Acorns are abundant this time of year in many parts of the country. They make wonderful game pieces for children to handle and use to spell new words, make up word games. and use for pretend.
A bowl full of acorns ready for play
What You Need: acorns!, permanent marker, paper
Play!
Acorns are fun to gather and collect with children.
Once each child has a bowl full of acorns, pass out permanent markers for children to print letters and faces on the nuts.
Games are played by spreading out the nuts and creating words. The acorn faces can bu used as wild nuts and stand for any missing letters during the word building. Of course more acorns can always be added!
Children will have fun adapting other word-building games they know using these natural playing pieces. Also, encourage children to make up their own rules and games. The main playtime objective is to have children manipulating letters to discover the fun of word building as a part of play.
Other ideas include:
- Spelling names out for the acorn people faces.
- Working cooperatively to create acorn messages.
- Tossing the acorns on the ground and scrambling to collect and form words in a short amount of time.
- Trading acorns with friends to create new words.
- Make up stories about acorn letter people.
Write About It!
Children copy down the words they create on lists to compare with friends. The words can be cut apart into strips and put together into sentences, poems, or messages.
Kids Write! 