Winter is here! Emmett, Lillian and I started January out by talking about the characteristics of winter and all things mittens. Keep reading to find a FREE mitten matching printable.
The playroom is now STOCKED with books about winter and snow for the month of January. I choose to read Winter is Here to my preschoolers to introduce characteristics of winter. We talked about winter words like mittens, coat, scarf, snowman, etc. We pointed out winter words and pictures as we read the story. You can find FREE printable Winter word cards HERE. There are many, many more winter and snow books available for the kids to flip through on their own or bring to me during reading time.
After the story, we listened to the song Three Little Kittens (Little Baby Bum version). Then we gathered all the mittens in the house and took turns “losing” them. This was basically an Easter egg hunt with mittens instead of eggs and the kids loved it. After the last round, we piled all the mittens together, matched them, and counted our matches.
Next, Emmett decided to play a mitten memory game that I’ve had in my stash for a couple of years. This particular mitten matching game came from Karen at Prekinders. You can check out more of her winter themed resources HERE. Matching games are his FAVORITE. Now that he is five, he can play by the original “concentration” rules. But if this is too challenging for your preschooler, you can adapt the game by allowing students to only turn 1 card over on each turn and leave it facing up during the game. This way, your preschooler can focus more on visual discrimination as opposed to remembering where each card is.
Speaking of matching, I like to use Emmett’s love of matching games to squeeze in a little phonemic awareness practice. I created this mitten rhyme match to help my preschoolers continue to strengthen their phonemic awareness skills using only pictures.
You can read more about this matching activity and grab it for FREE by clicking HERE.
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My preschooler loves matching games. So I like to play off of that passion whenever possible, especially when it comes to fostering phonemic awareness skills.
I created this Mitten Rhyme Match game to complement our winter themed activities in January. The matching game includes 8 pairs of colorful mittens. Each mitten depicts a familiar picture with high quality clip art.
Preschoolers can look at each picture, say the name out loud and match the mittens according to their rhymes.
If you are short on time, this matching game can be cut into rectangular cards with the paper cutter and used as a typical matching concentration game. I decided to cut the game into the shape of the mitten and set up a “clothesline” for my preschooler to hang his matches on. He LOVED this!
Our “clothesline” was just a string tied under the canopy of our Melissa and Doug grocery store. You can set a clothesline up just about anywhere. It doesn’t have to be fancy!
Emmett was very proud of his finished product and asked to leave the “clothesline” up so he could do it again later. Of course I said yes!
You can grab your copy of this Mitten Rhyme Match for FREE by clicking the image below. As always, thank you for looking!!
We are continuing our Christmas tree theme this week with lots of fun activities for preschool!! Here is our spin on some Christmas Tree themed fine motor centers.
Emmett and Lillian, my preschoolers, flocked right to the Play-Doh tray! (Can I just say how much I love these chip and dip dishes from the Dollar Tree??) I set up the divided tray as an invitation to create a Christmas tree. I included pony beads, plastic gems, and festive fabric trim. Emmett asked for stars, which I wasn’t able to include, but will keep an eye out for them for next time.
Lillian, my two year old, was very engaged in this activity, which honestly surprised me! I’m still trying to figure out what will hold her attention for longer than a few minutes so this was a win.
Here are our final products! The kids had fun creating these and were very proud to show them off to me.
I found a great pack of foam Christmas tree stickers at Michael’s and grabbed them with the intention of creating this Christmas tree discrimination sort. Emmett found this a little too easy and lost interest. He just turned five- I would say this activity is more suitable for a 3 or 4 year old preschooler.
Lillian, on the other hand, played with it for a while, but made up her own rules. She had lots of fun transferring the bells from a different activity and trees from bowl to bowl.
Next, I set up the tall, thin triangles from our Picasso Tiles pack to look like little Christmas trees. I challenged Emmett to figure out how many bells he could hang on each tree. He did this challenge rather quickly then made it his own.
