Happy February! I have been busy whipping up some fun and engaging Valentine’s Day themed alphabet activities for your preschoolers! I am excited to share some alphabet cover up mats, a roll and write game, an alphabet building mat, as well as an alphabet clip card in this post. Everything in this post is designed to help your preschoolers develop letter recognition, writing, and fine motor skills.
The idea behind this set of resources was to create several engaging activities that you could do with the SAME set of letter cards. My hope is that this saves some of your valuable time!! All you have to do is prep the cards once and you will have them ready to go for all of the activities in this post.
Alphabet cover up activities are always a go-to for practicing letter names and sounds. You can set the letter cards that you want to use (uppercase or lowercase) in a sensory bin for your preschoolers to find. They can take turns finding a letter, saying the name and/or sound, and covering it up on the mat. It’s always fun to add Valentine’s Day themed manipulatives for covering the letters. I am using Valentine heart table scatter from Hobby Lobby in the picture but you can also use mini erasers, flat marbles, pom poms or red or pink unifix cubes. If you don’t mind using the cover up mat only once, dot markers are always a fun choice too!
The cover up mats come in two variations – uppercase and lowercase letters. You can choose to have your preschoolers match uppercase to uppercase, uppercase to lowercase or lowercase to lowercase. The black and white version of each variation is also included if you prefer to print in black and white for single use on print on colored paper.
This set of activities also includes a Color the Room and Trace the Room recording sheet for both uppercase and lowercase letters. You can place the alphabet cards around the room and have your preschoolers find them and color or trace the matching letter on their sheet. My 4 year old loves doing these activities because it gets her up and moving around and because it is like a little game of hide and seek with letters.
If you have a pocket dice, the alphabet letters are perfect for making a Roll & Write game. Simply choose the letters that you want your students to practice writing, place them in the pocket dice and give them a copy of the Roll & Write recording sheet. Students can rolls the dice over and over while writing down the letter that they land on each time. Make it festive by using colorful red, pink and purple markers. If you don’t have a pocket dice, that’s okay! Put the letter cards of your choice in a draw pile or inside a bag to reach into and grab. This is a fun and engaging way to practice writing.
Don’t put the letter cards away yet!! The Say, Build & Write mat can be used with the letter cards in a draw pile or bag. Students can reach into the pile, grab a letter and place it on the mat. The mat will prompt them to say the name of the letter, say the sound of the letter, build the letter with manipulatives, and write the letter. You can decide to use these mats over and over by placing them in a page protector and using dry erase markers or copy them for single use to really focus on your letter of choice. The manipulatives that work well with this activity are mini erases, flat glass marbles, small cubes, or even playdough.
The last Valentine’s Day alphabet activity that I want to show you is the Find and Clip mats. These mats are designed to help preschoolers practice identifying and naming letters of the alphabet as well as strengthen fine motor skills. You can use these mats with or without the alphabet cards. If you choose to use the alphabet cards, you can present them face down in a draw pile. Have your students pick a letter card and clip the matching letter on the Find & Clip Mat. If you have the alphabet clips from Target, you can choose to just use those without the cards. It’s up to you!
I hope you were able to get some inspiration from this Valentine’s Day Alphabet Activities post. If you are interested in the activities highlighted in this post, click the icon below to visit my TpT shop.
There’s been a lot of penguin fun in our playroom this week! Penguins are a perfect theme to explore during the winter months. There are so many fun penguin activity ideas for preschoolers. I’m excited to share with you some penguin sensory activities, loose parts play, a penguin number sort, and a penguin letter matching activity. Take a look!
Sensory bins are by far my favorite activity to prepare for preschoolers. I usually prepare 3 – 4 each month to rotate in and out of our playroom. They always inspire long stretches of imaginative play. This penguin themed sensory bin is super simple. It has a cotton ball base to resemble snow, foam snowflake stickers and plastic penguin figures (Amazon). My 4 year old daughter, Lillian, had a blast hiding penguins under the “snow” and making the other penguins look for them. She also set them all up in a circle and hosted a penguin dance off. She loved it!!
Another incredibly simple penguin sensory activity that we enjoyed was playing with penguins in shaving cream. I gave my daughter a tray with a generous pile of shaving cream and two small penguin figurines. These particular penguins are from the Safari LTD Penguin Toob that I purchased at Michael’s. I like these penguins especially because they are positioned on their bellies, perfect for sliding around in the shaving cream.
We used the penguins to make letters, shapes and designs in the shaving cream. Lillian never hesitates when it comes to getting messy so she was happy to use her hands to make a design, wipe it away and make a new one. This is an activity that stays fun year after year. I keep it on hand for her older brothers too!
Now that Lillian has finally stopped putting everything little thing in her mouth, we are really diving into the world of loose parts play. I set up a fun arrangement for a penguin themed loose parts invitation to play and Lillian dived right in! This set up included blue and white pom poms, blue and clear flat marbles, acrylic snowflake scatter, reusable ice cubes, small blue and clear plastic cups, and blue and white unifix cubes. The clear plastic trays they are presented in are from Dollar Tree. I used felt sheets to define each child’s work space and more penguin figurines from the Penguin Toob.
Lilly got right to work gathering up materials for her penguin world. She very carefully arranged the pieces and added her penguins in their new little home. She made them a bridge and some ocean to swim in. This activity held her attention for a while as she practiced manipulating all the little parts, strengthening her fine motor skills and improving concentration.
I even joined in the fun too! It was so relaxing to build and create with all these little parts. When Lillian was finished, she asked me to leave it out so she could come back and build more later! We will definitely be adding more loose parts activities to our plans!
Here is her creation from the second round of building. I found her doing this completely independently a couple days after introducing this activity. She was so proud of what she had built, she wanted me to take a picture!
As with every theme, I like to work in some practice with math, especially counting. Lillian enjoys counting activities very much and is proficient with numbers 1 – 5. She still needs practice with one to one correspondence when it comes to number 6 and higher. To help her practice, I pulled out a Penguin Number Sort activity that I had on hand. This game has several penguin number mats (1 – 10) and fish cards representing numbers in different forms.
You can decide which penguin number cards to use and place the corresponding fish cards in a sensory bin. The fish cards represent numbers in word form, number form, tens frames and tallies.
Because this was Lillian’s first time playing a game with tallies, I decided to stick with numbers she knows well. I chose the 3, 4, and 5 penguin cards and placed the corresponding fish cards in a sensory bin for her to find and sort. She still needs help with reading the words and that is fine. I just want her to develop a concept of print and know that numbers have a word too. We will worry about actually reading the words later!
