Pumpkin Smash Alphabet Activity

Are you ready for a super fun fall activity?! This pumpkin smash alphabet activity is a hands-on way to practice identifying beginning sounds in words and it incorporates sensory play. The best of two worlds! If you have kinesthetic learners or children who need to keep their hands busy, you’ll love this one!

Importance of Teaching the ABCs

Young learners need many exposures to the alphabet to help them learn letters and beginning sounds in words!

Alphabet activities build the foundation for early literacy skills, which are key to future reading and writing success. At the preschool age, children are developing their ability to recognize letters, understand letter sounds (phonics), and eventually connect those letters to form words. Engaging in alphabet activities helps preschoolers improve letter recognition and develop phonemic awareness skills.

Materials Needed

Here’s what you’ll need for this alphabet activity:

• Pumpkin Smash printable (at the bottom of this post)
• laminator and laminating sheets
• play dough

Play Dough Recipe

If you don’t have any play dough on hand, you can make this simple, no-cook recipe! Follow these steps to make your play dough in less than 5 minutes.

1. Pour 1 cup of flour into a bowl.
2. Mix in 1/2 cup salt, 2 tablespoons of cream of tartar, and and 1 tablespoon of oil.
3. Slowly add in 1 cup of boiling water. (I boiled mine in the microwave for 2 minutes.)
4. Add in a drop or two of food coloring if you want to make it colored!

You can use any type of play dough, so feel free to use whatever you have on hand!

Preparing the Activity

Before you do the activity with students, you’ll want to print the pages on card stock paper and also laminate them. Since students will be smashing play dough on the cards, having the pages laminated works best. Cut the cards apart.

Activity Instructions

1. Place a card on a tray along with a rolled up piece of play dough.
2. Instruct the student to smash the play dough on top of the picture that matches the letter at the top of each card.

Students will look at all of the pictures and find the one picture that has the beginning sound that matches the alphabet letter.

You can do this activity in a small group or pairs. It would even be a good activity for a literacy center!

Isn’t this a fun way to practice alphabet and phonemic awareness skills?!

If you’d like a copy of this printable, simply click the button below!

Happy fall!

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