Emmett decided to get the square Picasso tiles and build a structure that could hold ALL the bells. He had fun constructing different shapes and filling them with bells. He discovered that a cube would hold all the bells at once. I love how this activity led to even more experimenting than I intended.
Our final Christmas tree activity was a simple invitation to decorate a Christmas tree. I set out a small tree that I already had in our decorations and a set of shatter proof Christmas ornaments. Emmett helped decorate for a few minutes, but Lillian sat here quite a while decorating and redecorating the tree. Then I left it out in the playroom to do and redo again.
The fine motor work that had to go into grasping the string, separating the hoop, and placing it on the branch is great practice for preschoolers and fun too! As with any fine motor activity with small pieces, know your preschooler. My two year old needed supervision with these activities and when she was done I put them out of reach.
We had a lot of fun with Christmas trees this week! Which Christmas tree preschool activity are you going to try???
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December is here!! I am so excited to share what Emmett, Lillian and I have been up to!! I put together a few gingerbread activities for preschool, including a FUN counting FREEBIE. Take a look!
There are SO many good gingerbread books out there for preschoolers, it is hard to choose. I will say, this selection of Jan Brett books is what I have in my collection and we focused especially on the Gingerbread Baby. There are many more on my wish list!!
I set up a little STEM challenge for Emmett immediately following the story, Gingerbread Baby. These are Picasso Tiles and a little gingerbread felt ornament that I got from Target a few years ago. I challenged him to create his own house for the Gingerbread Baby and he got right to work.
One thing I love about teaching preschoolers is watching their thinking process. Emmett immediately made a standard house with a roof, added a chimney and called it a day. Then he realized he wanted a “working” chimney.
He took his original roof and chimney apart and redesigned it so that it actually had a pathway into his Gingerbread house. Then he collected some small toys to test it out. He was so proud of himself!
I’m happy to share the table tent STEM station signs with you. To download a copy, press the button below. Simply print a fold in half for a little table tent!
Next, he headed straight for the sensory bin! Everything that I used in this bin I already had stashed in the house from other activities. This one is dry pinto beans, large buttons, gingerbread themed foam stickers (Michael’s), sparkly Christmas balls, and various bowls and utensils.
Lillian loved this bin. She had a great time collecting similar items in the containers. I’m still finding those sparkly balls around the house!
While Lillian was busy with the sensory bin, Emmett and I practiced counting syllables. He is just starting to develop his phonemic awareness, so we did this activity together.
I designed the gingerbread cookie picture cards so that 6 would belong in each category, 1 syllable, 2 syllables or 3 syllables. But Emmett made a couple of the cards up for discussion. For example, he called the “tree” a “Christmas tree” and put it with the three syllable words instead of the one syllable words. We also talked about whether we wanted to call the gift a gift or a present. Emmett decided it was a gift and put it with the one syllable words.
If you’d like to use this Gingerbread Syllable Sort with your preschoolers, you can find it in my shop by clicking the image below.
After syllables, we practiced counting gum drops on these adorable gingerbread cards. The picture cards depict numbers 1 – 20 and there are three versions of the recording sheets, 1 – 10, 11 – 20, and 1 – 20.
We spread the cards out face down on the table to make a draw pile but you can also put them in a sensory bin for the kids to pull from. I gave Emmett gum drops to manipulate in the tens frame to represent each number he found. He was very particular about wanting to use only green and red gum drops like in the picture which was so funny. If you’re not interested in using the tens frame portion of this activity, you can hang the cards around the room and have your preschoolers search for all the numbers, tracing them as they find them.
If you’d like to use the Gingerbread House Counting Activity with your preschoolers, you can find it in my shop by clicking the image below!
The last gingerbread activity I want to share with you is a FREE counting activity that you can play with or without dice, depending on your preschooler’s readiness. If you choose to play with dice, have your preschooler roll the dice for each type of candy at the bottom of the page. After each turn, use that amount of candy on the gingerbread house. If you want to give your preschooler a little bit more independence, let them decorate the gingerbread house however they like, then count the number of each candy that they used.