I try to add an element of play and imagination to the learning games that I set up for the playroom. We weren’t just sorting numbers, we were catching fish for the penguin’s dinner! Lillian was excited to “fish” for the penguins and figure out who gets which fish. In the future, I would add a paper clip to each fish and use a magnetic fishing rod to make it even more fun.
During our penguin week, we also took some time to practice letter recognition with this Penguin Alphabet Cover activity. This activity allows preschoolers to recognize, name and match uppercase and lowercase letters. The alphabet mats only present 5 – 6 letters at a time, so that activity is perfect for preschoolers with a shorter attention span or those to have trouble attending to activities that work with the whole alphabet at once. You can set this up as an individual activity, giving your students one mat at a time to “cover up” or a group activity, providing all 5 mats and having students work as a team to get them covered. As before, there is an element of play to this activity as well. You can pretend the penguins are all mixed up in the bin and need help finding the correct “home” on the icebergs.
Because I specifically wanted Lillian to practice identifying and naming the letters in her name, I quickly hand drew a new iceberg mat with the uppercase and lowercase letters of her name. I pulled the letters I needed from the letter cards and set them up in a sensory bin. I told Lillian to help me find each penguin’s spot on the iceberg and she was excited to help.
As she chose each penguin, we practiced saying the name of the letters, talked about uppercase and lowercase, then found their spot on the iceberg. When we were finished, we touched each letter and said their names again. Lillian has her L’s down pat because that one is first. To my surprise, she is doing a good job with lowercase i and uppercase I as well. The letters she is having the most trouble with is lowercase a and n. We will keep practicing!!
The last thing I want to share with you from our very fun week of penguin activities is our art. I decided to do a directed drawing with Lillian. She is newly four and just recently started drawing people in more detail. I figured this is the perfect time to introduce directed drawings to her. We used the directed drawing instructions from Pocketful of Preschool that I got as a free download several years ago. I just ran a quick search and wasn’t able to find it again (at least for free anyway). However, there are LOTS of options out there, including some free ones on TpT. Feel free to choose the one you like best!
We started by painting the “snowy sky” background first. I provided a palette of paints with white, light blue, and light purple. I encouraged her to paint the whole paper and she was happy to oblige! On a separate sheet of paper, we went through each step of the directed draw together. She did deviate a little (as Lilly usually does!) because she wanted the nose to be a circle not a triangle. Once the paint was dry on our background, I colored and cut out our penguins and Lillian glued them to the snowy scene.
Tada! Lillian was so excited to see the finished products and we will proudly hang these in our playroom.
Thanks for checking out our fun activities from Penguin week! I hope this post inspired you to do some purposeful playing and learning with your preschoolers or helped you plan out your week in the classroom! If you need any links to the activities mentioned in this post, you can find them below.
It’s apple picking season once again so I thought I’d share some more fun, hands-on activities you can do with your preschoolers to get them excited about apples. This post includes apple book inspiration, sensory play ideas, and some dramatic play inspiration, including a free download for your apples dramatic play center.
Whenever I am planning a new theme for the playroom, I always start with the children’s literature. I have grown a pretty big personal library over the years, but still scour the library for themed titles as well when there is a particular one that I want. If you’d like to see my full collection of apple books, click the Instagram link below.
There are so many fun apple themed books to choose from, so it’s hard to narrow it down to a few favorites. But I chose four titles to highlight in this post so that you can narrow down your search as well.
Apple Farmer Annie, by Monica Wellington, is a simple story about a farmer, Annie, who prepares her apples and apple products for a market in the city. The illustrations are vibrant and engaging. The text is straightforward and well suited to hold the attention of a preschooler.
Tap the Magic Apple Tree, by Christie Matheson is an interactive book about the cycle of an apple tree through the seasons. The really fun thing about this book is that each page asks the reader to do an action (i.e. tap the book, rub the leaves, blow on the leaves, ect.) and the kids love it! Each page reveals a new development from flower buds, to apples, to falling leaves. This one gets picked up off our shelf over and over.
Ten Apples Up On Top, by Dr. Seuss, is an apple book classic. Of course, the clever rhyme schemes in this story make it fun and silly. Because it follows three animals competing to see who can balance apples on their heads while doing different activities, it also lends itself to counting practice (Another post on counting apples activities soon!).
Ted Red Apples, by Pat Hutchins is also another favorite that tells the story of a farmer whose farm animals keep eating the apples on his apple tree. The story counts down from 10 as each new animal takes an apple. This book has sing-song verse that kids love and lends itself very well to teaching sequence of events as well as counting.
Sensory play is always a must when introducing a new theme. I like to make sensory bins for the playroom and alternate them every week. I also like to KEEP IT SIMPLE. Sensory bins don’t have to cost a fortune to be fun, most teachers and moms are on a budget. I totally get that! I keep several sensory bin bases on hand to use and reuse. Black beans are probably my favorite sensory bin base because I love how they make the other colors pop. I chose black beans for the apple sensory bin because they resemble apple seeds. I added red, green, and yellow pom poms which I already had on hand. The red and green scoops were a free giveaway from another teacher cleaning out her classroom (I will keep them handy for Christmas time too!) and the wooden bowls are from my kitchen. The only thing I purchased were the small foam apples (Amazon) and the cost was well worth it because that was several years ago and I use them all the time.
Play doh trays are another fun way to incorporate sensory play into your apple theme. This apple play doh tray invited my little learners to create apple trees with the materials. I offered green play doh, small sticks, red, yellow, and green buttons, and play doh rollers. The preschoolers got right to it, making a sweet little apple orchard. This activity allowed for conversation about colors, counting, and size comparison.
Dot stickers and butcher paper activities are a favorite here and when you put them together- wow!!! My preschoolers were very excited to decorate the apple trees on this butcher paper. I started by drawing the outline of three large trees. Then I gave them each a sheet of red, yellow and green stickers. I left this open ended, they could decide where to put the stickers. But you could easily make this a color sorting activity by labeling each tree with a certain color. If you draw the trees smaller and label them with numbers, this could become a counting game as well!
When it comes to dramatic play, I like to change out this Melissa and Doug Grocery Stand about every month or so. If you can get ahold of this exact stand, it is the best for small spaces in my opinion! I was able to grab one off of Facebook Marketplace for our playroom and it fits very well in the corner of our playroom. I love how versatile the compartments are in the front. 9 empty bins ready to be transformed! This stand does come with 9 chalkboard labels that hang on the front, but I actually never use those. When it comes to labeling the dramatic play area, there are so many fun and engaging sets out there that you can use. Because we have a small space dedicated to dramatic play, I prefer to just make my own labels using photographs of our actual space. The pictures on each bin label are actual photographs of the bins themselves. This helps preschoolers know exactly how to put things away when it’s time to clean up. Especially because so many components can easily get strewn about!
