards and they no longer have the 3 colors per card samples. Only have a single color. Any ideas on where to find them?
where do you find the full sheets of paint strip sample? for the project? I only see small narrow strips?
How did you get so many paint shade papers for the acorns and leaves? Did you go to home depot and take a bunch off of the paint color sample display? I really want to try this with my first graders!
Would you happen to have a template for the basket?
What grade did you use this with?
Love this activity! Such a great vocabulary tool for 2nd graders!
I am currently writing up a ’10 FREE Fall Activities’ blog post and am featuring this blog post! (Linking directly to this page)
Can’t wait to share with my audience.
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.
I love your shades of meaning acorns. Would you mind sharing your list of words you used for the top?