Emmett chose to play with dice this round, which was perfect for him. He had so much fun with this one! If you’d like to download this activity for your preschooler, you can find it in my shop for FREE. Just click the image below.
That wraps up my list of preschool gingerbread activities for you!! I hope you are able to find some fun inspiration for your preschool classroom or homeschool. Please feel free to share your experience. I love you hear from you! @mrsmamabird #learnwithmrsmamabird
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It’s almost Thanksgiving!! Turkey day was a success with Emmett, my preschooler. Read on to see all the fun things we did to explore Thanksgiving and turkeys! You can also grab my Turkey Sound Cover Up activity for FREE!
I always start our learning time with a read aloud or two. I have my Thanksgiving books divided into three categories: turkeys, Thanksgiving traditions, and gratitude. Run, Turkey, Run, The Night Before Thanksgiving, 10 Fat Turkeys and This Little Turkey are a few of my turkey picks for this year.
Our first activity was an invitation to create a playdoh turkey using items in our loose parts tray. Our tray included craft feathers, playdoh, rollers, googly eyes, and orange pipe cleaners. My intention was to prepare brown playdoh for the turkey’s body, but sometimes you just run out of time! There’s always next time.
I decided to make a pink turkey with a few tail feathers. Emmett’s turkey was orange with some prominent blue wings. He took this activity a little further and decided to make a “turkey monster” to go with his turkey. He insisted that the turkey monster be featured in my post as well!
Our next activity came from Playdough To Plato, another fantastic blog. These turkey rhyming cards are FREE and you can find them HERE if you would like to use them as well. Emmett is just getting the hang of rhyming words and he loves matching games so this activity was perfect for him.
I love when I can work in some fine motor skills practice into our day. I precut these colorful turkey feathers ahead of time. I free handed them, but if you need a template, there are plenty of free ones out there! Check out my Thanksgiving Pinterest Board to find one. I presented some with lines and some without and allowed Emmett to choose how he wanted for “feather” them.
Finally, we practiced beginning sounds with this Turkey Sounds Cover Up activity. Emmett was excited to practice identifying the sounds at the beginning of each picture on the turkey. I wrote letters on simple plastic BINGO chips, but you can use anything you’d like to cover up the pictures, including alphabet erasers, playdoh and alphabet stamps, alphabet tiles, etc.
You can download this Turkey Sounds Cover Up activity for FREE by clicking the button below.
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Do you need more preschool and kindergarten phonemic awareness activities for Thanksgiving?? These little turkeys are here to help. This syllable sort can be used as a stand alone activity or you can incorporate it into a sensory bin.
To prepare this activity, all you have to do is print, laminate and cut out the turkeys and their feathers. Each turkey has 5 corresponding feathers representing one, two or three syllable Thanksgiving or fall related words. The one syllable words include corn, bird, beans, leaf, and hay. The two syllable words include pilgrim, turkey, squirrel, pumpkin and scarecrow. And the three syllable words include November, Mayflower, sunflower, family and apple pie.
You can add magnets to the back of the turkeys and feathers so that students can easily manipulate the components on a cookie sheet or magnetic white board without the feathers sliding around.
The feathers are a perfect addition to a turkey themed sensory bin. Add beans, crafting feathers, picture card feathers (really anything fall related!) to a deep tray or sensory bin. Students can hunt for the picture card feathers and place them on the corresponding turkey.
That’s it! These turkeys will add some Thanksgiving fun to your literacy centers. If you would like a set of your own, you can find the Turkey Syllable Sorting Activity in my shop by clicking the button below.
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The week leading up to Thanksgiving is the perfect time to sneak in a little lesson about healthy food choices. One of my favorite books to introduce fruits and vegetables is Lois Ehlert’s Eating the Alphabet.
