Fall Alphabet Art Project: Mystery Letter Tree

This mystery letter fall tree is a great way to combine art and literacy in a super fun way! The project can even be modified to provide letter recognition and sound practice, turned into a name activity, or set up as a way to practice spelling words.

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This mystery letter fall tree is always extra fun for kids because of the added element of surprise! In this fall activity, kids paint various paper fall leaves with watercolors to discover hidden letters of the alphabet. They then glue the letter leaves to onto paper to create a fall tree! (This post contains affiliate links.)

Materials for Mystery Letter Fall Tree

• 18 x 12 inch white paper (We used watercolor paper, but regular construction paper will work too.)
• Smal scraps of white paper
• Watercolor paints (We love liquid watercolors! You can also use watercolor cakes.)
• Paintbrushes
• Scissors
• Liquid glue (If you don’t want to wait for the glue to dry, you can use glue dots.)
• White crayon or oil pastel

Directions for Mystery Letter Fall Tree

Setting up the mystery tree fall craft is really easy! Start by cutting lots of little white leaves from your white paper. Once you have enough, use your white crayon or oil pastel to write one letter onto each leaf.

Prepare the fall tree by painting a bare tree onto your paper. (Children can also draw their trees with crayons, colored pencils, or markers.)

Set out the paints and invite your child to begin painting the leaves one at a time and setting them aside to dry.

Once the letter leaves have dried, your child can glue them onto his/her fall tree!

This fall art project can be modified for a wide variety of ages.

It was a great way for my 3 year old to practice letter recognition and sounds. As he discovered the mystery letter, he’d say its name and sound. Here’s Theo making the letter sound of the letter he just discovered!

Children can try to find all the letters in their names and glue them into the tree. Extra letters can be glued at the bottom in a letter leaf pile!

Older children can try to find letters in their spelling words.

This fall literacy and art activity was definitely a hit with both kids! I’m sure we’ll have many more mystery letter fall trees hanging in our house this fall!

Find more alphabet actives in our ABCs and 123s ebook!