Our apple stand has lots of apple products for little customers to buy. There’s unopened apple juice bottles, faux apples (from At Home), mini pie tins (Amazon), felt pie crust, and red and green pom poms for the pie filler. The bushel basket is from Michael’s and I honestly wish I would have purchased at least two. The kids absolutely love filling the basket with apples then emptying it again.
If you would like to use the apples banner or any of the apple stand labels for your dramatic play area, you can download them for FREE by clicking the button below. The file is editable, so you can add your own photographs and text onto the labels.
A lot of teachers are in the final count down of the school year so I wanted to create something that could lead you right into summer. In this post you will find several summer themed name puzzles and book buddy suggestions. These puzzles are the perfect way for your preschoolers to practice and master how to spell their names. You can even send them home to use over the summer!
You can’t teach a watermelon theme in preschool without reading The Watermelon Seed! This is a funny story about an alligator who accidently swallows a watermelon seed and worries about what might happen! Although this book lends itself very well to counting activities, I wanted to showcase how well these watermelon name puzzles compliment it as well. Mouse’s First Summer is a book about several summer icons, but I loved the big, juicy watermelon on the front cover!
The watermelon name puzzles include templates for names from 2 letters to 15 letters. The watermelon picture allows the puzzle to become self-correcting. If your preschoolers put the letters of their name in the wrong order, they will be able to tell because the picture won’t be correct. These puzzles pair perfectly with books like The Watermelon Seed or Mouse’s First Summer. You could even enjoy a watermelon snack afterwards!
When it comes to ice cream books, Should I Share My Ice Cream, by Mo Willems is one of my favorites. It touches on the themes of friendship and the balance between thinking about ourselves and thinking about others. The Little Ice Cream Truck, by Margery Cuyler is an adorable, nostalgic story from the point of view of the ice cream truck who travels around town making everyone’s day. Just One More, by Jennifer Hansen Rolli, is a relatable story about a little girl who always wants one more of everything. It’s hard not to ask for just one more scoop of ice cream! Ice Cream Face, by Heidi Woodward Sheffield, is a fun story about a little boy and the many stages of enjoying an ice cream cone. It’s a great way to start a conversation about emotions and sharing. All of these children’s books would compliment the ice cream name puzzles are are a great addition to an ice cream theme!
Who doesn’t love ice cream activities?? Ice cream is a summertime staple so it is an obvious choice for a summer preschool theme. These ice cream name puzzles are bright and fun. Several ice cream cone clips will help preschoolers determine the subsequent letters in their names. And if they get it wrong? Just match the ice cream cone colors to figure it out!
Speaking of sweet, cold, summer treats, popsicles are another fun summer theme! With that in mind, I designed these popsicle themed name puzzle templates as another summertime option. The rainbow sequence can help preschoolers fit together the letters of their names. Not to mention the colors are so eye catching and fun.
For books all about summer, I like to start with Summer Song, by Kevin Henkes. It presents all the characteristics of summer with soft, colorful illustrations and poetic, sensory language. Summer Color, by Diana Murray, describes a fun summer day with the passing of a thunderstorm in all the colors that go with it. It’s a fun rhyming text with lively, colorful illustrations. Summer, by Ailie Busby, is perfect for the younger preschoolers. Each page contains only a sentence or two. The illustrations show younger children enjoying the staples of summer. Summer Days and Nights, by Wong Herbert Yee, is told from the perspective of a little girl enjoying nature on a typical summer day and night. She catches butterflies, enjoys some lemonade, goes swimming, has a picnic, and goes exploring in the dark. Lastly, My Awesome Summer by P. Matis, by Paul Meisel, is the story of a fun summer told from a praying mantis’ point of view in diary form! It is very clever and engaging. All of these stories work perfectly to highlight the summer season and compliment the Summer Fun Themed Name Puzzles perfectly.
If you’re looking to focus on the fun activities of summer (swimming!!) then you might prefer the Summer Fun Themed Name Puzzles. These puzzles use clips of familiar summer icons, umbrellas, beach balls, floaties, an inflatable pool and flip flops to help your preschoolers arrange the letters in their name. Just like the puzzle templates above, this one can accommodate names from 2 – 15 letters.
Last but not least, my favorite summer name puzzle, the Summer Kids Name Puzzles! I love how adorable these summer kids toppers are and how they incorporate some of the elements of summer included in the other puzzles (beach ball, watermelon and ice cream). These puzzles are the perfect little end-of-the-school-year gift for your preschoolers to take home and practice spelling their names over the summer.
If your preschoolers are just being introduced to their names, especially if it is a longer name, there are some things you can do to support them. My daughter has 7 letters in her name and a lot of the letters look alike. Lillian- 3 l’s and 2 i’s all in a row! She was having a lot of trouble arranging the letters in the correct order. I decided to print her a second puzzle and not cut it apart. Then I put both the whole puzzle and all the puzzle pieces on a cookie tin. The individual puzzle pieces had magnets on the back so they didn’t move out of place. Lillian was able to pick up each piece and put it in the correct order using the whole puzzle to match the letters. We then practiced saying each letter in her name. This helped her tremendously!
Another way to support preschoolers just starting to learn their name is to give them the whole puzzle and letter magnets. Have them simply place the matching magnets on top of each letter in their name to practice putting the letters in order. This will save you time not having to print and prepare two separate puzzles!
That’s it! I hope you found some name activities inspiration! If you are interested in any of the name puzzles from this post, you can find them by clicking on the icons below. Thank you for being here!
Are you having trouble deciding?? I’ve got you! I went ahead a put ALL of the summer name puzzles into a bundle so that you can get them ALL for a discount. You can find the bundle by clicking the icon below.
Before April comes to an end, I want to share a huge set of rainy day themed activities that I created to compliment the book Red Rubber Boot Day, By Mary Lyn Ray. All the activities in this post have a red rubber boot and puddle theme like the story, but they all compliment a rainy day theme, weather theme, letter r theme or letter b theme as well. Below you will find literacy and math activities to enhance letter recognition, beginning sound recognition, rhyming, syllable identification, writing skills, number recognition, counting, and subitizing.
