Over in the Forest Activities for Early Learners

This post may contain affiliate links.

If you have an animal-lover like I do, then you probably study animals of all types in your homeschool science lessons.

I know that preschool and early elementary teachers like to study animals with their students, as well. There are so many related activities to do with animal themes. If you’re teaching about forests and/or woodlands, you’ll love the Over in the Forest activities and printables featured below.

Over in the Forest by Marianne Berkes is a fun book for the preschool and early elementary crowd. Not only are kids introduced to various animals that live in the forest, but there are so many ways to bring in some fun learning opportunities.

Little ones will learn about the names of different animal babies. They will practice counting to ten. And, they’ll learn how various animals move throughout the forest.

Over in the Forest Activities

Hands-On Activities

After reading Over in the Forest with your little ones and completing some of the activity pages in the printable below, choose one or more of the activities below to bring the story to life.

• Teach your little ones how to tell how old a tree is.
• Have your students collect branches on your next nature walk. Then, let them create unique textured paintings with nature’s paintbrushes.
• Make a fancy stick crown!
• Make some Waldorf-inspired nature blocks from old tree limbs.
• Follow this tutorial to make stick picture frames. This is yet another activity that uses nature found in the forest.
• Go on a walk (alone) and gather fallen leaves. Now, give those leaves to your child and see if they can find the tree that matches the leaves.
• Kids will enjoy working together to create forest fairy tales.
• Gather leaves, twigs, nuts, and cones. Display things that come from trees on your classroom nature table.
• Create a story tree with story baskets. These baskets are perfect for encouraging storytelling, language skills, sequencing, and more.

More ‘Forest Friends’ Fun

Snacks and Treats

These snacks and treats are super fun and go perfectly with a forest/woodland theme.

• Bear crackers
• Hungry owl crackers
• Chocolate hedgehog truffles
• Acorn cookies
• Apple turtles
• Cute and easy snail lunch
• Cute lunch idea: Beaver