Fall Leaves Alphabet Play Dough Mats

Fall is my absolute favorite season! The smell of pumpkin and spice, wearing hoodies, walking on crunching leaves and feeling the chilly temperatures. It is relaxing and cozy. Leaves and pumpkins are my favorite. You can play in the leaves, decorate with them, and they make excellent themes for fall learning activities. These free Fall Leaves Alphabet Play Dough Mats are the perfect way to practice the alphabet and strengthen fine motor skills as well!

*Pair with our Alphabet Centers & Activities for Pre-K & Kindergarten!

Fall Leaves Alphabet Play Dough Mats

Fall leaves make excellent learning tools for kids and these mats are no different! They are perfect from September all the way through the end of November. With fall colored play dough or fall-themed manipulatives, these mats are a fantastic way to help children with letter formation, letter recognition, and even beginning sounds.

These Fall Leaves Play Dough Mats come in a full alphabet set, including both uppercase and lowercase! They’re perfect for children from toddlers all the way through Kindergarten.

Children who are just beginning to explore the alphabet will benefit from these play dough mats, as will children who are learning beginning sounds or even sight words!

Features

Not only are these play dough mats extremely beneficial for exploring the alphabet, beginning sounds, and sight words, but they have other developmental benefits as well.

These mats, in combination with play dough, become a fabulous sensory activity, they help strengthen fine motor skills, as well as assist with prewriting skills.

Each page has its own letter, both uppercase and lowercase. Each is decorated with fun fall leaves and pumpkins to help motivate children to enjoy the letter mats.

Preparing The Play Dough Mats

If you haven’t used printable play dough mats in your home or classroom before, you are in for a treat. Children will love these play dough mats so much they won’t realize they are, in fact learning!

Once these mats are prepared, they are prepared forever. This is a low-prep activity, you’ll want to use more and more.

The first thing I do is print out the set. Next, I like to laminate each page. The purpose of this is to make sure the play dough doesn’t stick to the paper.

Money Saving Tip: If you would like to save on lamination sheets, you can laminate the pages back to back.

How to Use with Play Dough

• The letters can be filled in completely with play dough.
• Use different colors of play dough in each letter.
• Children can create balls of play dough to make dotted lines through the letter.
• Create snakes with the play dough to ‘write’ the letters.
• Play dough tools are also fantastic for this activity.

Alternative Play Ideas

These ABC Mats are not limited to only play dough. You can also use other objects to fill the letters. For instance:

• Pom poms
• Slime
• Dry erase markers
• Pipe cleaners
• Gems

More Benefits of Play Dough in the Classroom

• it is a fantastic way to strengthen fine motor skills, which helps with prewriting skills
• can be calming and stress relieving
• encourages development of hand-eye coordination
• excellent sensory play activity
• increases creativity and imagination
• will help with letter recognition and letter formation
• is a fun way to introduce beginning sounds

Some kids need extra encouragement to do learning activities and this can easily be done by adding a fun factor. Play dough alone can be a super fun activity that most children enjoy, so adding a learning aspect to this activity is perfect.

This is a fantastic set for a literacy center in a classroom or as an ABC activity at home!

Grab Your FREE Set

Ready for some hands-on, alphabet learning fun? Grab these free Fall Leaves Alphabet Play Dough Mats by clicking the large, yellow download button below!