First, let’s talk about the book! At the center of the story is a child who is trying to decide how to entertain himself on a rainy day. The book uses lots of sensory language to describe the rain- how it smells and how it feels on your bare feet. The child goes through lots of imaginative play during the rainstorm until the weather breaks and he can go splash in all the puddles.
Because the story is so relatable, I decided to start with a question of the day: Do you like rainy days? You can display this header on a vertical surface or pocket chart, then provide cards or sticky notes with your students’ names on them. Students can place their card under the answer that describes their own feelings. Either yes, they do like rainy days or no, they do not. I’ve also seen this done with popsicle sticks in two different jars. I would challenge you to revisit the question of the day before and after reading the story to see if anyone changes their mind.
The next activity in the set is a Rainy Day and Sunny Day Picture Card Sort. Each picture card represents a fun activity that kids like to do. You can challenge your students to determine if each activity is best for a rainy day or a sunny day and why. Some of the activities have an obvious answer and others might be up for discussion. Several of the activities are showcased in the book, including playing cars, reading, building with blocks, and making a cave in the closet.
A great way to develop phonemic awareness is to practice identifying syllables in given words. In this activities set, I designed a syllable card sort using picture cards to represent 1, 2, or 3 syllable units. The pictures on the picture cards are all spring related with a red rubber boot theme. They can be sorted onto the puddle card with the corresponding number of syllables.
Another great way to develop phonemic awareness is with rhyming activities! Here is a red rubber boot themed rhyming activity to help do just that. Each puzzle is red boot themed and self-correcting, they will only connect one certain way. Students who aren’t sure about a match can check the pattern on the puzzle to find out if they got a rhyming match or need to try again.
If your students are ready to practice matching beginning sounds, this literacy center is perfect! I created 26 puddle themed beginning sound picture cards, 26 red rubber boot themed uppercase cards, 26 red rubber boot themed lowercase cards, and 26 red rubber boot themed sound cards for this matching center.
I do think that centers with this many loose cards can become really cumbersome for little learners, especially preschoolers. When I do matching games like this with my kids, I select the letters that I want them to practice ahead of time. I usually don’t choose more than 10 – 12, depending on the learner. In this matching game, I lay out all the puddle cards on the table in front of them. Then I gather all the corresponding matches, shuffle them and put them together in a draw pile. When presented this way, it becomes more of a cooperative game. Preschoolers can take turns drawing a card and placing it on the correct puddle. They work together to complete all the matches.
If your preschoolers are still working on identifying and writing letters, you can simply use the uppercase and/or lowercase boot cards in a couple different ways. You can select 10 – 12 letter matches and make a concentration game. Or you can put the letters in a draw pile and give your preschoolers the Red Rubber Boot Alphabet Build and Write Mat. With this activity, preschoolers can draw an alphabet card, build it with a given manipulative, then practice writing it at the bottom. In the example, I used blue flat marbles, but pipe cleaners, beads, buttons, playdough, and wiki stix work well too!
Another way to practice letter identification is with the Raindrop Alphabet Cover Up Mat. I LOVE these cover up activities because they are so versatile. You can choose to match uppercase to uppercase letters, lowercase to lowercase letters, lowercase to uppercase letters, beginning sounds to uppercase letters, or beginning sounds to lowercase letters. You can set up the activity according to your preschoolers needs. They also work well as an independent center, partner activity or group activity. Of course the cards work just fine in a draw pile, but you can make the game extra engaging by setting the cards up in a sensory bin for students to search in. I included blue dyed rice, blue flat marbles and cotton balls. The blue flat marbles work well to cover up the letters on the cover up mat as they are identified because they are heavy and stay in place. You can also use bingo dotters, round counters, buttons, pom poms, whatever you have!
I love to sneak in some low pressure writing practice whenever I can for preschoolers to practice pencil grip and letter formation. If your preschoolers are ready to practice writing letters, you can use the Red Rubber Book Flip and Write with any set of letter cards (uppercase or lowercase). Simply make a pile of the letters you’d like your preschooler to practice and have them flip the pile one at a time. After flipping each card, have your preschooler write that letter in an empty box on the recording sheet. Keep flipping until each box is filled or the card pile runs out. You can use this same recording sheet with the number cards too!
The last literacy activities I want to highlight are the Red Rubber Boot Cut & Paste Printables. I like to include printables in my resource packs to compliment the centers. These are good assessment tools that help you gauge what a preschooler can do independently after practicing the same skills with you or a friend. All three of these printables have students cut out the boot cards at the bottom and glue them to the corresponding puddles at the top.
Now let’s talk about math centers! This resource pack includes several number cards that can be used lots of different ways. There are 20 puddle themed number cards, 20 red rubber boot themed number cards, 20 red rubber boot themed tens frame cards, and 12 red rubber boot themed dice cards.
Similar to the letter and sound matching game above, you can use the number cards to create a number matching game. Each puddle number card can correspond to a number boot card, a tens frame boot card and a dice boot card (up to 12). Select the numbers you’d like your preschoolers to practice and set up your matching game just like the game above.
I love incorporating tens frame activities into any number practice for preschoolers. They are great for building number sense, one to one correspondence, and help prepare your preschooler for subitizing. You can use the red rubber boot themed number cards to practice numbers 1 – 10 or 1 – 20 on the tens frames. Again, I used blue flat marbles in the example (I think they make perfect rain drops!), but you can use anything you have on hand- buttons, counters, playdough balls, anything!
You can also use these tens frames with a sensory bin to hold the cards. It’s fun for preschoolers to go searching in the bin for the different cards until they’ve practiced all the numbers. You can set this up for an individual or use it in a group and take turns fetching numbers.
Speaking of sensory bins, I made Cover Up Mats for numbers too! There are two mats: numbers 1 – 12 and 1 – 20. You can use these in several ways to match numbers to numbers, numbers to dice, or tens frames to numbers. Number card draw piles work just fine too if you’re in a pinch!
Of course every book companion pack needs a write and draw response activity! I like to keep it simple and let your little learners add their own personality to it. This printable is no prep at all. It simply asks your preschooler to draw a picture of what they like to do on rainy days. Then there is space in the puddle for you or your beginning writer (if they’re ready) to write down what that fun activity is. These would make a great bulletin board! Another idea would be to take a photo of your little learner jumping in the air (as if they were jumping in a puddle), print it, cut it out, and glue it to the page.
If you are interested in any of the activities in this post, you can find them here:
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Gardens are a perfect spring theme for preschool! In this post you will find some creative garden themed activities to get your preschoolers engaged and learning. Some of these activities include, companion activities for My Garden, by Kevin Henkes, garden alphabet games, a flower syllable game (FREE), garden number games, garden visual discrimination activities, garden sensory bin ideas, and a garden craft template (FREE).