In this book, Ehlert uses vibrant illustrations to portray many different fruits and vegetables that begin with each letter of the alphabet. I designed a few activities that work well as companion activities before, during and after reading this book. They can also stand alone as fun activities and centers about fruits and vegetables for preschool and kindergarten.
Here are 63 word and picture cards that correspond with the fruits and vegetables introduced in the book, Eating the Alphabet. You can use these for participation cards, vocabulary, word walls, matching activities and to teach ABC order.
For those kindergarteners that are ready to put words in alphabetical order, there are plenty of picture and word cards to create multiple sets to be manipulated and arranged. I designed three recording sheets, ranging from 4 words in a set to 6 words in a set. Students can arrange their word cards in alphabetical order and record them on their paper. Use this a center or make multiple stations around the room.
The next activity includes 47 colorful picture cards of fruits and vegetables. Again, these picture cards can be used in several ways, depending on your learners. In preschool, students can sort the picture cards by color. Today we talked about the idea of “eating the rainbow,” sorted the cards by color and pointed out fruits and vegetables that we like in each category. Emmett noticed there’s nothing purple that he likes, so I challenged him to find something purple to try next time we go to the grocery store. You could also talk about the difference between fruits and vegetables and sort the picture cards accordingly.
In preschool and kindergarten, these picture cards can be used to practice beginning sounds. I designed a sorting mat for each letter of the alphabet and created at least one picture card for each letter sound. I decided to use the most recent three letters that Emmett has learned to practice today. To be honest, there are a lot of produce items in the story that I don’t buy on a regular basis or have ever had before. We referenced the word and picture cards for some of the pictures and talked about how we’ve never had gooseberries before and would like to try them!
I also created two versions of this beginning sounds cover up mat. Each mat has 12 vibrant pictures of different produce from the story. There are alphabet cards included as well, but you can also use your own alphabet letters. This mat fits perfectly on a cookie sheet with magnetic letters.
Emmett is still learning his letter sounds, so he completed this activity with this Alphabet Linking Chart by his side. Whenever he needed to remember what sound a letter made, he checked his linking chart, said the corresponding name on the chart, and isolated the beginning sound. Then he was able to match the beginning sounds from the linking chart to the beginning sounds of the pictures on the Cover Up Mat. (Click HERE if you need a linking chart. It’s FREE!!)
Finally, here’s a look at the Fruits and Vegetables Alphabet Flash Cards and Letter Draw activity. The flash cards, again, have so many uses. You can have your preschoolers and kindergarteners name the letters, say the sounds, or write the letters that they choose. You can also be intentional about which letters you want your little learners to practice and separate the cards accordingly.
Emmett and I flipped all of the cards face down onto the table and took turns turning them over, one at a time. On our turn, we said the name of the letter, the sound the letter makes and wrote the letter (both uppercase and lowercase) on the recording sheet. He worked really hard on this and took great care in his letter formation.
All of these fun, engaging fruit and vegetable activities for preschool and kindergarten are available in my shop. Click the button below to check them out!!
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November is the perfect time to talk about hibernation!! We ended our bear theme with some hibernation activities specifically intended for preschool.
Did you know that most bears actually snore when they are hibernating?? Bear Snores On is my favorite read aloud about hibernation, and if you’ve been following my posts, you know we’ve been reading Karma Wilson books all week. Another fun story about hibernation is Time to Sleep by Denise Fleming.
Before we started our activities for the day, I pulled some things from around the house to set up a “Bear Bedtime Station” for the kids to play. I gathered teddy bears, small pillows, small blankets, a new toothbrush, a comb, a container to use as a small bath, an empty shampoo bottle, a washcloth and several bear board books. I also made station signs to go with all these components that I am happy to share with you at the bottom of this post.
My preschooler, Emmett, took great care of his bear. He combed his hair, gave him a bath, and actually had him “go potty” before bed as well. As he tucked his bears in bed, he noticed they needed a stuffed animal. So he ran up to his room to get two small plush toys for the bears to hold as they slept. Then he listened as I read everyone (bears and people) bedtime stories from our book basket.
