Free Pumpkin Magnet Letters Mat Activity
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Get a FREE pumpkin-themed magnet letter mat activity to boost multi-sensory learning, support the process of orthographic mapping, and more!
Why We Love It
Activities that support orthographic mapping are a powerful, research-backed way for children’s brains to learn new words. The goal is for these words to eventually become sight words— words that kids can recognize instantly, without any effort at all.
To make this process enjoyable, we want to design lessons that are engaging and exciting, sparking kids’ enthusiasm throughout the learning process.
What children may not realize is that these activities are carefully planned, targeted, and focused to maximize their learning. Sneaky, but effective! Muah-ha-ha (said in my villain voice, of course).
So here we’re sharing one such resource with you! It’s a pumpkin letter-mat activity that can be used for so many things!
This fall-themed magnet letter mat offers a fun, multisensory activity that helps strengthen skills in so many areas: phonemic awareness, letter recognition, alphabet knowledge, sound-symbol connections, and spelling. These truly are essential skills for successful readers.
The mat is designed to use magnet letters and fits on a 9×13 inch baking sheet, which makes the magnet letters and mat stick in place!
🎃 It features bright orange pumpkins, acorns, color-coded vowels and consonants, and writing lines.
The pumpkins function as Elkonin boxes. Students will match each phoneme (sound) to each grapheme (letter) in a word. It works great for centers, individual work, or groups.
So if you’ve been wondering what to do with your magnet letters or interested in finding multi-sensory learning activities for young readers, this resource is for you!
Activity Ideas
Research aligned with the Science of Reading supports multimodal activities (visual, auditory, tactile/kinesthetic) to improve engagement and retention.
Try out some of these fun ideas as you use the letter mat!
🔤 Match the Letters: Have kids place the magnetic letters on the correct places, saying the letter names and sounds out loud as they go. So they would place the a in the correct position and say out loud, “A says /ă/.”
- If you have capital letter magnets, you can add an extra challenge by having students match the capital letter magnet to the correct lowercase letter.
🔤 ABC Order: Starting with the letter a, kids will locate the corresponding letter and place it on the mat. They should continue this all the way through the Letter Z.
- This activity builds kids’ alphabet knowledge. It helps them distinguish vowels from consonants and builds an awareness of alphabetical order.
- Try out out free Alphabet Arcs as another wonderful resource for this skill.
🔤 CVC Word Building: Dictate CVC words to your students. Have them identify the phonemes (sounds) they hear in each word, then place the correct grapheme (letter) in the pumpkins. Students drag their fingers from acorn to acorn along the dotted line to blend the sounds together. Last, they write the full word on the writing lines.
- Use our printable chart with 100 CVC words to dictate the words out loud.
- If kids are struggling with blending the sounds to read, try out our blending sounds resource.
🔤 Blends Word Building: Practice building words with beginning blends and ending blends. Kids have to pay close attention to every phoneme they hear in the word, then use the correct graphemes to build the words on the pumpkins.
- Use our printable consonant blends word list for dictation!
🔤 Change the Phoneme: Phoneme manipulation practice is an important foundational phonological awareness skill. Have students spell a cvc word, then ask them to change one phoneme at a time. Practice changing the beginning, medial, and final sounds!
- It can be something like this: Teacher says, “Spell the word “yes.” Now, change /s/ to /t/. What’s the new word?” It’s incredibly simple and so effective!
- Get 30 No-Prep worksheets for phoneme substitution.
Related Resources
Get 28 Magnet Letter Word Building Mats with fun themes for even more practice!
- Learn more: All About Orthographic Mapping
- Fall Fun: Halloween Word Mapping Practice
Download & Print
PRINTING INFO: We recommend printing on legal-size paper (8.5×14) to fit on a 9×13-inch baking sheet (I got it at Dollar Tree!). You will need to trim the edges and round the corners of the paper. Print a text page to ensure it fits correctly and adjust your printer settings. Use legal-size laminating sheets to allow for extended use!
DOWNLOAD TERMS: All of our resources and printables are designed for personal use only in homes and classrooms. Each teacher must download his or her own copy. You may not: Save our files to a shared drive, reproduce our resources on the web, or make photocopies for anyone besides your own students. To share with others, please use the social share links provided or distribute the link to the blog post so others can download their own copies. Your support in this allows us to keep making free resources for everyone! Please see our Creative Credits page for information about the licensed clipart we use. If you have any questions or concerns regarding our terms, please email us. Thank you!
👉 More Free Fall Fun: Fluency Turkey for practicing ALL phonics skills.