There are so many fun children’s books to choose from when planning a garden them for preschool. My Garden, by Kevin Henkes is one of my favorite stories to use when exploring gardens and spring time because it harnesses the imagination of a child who is gardening alongside her mother.
In the story, My Garden, a child imagines the changes she would make to her mother’s garden if it could do fantastic things. For example, if she picked a flower from her garden, another would grow right back in it’s place. She imagines that the strawberries light up at night and the garden can also grow useful things like umbrellas and buttons.
The story sets the stage for preschoolers to make connections to the story and imagine their own magical gardens. I created a response activity that asks them to do exactly that- create their own gardens. The activity provides pictures from the story for students to cut and paste onto a garden background to represent what they would want their garden to look like. There are also blank squares to add their own ideas if they choose. Once students are finished arranging their gardens, they can attach the writing prompt to add a description of their garden. The writing prompt reads, “If I had a garden…”
There is also the option to cut and glue the grass and the fence onto a sheet of brown construction paper to give students more room to work. If you’re in a hurry, substitute the grass image with green construction paper that students can cut to look like grass. This activity and much more can be found in the My Garden Book Companion at the bottom of this post.
Cover up games are my absolute favorite way to practice letter and number recognition. I am excited to share these adorable garden themed cover up games for both alphabet and numbers.
I created 3 sets of literacy cards for the Garden Alphabet Cover Up games: uppercase letters, lowercase letters and beginning sound pictures.
These letter cards can be placed in a sensory bin or presented in a draw pile. I chose to use pinto beans in the sensory bin because they are brown like dirt, but a bit of rice dyed green would be really fun too!
There are 3 Literacy Cover Up Mats to choose from: uppercase letters, lowercase letters and beginning sound pictures. You can decide how you want your students to match the letters or sounds, depending on their readiness level. Preschoolers are able to match uppercase to uppercase, lowercase to lowercase, lowercase to uppercase, uppercase to lowercase, uppercase to beginning sound, lowercase to beginning sound, and beginning sound to beginning sound. When a card is pulled from the bin or pile, students can cover it’s match on the cover up mat with a dry erase marker or a counter.
If you don’t have the time (or let’s face it, the patience) to cut out all the letter cards, don’t! These cover up mats also work perfectly with 1 inch letter tiles or alphabet erasers. You can hide them in the sensory bin or inside some fun containers. I used carrot Easter eggs from Michael’s and 1 inch letter tiles in the picture. Simply have your students find the letter and place it on top of it’s match on the mat.
Of course I couldn’t take the time to make all these fun cover up mats without including numbers too. With this resource, a set of number cards 1 – 20 is also included.
You can decide if you want to practice numbers 1 – 10 or 1 – 20 and set up your Cover Up Mat accordingly.
You can play the Cover Up game the same was as the letter version, with the number cards in the sensory bin, covering up the mat as you find each number. Or you can put counters in small containers to dump and count. Then cover up the quantity of the items found. I filled the same Easter egg carrots with carrot erasers to represent each number 1 – 10.
For those of you who prefer to use the cover up mat a single time, there are black and white versions of all five mats! These are great with crayons, markers, and dot markers. Then students can keep their work!
For the preschoolers who have mastered identifying letter names, both upper and lowercase, I love activities that bring together letter name and letter sound identification. I created a garden themed alphabet game to enhance letter recognition and letter sound recognition in the same game.
The biggest cards in this game are the watering can beginning sound cards. They are the anchor cards. Choose which letters you want to practice (I like to stick with 12 or less at a time) and lay the watering cans out on the surface in front of you.
The matching cards include the Seed Packet Uppercase Letter Cards, the Spade Lowercase Letter Cards and the Flower Pot Beginning Sound Picture Cards. Again, take out the cards that correspond with the letters you want your preschoolers to practice. These cards are the same size so they can be shuffled together and placed face down in a draw pile.
Have your preschoolers take turns drawing a card and placing it on the correct watering can. The object of the game is to work together to build all the matches. Each watering can has an uppercase letter, lowercase letter and beginning sound picture that will correspond with it.
At the end of the game, your preschoolers can show what they know with these garden themed letter and sound match printables. You can find the link for all the Garden Letter and Sound Match materials at the bottom of this post.
Another fun garden themed activity is the Build a Flower Syllable Sort, which is FREE in my TpT Shop. Practicing syllables is an excellent way for your preschooler to build phonemic awareness and prepare them for kindergarten.
This activity includes 15 spring picture flower petals and 3 flower stems. Each flower stems represents a number of syllables in the word: one, two, or three. Preschoolers can take turns picking a flower petal and placing it on the correct flower stem based on the number of syllables in the picture.
Preschoolers can work together to build all three flowers then practice counting syllables on their own with the printable syllable counting worksheet. You can find the link to this FREEBIE at the bottom of this post.
Sensory bins are an absolute FAVORITE in my house, so I can’t start a new theme of stories and activities without switching out the items in our sensory bins. Truth be told, I actually really enjoy curating little items to put inside these bins for my kids to explore. Since I’ve been making these for several years, I store and reuse all my fillers.
This garden sensory bin features a mini gardening tool kit that I spotted a the Target dollar spot, faux flowers from dollar tree, and a small decorative bird and nest from Michaels. My daughter loved filling the flower pot with pinto beans and placing the flowers in it. I will definitely add more flower pots next time I put this bin together.
Another oldie-but-goodie preschool activity is always play doh trays. When you mix play doh, play doh tools, and several loose parts items together, it gives preschoolers such a strong invitation to create. Don’t you love the yellow tulip with pink leaves?? Have all your preschoolers work together to build a whole garden!
Finally, no preschool theme is complete without a good craft to top it off. I created a FREE watering can template for you to design a flower bouquet inside of. The preschool activity is very open ended- you can decide the medium for the watering can, stem, flower petals and leaves based on whatever you have on hand. I decided to color the watering can with my daughter in crayons, then cut it out and glue it to a new piece of paper. Then we used markers to draw flower stems and added flower centers and petals with our fingerprints and tempera paint. At the end, we drew leaves on the stems with markers again. I love this craft because it can be trimmed to fit an 8 x 10 frame or the watering can can be cut out and glued to an 8 x 10 canvas, making a perfect gift! If you’re interested in downloading this activity, you can find the link below.
