Give little ones a hands-on way to become familiar with the letters in their name. This hedgehog name craft gives preschool, pre-k, and kindergarten children a chance to create a cute hedgehog covered in fall leaves that spell their name. The activity combines name recognition, letter recognition, and early literacy skills into a fun nature inspired project that takes about 20 minutes to make.

Check out our other fun name crafts so kids can practice spelling and recognizing their name through personalized creations.

Collage showing completed autumn hedgehog name crafts and step-by-step photos for assembling and adding lettered leaves.

Good To Know

Themes: Hedgehogs, fall, woodland animals
Activity: Build a hedgehog and spell the child’s name across colorful leaf-shaped letter pieces on its back
Template: Includes a free printable hedgehog name craft with editable leaf letter pieces Ages: Preschool through first grade
Time: 20–25 minutes
Skills: Name recognition, letter sequencing, spelling, cutting, and gluing

Cute Fall Name Activity for Kids

Tiny leaves have tumbled down onto this adorable hedgehog! Kids will create their personalized hedgehog by adding paper leaves across its spiky back. The letters on the leaves will come together to spell out the child’s name, and turn an easy fall craft into a fun name recognition activity.

Kids can get creative while practicing important early learning skills at the same time. Placing the leaves and identifying the letters supports fine motor skills, letter recognition, and hand-eye coordination. Plus they’ll become more confident with spelling their names.

Use our editable template to make this activity simple for the grown ups, too! Type your child’s name into the PDF before printing, then gather a few basic supplies for your kiddos to create a sweet keepsake.

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Supplies

Colored cardstock or construction paper
Scissors
Glue
Markers
Hedgehog Name Template (click the “click here to get your freebies” image at the end of the post)

Directions

Start by printing the template, then gather the materials for this fun activity. Get those scissors ready, and let’s help the kids bring this hedgehog to life!

Hands holding a printable hedgehog craft template with body, eye, nose, ear, and back leg pieces.

Look for the eye piece and glue it onto the body, below the eyebrows.

Hands gluing the eye onto the hedgehog body for the Hedgehog Name Craft.

Grab a marker and add a little cheek below the eye. This is a fun way to give the hedgehog a little extra personality.

Hands adding a cheek detail to the hedgehog face with a marker.

Take the spines piece and glue it onto the body. Line it up along the top so the spiky edges surround the hedgehog’s back while the face stays visible.

Hands placing the spiky back piece over the hedgehog body.

Grab the ear piece and glue it onto the upper right side of the hedgehog’s head, near the eye.

Hands attaching the ear to the hedgehog head below the spiky back piece.

Take the back legs and glue them behind the bottom of the body so the feet peek out underneath.

Hands attaching a back leg to the bottom of the hedgehog body.

Let’s add the nose. Glue it onto the tip of the hedgehog’s face and press it down to secure it in place.

Hands attaching the nose to the front of the hedgehog face.

Grab the leaf pieces and help your child write one letter of their name on each leaf, then glue the lettered leaves across the hedgehog’s spines in the correct order.

Hands attaching lettered leaves to the hedgehog’s back to spell a name.

Finish the craft by gluing on the last lettered leaf to complete your child’s name. Give everything a final press, and their personalized hedgehog name craft is ready to display!

Hands attaching the final lettered leaf to the hedgehog’s back to complete the name.

This cute hedgehog craft turns name practice into a hands-on activity kids can enjoy while working on fine motor skills and letter recognition. Encourage them to say the letters as they go for a little extra name and letter practice.

When you are ready for another activity, use the related crafts and printables below to plan more hands-on learning for your fall or woodland animal theme.

Hands holding a completed hedgehog name craft with colorful lettered leaves spelling a child’s name.

Literacy Connection: Ask children to say each letter as they add it, then point out the first letter as the “starting sound” in their name.
To reduce the amount of cutting, use the simplified full-color or color-in version of the template.

Woodland Animal Books for Children

One of our favorite things to do whenever we start a new unit is to begin with books. Grab these popular books from your library or grab them from Amazon to add to your home collection!

Bear Can’t Wait– If your child loves the Bear series of books, they’ll want to read the newest one where Bear plans a special surprise for Hare!

A Walk Through the Woods– This beautiful and intricate children’s book will keep children engaged and wanting to turn the page!

Owl Babies– Kids will relate to the message of this cute little book. In it, owl babies are waiting and worrying, will Mommy return? There’s a great resolution and fun illustrations as well.

A completed Craft showing two hedgehog name crafts with colorful lettered leaves spelling each child’s name.

Woodland Wildlife Crafts

Fox Name Craft – Scamper into some learning fun when kids make this personalized fox! They’ll create their own cozy scene of a fox peeking out of its burrow with leaves that spell out their name. This hands-on project gives your little foxes a fun way to strengthen early literacy skills while getting creative.

Bunny Paper Bag Craft – Hop into hands-on fun with this adorable bunny! Little ones can create a sweet bunny puppet, then have their new floppy eared friend join story time and pretend play. Cutting and assembling the pieces helps strengthen fine motor skills and encourages creativity and imaginative storytelling.

collage image of Woodland Wildlife Crafts

Raccoon Paper Plate Craft – These woodland bandits will sneak learning into craft time when kids make this raccoon out of a paper plate craft! They’ll turn a paper plate, some paint, and our free template into a cute masked raccoon by painting, cutting, and gluing.

Owl Paper Cup Craft – Whoo’s ready for a little creative fun? Kids can turn an ordinary paper cup into an owl with just a few simple supplies. Their creativity will take flight as they create a feathered friend for storytime, imaginative play, or fall decorating.

Forest Animal Fine Motor Activities

These forest animal tracing worksheets give little ones a variety of lines to trace in order to build up their pre-writing skills. On the letter page, children will trace uppercase and lowercase Bb.

The line tracing pages will have kids following straight, curved, wavy, and zigzag paths between forest animals to work on pencil control, hand-eye coordination, concentration, and finger strength. On the last page, kids will complete the skunk by filling in the lines, then color it in.

collage image of Forest Animal Fine Motor Activities

Grab the dot markers and the owl do a dot activity pages to give kids four hands-on activities to complete. Children will hunt for and dot uppercase and lowercase ‘Oo’s which will strengthen their letter recognition and concentration.

They’ll count owls and dot the matching number of circles to practice number recognition and counting. A fine motor page has them follow dotted paths, and finally the owl art page has them dot circles with colors to build hand control and coordination.

Hands holding a completed hedgehog name craft with lettered leaves spelling a child’s name.

These four different squirrel activity pages feel more like a game than learning. They include engaging activities like counting different squirrels and completing a graph to work on counting, sorting, and comparison skills.

The maze has them guide a squirrel to its friend, strengthening problem solving, pencil control, and focus. Children will match identical squirrel pictures to develop visual discrimination, then pair squirrels with their shadows to practice memory and attention to detail.

Connect the dot activities are a great choice for preschool or kindergarten learning time, quiet afternoons, or a nature themed lesson. These fox dot to dots help kids practice counting and number recognition while following the dots to reveal 3 different foxes.

They’re also handy for strengthening fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination, so add crayons for a little coloring fun once each woodland friend appears!

Did you make this activity with your kids or students? We’d love to feature them on our social media!

For a chance to have your child’s project featured, simply snap a picture of the completed project and post it to our Facebook page, email it to us directly by clicking here, or use #simpleeverydaymom on your social media!

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