Who else has an obsession with mini erasers? It cannot just be me. Every time I’m in the dollar store or the Dollar Spot, I love looking through them all. There were a ton of options out for the fall season too! There are a million different learning ideas that they can be used for. A pumpkin pre-writing activity was perfect for all of the little pumpkin erasers we had in my classroom. This activity takes no time to set up, and you probably have the other supplies on hand!

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Pumpkin Pre-writing Activity

If this isn’t your first time here, you already know that I’m all about keeping things simple. I don’t have the time in my life with 3 kids at home and 23 preschoolers to get all fancy-shmancy with learning activities…especially when I like to change things up all the time! So simple it is.

This pumpkin pre-writing activity was a last minute idea. I had an awesome parent send in a bunch of different fall themed erasers, but I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them. I threw the hundreds of pumpkin erasers on a table in my classroom. Immediately the seats at the table were full of preschoolers. They didn’t need an actual activity planned, but I quickly came up with one!

The only supplies you need for this activity is cute erasers, paper, and a marker. I used black construction paper and a silver Sharpie. On the papers I drew different lines. Some lines were curvy. Some lines were straight. Some lines were zig zag.

The only direction I gave to my preschoolers was to remember that we have talked about how we start writing our letters from left to right and top to bottom. They were supposed to try to do this with their pumpkins erasers too.

Oh, and I asked them to be careful of my papers since I hadn’t laminated them. Let’s just say, they are 3 and 4 years-old, so they did their best!

My preschoolers spent a few mornings completely engaged in this activity. Following the lines and understanding the goal of tracing the lines with the pumpkins one at a time is important as we begin writing letters.

I’m not a fan of having little kids try to write letters of the alphabet before they are ready. This is why pre-writing activities like this are so important. The pumpkin pre-writing activity sets little kids up for success later on when they are ready to write with pencil and paper. It also works those fine motor muscles. Without strengthening these muscles, writing will become a struggle because it will take so much effort.