I hope this post provided you with some inspiration as you plan some fun garden and spring activities for your preschoolers. As always, I thoroughly enjoyed creating these engaging resources for you through the help of my curious preschooler, Lillian.
Below you can find the links to all the activities mentioned throughout the post and more.
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There are so many fun ways to incorporate rainbows into preschool play and learning. In this post, you will find rainbow themed activities to enhance color recognition, letter recognition, phonemic awareness, number recognition, counting, writing and sensory play.
Whenever I am planning a theme to design activities around, I always start with the children’s books about that topic. Rainbow books can be stories with rainbows in them, books about rainbows, and books about the colors of the rainbow. A few of my favorites are A Rainbow of My Own, How the Crayons Saved the Rainbow, Curious George Discovers the Rainbow, Ready to Read Rainbow, Planting a Rainbow, and Bear Sees Colors. Of course, there are so many to choose from and my collection continues to grow. In this post, you will find a FREE craftivity to compliment A Rainbow of My Own, by Don Freeman and a catchy song you can use on your own preschool color hunt.
First, I am going to share the Rainbow Alphabet and Number Cover up activities that I designed and the different ways that they can be used. There are 3 sets of cards that can be used in these activities: uppercase letters, lowercase letters and numbers 1 – 20.
There are four different versions of the cover up mats: uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers 1 – 10 and numbers 1 – 20. You will need to decide what you want your preschoolers to use to cover up the letters and numbers that they are matching. Dot markers, mini erasers, flat marbles (I would use blue to represent rain drops!), and circular chips work well.
If you have the alphabet or number mini erasers from Target, that eliminates the need to use the cards. My kids love these erasers. They fit perfectly on the mat, they stay in place and they are fun to manipulate.
To set up the activity, laminate and cut out the cards that you need. You can place them in a sensory bin for your preschoolers to find, identify and cover. A colorful base works perfectly for a rainbow activity. I used pony beads, but Perler beads or dyed rice would be fun too!
If you don’t have time to prep a sensory bin, you can simply use the cards to make a flip or draw pile. Have students pick from the top, cover that letter or number then discard it. They can keep going until they’ve covered every letter or number!
For those of you who prefer not to print in color, there are black and white versions of the cover up mats as well. These are perfect for single use. Students can find the alphabet or number cards, match it on their mats and dot it with dot markers.
When I was planning all of these rainbow activities, I tried to find a wooden puzzle that separated by each part of the rainbow. Surprisingly, I couldn’t find one anywhere. So I decided to make my own using high quality clipart and color labels. Once it was printed and laminated, I added a few piece of magnetic tape to the back of each piece so that the puzzle could be built on a magnet surface. I used a small cookie tin from the Dollar Tree, but a whiteboard or oil pan would work well also.
My daughter, Lillian, absolutely loved putting this together. It took her a couple tries before she got the order of the colors right, but she did it! This idea led me to make several more rainbow themed puzzles.
I created three strip puzzles that divide the rainbow into narrow strips with clues along the bottom to help put it back together in the right order. One strip puzzle spells out the word rainbow and the others put numbers 1 – 10 and 11 – 20 in numeric order.
The next set of rainbow puzzles I created are several sets of 2-piece puzzles. One set connects an uppercase letter to its corresponding lowercase letter. Another set connects both letters to a picture of something that starts with the corresponding letter sound.
The last set of 2-piece puzzles I created are connecting a number to it’s matching value on a die or dice. This set of rainbow puzzles include numbers 1 – 12. This is the set I decided to set up for Lillian to practice numbers with. She’s only three, so we started with only puzzles 1 – 6. That is what I love about these large sets of 2 piece puzzles. You can use only the ones that you would like to practice with your preschoolers and save the others for later.
For Lillian, I set up at rainbow themed sensory bin and placed each piece of the six puzzles in the bin. I also placed a cookie tin inside the bin to act as our vertical surface. We worked together to find all the puzzle pieces and connect the rainbows back together by matching the numbers to their quantities. This is also a great way to introduce and practice subitizing with your preschoolers.
When we were done with the number puzzles, the sensory bin itself was a really fun activity! To make this rainbow themed sensory bin, I dyed some rice blue and let it dry overnight. Then I added blue flat marbles (rain drops), cotton balls (clouds), sun and rainbow mini erasers, rainbow “eggs,” and some various scoops and small bowls. Lillian had a great time scooping the contents of this bin from one container to the next and sorting out all the loose parts she found inside.
On of my favorite preschool rainbow activities is going on a color hunt! Color hunts pair very well with the story Bear Sees Colors, by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman, but you can use them with any rainbow story or as their own stand alone activity. For this particular color hunt, we sang a very catchy song while we looked for all the colors of the rainbow. Here it is:
Can You Find The Color (to the tune of Have You Seen the Muffin Man?)
Can you find the color red, color red, color red?
Can you find the color red and put it in this basket?
Keep singing through all the colors until you have found every color of the rainbow! You can even extend this activity by building a big rainbow on the floor with all the colorful items.
The last rainbow activity I want to share with you today is an adorable craftivity that I made to compliment the story A Rainbow of My Own, by Don Freeman. This craftivity allows preschoolers to draw and write about what they would do if they had their very own rainbow, just like the boy imagines in the story.
There are two versions of the craftivity for you to choose from. One version has a sentence starter for your students to complete. It reads “If I had my own rainbow, I would…” The second version of the craftivity simply has blank lines. You can find this printable craftivity for FREE in my shop by clicking the icon below. You can also find the Rainbow Letter and Number Cover Up and Rainbow Puzzles below.
I hope you were able to find some rainbow inspiration today. Have fun planning fun rainbow activities with your preschoolers!
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Valentine’s Day is fast approaching!! If you are in need of some Valentine’s Day activities for your plans, you have come to the right place. In this post, I will share some monster puzzles, ABC monster games, as well as a fun Valentine’s Day monster FREEBIE to help your preschoolers order the letters in their name, identify letters, and identify letter sounds.
Preschoolers absolutely love learning the letters and spelling of their own names. Here’s a look at the Valentine’s monster name puzzles. These puzzles are editable so that you can add the names of your own students with templates that support names with 2 – 15 letters. You can also use these puzzles to practice counting, ordering letters, spelling vocabulary words and sight words, if you so choose.
There are several ways to use these name puzzles. I prefer to print them in color, laminate them, and add a magnet to the back of each piece. This makes the pieces easier to manipulate on a magnetic surface. A cookie tin from the Dollar Store is an easy way to display the pieces with plenty of room to arrange the puzzle. If you choose not to laminate the pieces for reuse, your students can glue the pieces in order on a sheet of construction paper.
Black and white versions of each template are available with this resource if you prefer not to or don’t have access to colored ink. You preschoolers can color their own name puzzles, cut out the pieces, order them and glue. This approach would incorporate some very important fine motor skills as well.
You can have your preschoolers go on their own “Love Hunt” with the Love Monster Alphabet search and find activity. With this activity, you can display the alphabet cards and tuck the 10 monster cards underneath 10 different alphabet cards at random without letting the students see. Your little learners can take turns naming each letter then peek underneath to see if they find a monster. This can be cooperative or competitive, it’s up to you!
If you would like your preschoolers to keep track of where the monsters are found, there are two alphabet mat variations to use. Students can cover up the colored hearts with counters or monster erasers with the colored version. If you prefer black and white, have your students color or dot the letters where the monsters are found.
You can also use the Love Monster Alphabet Mats with search and find sensory bins or alphabet hunts around the room. I set up a sensory bin with our 1 inch tiles for Lillian to find and match the letters. You could also use the letter cards and “hide” them around the room. Have students walk around and color in each alphabet heart as they find the corresponding letter. These Love Monster Alphabet Mats are available for FREE in my shop. The link to this freebie is at the bottom of this post.
Update: I found these amazing little heart shaped containers at Walmart and had to grab them for this activity!! They are just the right size to fit the 1 inch letter tiles that I like to use with this Search and Find Activity. They would also fit alphabet erasers or letter beads if you prefer to use those. I simply put one letter tile in each heart and hid the hearts in a sensory tray full of black beans. They added task of opening the little containers is not only super fun and engaging, it is any way to build those fine motor skills which is exactly what preschoolers need before they learn to write.
The last Love Monster activity I designed for Valentine’s Day is a set of Love Monster Alphabet Puzzles. This activity includes a set of 26, four piece puzzles. Each puzzle represents a different letter of the alphabet with a piece for the uppercase letter a piece for the lowercase letter and two pieces for a picture that begins with that letter. My favorite way to put these puzzles together is cooperatively in a small group. Because all 26 puzzles at once can be cumbersome, I prefer to choose 10 – 12 letters to focus on for the game and only use those pieces. Once I’ve selected the pieces I want to use, I mix them up and create a draw pile. Each player takes a turn drawing a card and placing it on the table. If the card goes with another card that has been played, it gets placed with that puzzle. If it begins a new puzzle, it gets placed in an empty space on the table. Your students can work together adding pieces until all the puzzles are complete. The Love Monster picture on each puzzle provides an opportunity for your students to self correct as they go.
That’s it! I had a lot of fun creating and preparing these fun Valentine’s Day activities for preschool and kindergarten. I hope that you are inspired by them as you plan a fun Valentine’s week for your little learners!
If you would like all the fun Valentine’s Day Monster activities, including the FREE alphabet mat, you can find them in my shop by clicking the icons below.
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It’s been a while, but I’m back!! Now that we are in the midst of winter, I’ve got some fun activities for you all about one of our favorite cold weather animals- PENGUINS! In this post you will find penguin books, center ideas, sensory play ideas and a fun craftivity especially designed for your preschoolers.
There is no shortage of adorable penguin themed books for little readers. I always try to balance out a mix of nonfiction and fiction books for my kids to choose from. Most of these titles have bright, engaging pictures as well as short, predictable text. My three year old daughter, Lillian, loves books but she doesn’t yet have the attention span for long drawn out stories. I will say Penguin Problems, by Jory John and Lane Smith is one of my absolute favorites. It’s a funny story about a penguin who complains. A lot. When a wise walruses teaches the penguin to appreciate the wonderful things in his life, he begins to see that life out on the frozen ice isn’t so bad. If you like Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman’s lovable character from the “Bear Snores On” series, you will love Where is Home, Little Pip? The story is about a sweet, curious penguin who wandered too far from the nest. The story and the illustrations are so engaging.
We spent a lot of time with Penguins Love Colors, by Sarah Aspinall. This is a fun story about 6 little penguins who all have a different favorite color, even though their home is surrounded by almost all white. They paint their mom a colorful picture in the snow, reviewing all the colors as they go, then get a much needed bath at the end.
I created a few colorful penguin activities to do after reading Penguin Loves Colors. The first activity Lillian chose was a colorful penguin and iceberg matching game. I set up the colorful penguins in an easy sensory tray and laid out the iceberg mats so that everybody could reach. We took turns choosing a penguin, naming the color and placing it on the correct iceberg. Lillian and her friend did a great job deciphering between pink and red, light blue and blue, and black and gray.
The next activity I created is a simple two piece puzzle set to match each color in the story, Penguins Love Colors. Each character was given a named based on their favorite color: Tulip, Tiger Lily, Dandelion, Violet, Bluebell, and Broccoli. With these puzzles, preschoolers can match the penguins to their corresponding picture by matching the colors.
Who loves Write the Room activities?? All of my kids love the challenge of finding all the elements of the story around the room and recording their findings on their recording sheets. I created a picture and word card for each colorful penguin in the story and designed three different recording sheets to choose from based on your learners’ abilities. The first recording sheet is for your pre-writers and requires only coloring to record their penguin findings around the room.
The other recording sheets are for writing (and coloring if you choose!). There are two versions of the Write the Room recording sheets. One version has a large space for preschoolers to write each word. This is better for those kiddos who are just beginning to write and need lots of room for their letters. The second version of the Write the Room recording sheet has smaller boxes designated for the words. You can give this sheet to your more confident writers to help them hone in on their fine motor skills.
Lillian is just starting to learn how to write letters, so I decided to use the Color the Room recording sheet with her. I taped the colored penguin cards to 6 plastic cups and provided the corresponding marker in each cup ahead of time. I hid the penguins around the house and had Lillian look for them. Each time she found another penguin, she could use the marker to color a penguin on the recording sheet. She was so engaged in the activity!
Up next, I created a Colorful Penguin Spinner Game. Preschoolers can use the spinner at the top of the page with a pencil and paper clip. This game can be used individually or with a partner. Preschoolers can take turns spinning the spinner and coloring in the corresponding colored penguin. The first color to get to the top of the graph is the winner! I like to laminate these or put them in page protectors so that they can be used over and over.
Another fun way to practice colors is with dot markers! I designed these colorful penguin cards with my pocket dice in mind. However, you can simply flip them over to make a draw pile or put them in a paper bag for students to pick from. As students roll (or choose) a new color, they dot a corresponding dot onto their Penguin Dot Art sheet. You can even add a standard dice to turn it into a counting game. For example, if your preschooler roles blue and 5, they add 5 blue dots to their picture.
Lillian is loves numbers and counting games, so we played with the color dice and number dice. We each took turns rolling the dice and dotting the penguin the right number of colored dots. She was so proud of her colorful penguin at the end!
Of course, the best way to follow up any story is with art. After we were finished reading and practicing colors, we created a colorful penguin ice painting.
This art project took a little prep ahead of time, but it was worth it. I simply filled an ice cub tray about 3/4 full of water. Then I gave each ice cube compartment a squirt of washable tempura paint. I added a popsicle stick to each ice cube and place the tray in the freezer over night. You will need to take them out of the freezer a few minutes before you start painting to let them melt slightly. The melted water becomes your medium so the paint will show up better when the cubes are wet. The final project ended up resembling pastels. So fun!
After we were done painting, we used some pre cut out shapes to build penguins on our masterpieces. I designed a template to use to make these shapes. I traced each shape onto the color paper that I wanted and cut them out ahead of time. You could also have your preschoolers color and cut each shape themselves, depending on ability. You can download this template for FREE at the bottom of this post.
Last but not least, to wrap up our penguin day fun, we played penguin ice rescue. Ahead of time, I froze small plastic penguin toys in yogurt containers filled with water. When it was time, I popped them out on a tray and gave Lillian and her friend a cup of warm water and a plastic dropper. I allotted 15 – 20 minutes for this activity and they played with it for almost an hour!
The girls took their time excavating the penguins from each block of ice, talking about the parts of the penguin as they emerged from the ice. Then they played together with the penguins in their little ice world, setting up a penguin hospital and giving them all a check up. I love how their imagination took this activity a step further and made it so engaging!
I hope you found some inspiration for your preschoolers from this post. If you would like access the resources mentioned above, you can find them by clicking the link below.
You can download the FREE Penguin Loves Colors Craft Template by clicking the DOWNLOAD button below.
Spring has sprung and that means April Showers are upon us! In this post you will find several fun and engaging rainy weather themed activities for preschool designed to enhance fine motor skills, name building, alphabet knowledge, letter sound recognition, as well as counting.
Whenever I decide to explore a new theme, I always start with the literature. One of my favorite things about teaching is curating the children’s books to go along with the changing themes. I love scouring the library and exploring other teacher’s suggestions for new read alouds.
To start our rainy weather day, we read Red Rubber Boot Day, by Mary Lyn Ray. The simple, relatable story is about a child who tries very hard to entertain himself inside the house on a wet, rainy day. But in the end, he decides to put on his boots and his raincoat and enjoy the rainy day outside.
After the story, I gave my preschoolers 12 foam sheets shaped like puddles. Each “puddle” was numbered (1 – 12). I directed them to make a path with the puddles for us to hop through. Emmett, my five year old, and Lillian, my two year old, worked together to lay out a path across the floor. They happily hopped from puddle to puddle, counting out 1 through 12. Next, we rearranged the puddles into a random group and I grabbed two large foam dice. Emmett and I took turns rolling the dice. After each roll, we identified the number, located the corresponding puddle, and jumped in the puddle that number of times. They had so much fun with this!
Worm Weather, by Jean Taft is a particular favorite in my house because my kids are obsessed with worms! We live on a wooded lot and spend a lot of time outside, so if my kids come up to me with their hands cupped, chances are they have a worm. The story, Worm Weather, is about a brother and a sister who get caught in the rain. It is playful and full of rhyme.
To compliment the story, I gave Emmett a Worm Name Puzzle. Even though Emmett knows how to spell his name, he still had to pay close attention. The multiple m’s and t’s made Emmett have to attend to the picture and the letters as he put the puzzle together.
Because Worm Weather is told in rhyme, I decided to continue to reinforce rhyming with Emmett using these Worm Rhyme Match Cards. We used the cards to play Concentration, but they can also be used to find a partner or simply match them together.
Throughout the game, Emmett made a couple of mistakes. He still forgets that rhyming words sound the same at the end and not the beginning. When he tried to match “bee” and “boat,” that gave me an opportunity to reinforce the concept of rhyming words. Practice makes progress! If you’d like to grab the Word Name Puzzle or Worm Rhyme Cards, keep scrolling. The links are at the bottom of this post.
After the Worm Rhyme Card Match, I gave Emmett a consonant matching game to do independently. To prepare this, I simply printed out the cloud, glued it a cereal box and cut it out along the outline. Then I gathered all the consonants in my Target letter clips.
Emmett worked independently to match the uppercase consonant clips to the lowercase consonants along the edge of the cloud. This was a perfect way to strengthen those fine motor skills and alphabet knowledge at the same time. This printable is FREE in my TpT shop. This link is also at the bottom on this post.
While Emmett was working hard on his consonant cloud, I sat with Lillian as she explored our weather themed sensory bin. She kept very busy scooping rice from one bowl to the next.
I added four little bowls to the bin with the intention of having the preschoolers sort the different types of weather in the bin (sun, rainbow, rain, clouds). But Lillian was more interested in playing her own way so I let her do her thing. A discrimination sort may be a fun invitation for older preschoolers. Emmett eventually joined in and helped Lillian scoop all the rice around.
Next, we made play dough storm clouds! Ahead of time, I prepared white home made play dough. Then I set out blue rhinestones, blue glass gems, and pipe cleaner “lightening bolts” in a loose parts tray.
Our finished products! Lillian had a grand time mixing all the materials into her storm cloud. Emmett created a big storm over an ocean. This was a little messy but they loved it!
The last story I want to showcase is The Big Umbrella, by Amy June Bates. This is a sweet story about a friendly umbrella who can stretch as wide as it needs to to help anyone who wants to stay dry. It’s a great way to initiate a conversation about inclusion, helping others, or kindness.
The Big Umbrella inspired the creation of these adorable umbrella cards. These cards are designed to help early readers distinguish between beginning sounds. You can choose which letters to focus on and use only the raindrops you need. I like to set out the umbrella cards to start and put the raindrops in a draw pile. Preschoolers can take turns choosing a raindrop and placing it under the correct umbrella. Encourage kiddos to work together to complete all the umbrellas.
I hope you enjoyed our Rainy Weather Activities! I add new ideas, FREEBIES and resources all the time. Be sure to follow me by clicking the social icons at the top of this page so you don’t miss out on any of my new creations.
If you’re interested in any of the resources in this post, you can click the icon below to find them.
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