Emmett is not the only one who took good care of our bears. My toddler, Lillian, got a turn with our bear station too. She meticulously brushed the bear’s teeth, combed their hair, placed them on their pillows and covered them up with their blankets.
She happily looked at bedtime books with her bears then even climbed in “bed” herself as she tucked everyone in for a long winter’s nap. Emmett was surprised to see Lillian had decided to hibernate too!
Our next hibernation activity was just for Emmett. I set up some materials to challenge him to build a den for our small plastic bears. I gave him wooden blocks from our Contraptions kit, small sticks, and some smooth stones to work with. He ended up making three dens, one for each of the bears. (Although, we did learn polar bears don’t actually hibernate. Pregnant mothers will stay in the den, but their heart rate and temperature never decrease.)
Once he was done building, he did some experiments to see which den was the strongest. He built and rebuilt them several times and ended with all three bears together in the strongest den. It was sort of a 3-little-bears-and-the-big-bad-Emmett scenario. He loved it!
If you would like to try this activity with your own little learners, I created a STEM station sign for you to use! Just click the icon below and download it for FREE.
If you would like to grab your own set of wooden planks for this activity, click the image below for a link to the set that we used! They are the KEVA Contraptions 50 Plank Set. These are SO fun to build with and can be used to lots of fun STEM projects, loose parts play, block centers and experiments. The set comes with 6 build ideas, but endless possibilities!
I’ve also included a link to the bear family that use for this activity as well! Click on the image to grab your own set.
If you would like to set up a Bear Bedtime Station for your preschooler, here are some cute station signs you can use to organize your materials. Just press the button below to download!
This week we explored the lovable bear from Karma Wilson’s books, Bear Says Thanks, Bear Sees Colors, Bear Counts and Bear Snores On. To support our bear theme, I created this letter matching activity for preschool and kindergarten.
I originally designed this printable with the Melissa & Doug alphabet stamps in mind. But you can use this fun printable with any small alphabet manipulatives you want. Pictured above are 1 inch alphabet tiles. Other manipulatives that will work are alphabet beads, alphabet stickers, or writing in the corresponding letters.
Emmett was super excited to get to use the stamps and the multicolored ink pad today. He took the time to match the ink color that he chose to the color on the stamp. Him and I took turns stamping each letter (he insisted that we do them in order) and he was excited when the letter E landed on his turn.
I decided to have him match the uppercase letters on the page to lower case stamps. You can choose to match uppercase to uppercase, lowercase to lowercase or uppercase to lowercase, depending on your students’ readiness level. There are two variations of the printable.
Voila! Emmett was so proud of our finished product.
Are you ready to download this free printable?? Just click the button below and it’s yours! If you choose to share on Instagram, please tag me! @mrsmamabird or #learnwithmrsmamabird
Looking for a counting activity for fall or Halloween?? Stop here! After our pumpkin investigation last week, I washed and dried all the pumpkin seeds with the intention of making this counting game. I formatted the pumpkins with traceable numbers, got it all set up, and decided I didn’t like it!! So, I got back on my computer, tweaked the recording sheet a bit, and got it ready for you as fast as I could.
Now the recording sheet includes a tens frame so that kids can keep their pumpkin seeds organized as they count. This helped my now five year old, Emmett, so much. I slipped the recording sheet into a wipe clean sleeve, but you can print and copy if you prefer. I counted out pumpkin seeds ahead of time and put them in these adorable plastic jack-o-lanterns from Target. You could also use orange Easter eggs or even plastic bags to hold your manipulatives.
I chose to give Emmett the 1 – 20 version of the game. He was able to lay the seeds out in the tens frames correctly. He even was able to recognize that when the seeds filled up one tens frame, he could count up from ten to find out the total count. This could be extended into introducing the concept that teen numbers are always equal to 10 plus a number. We didn’t go there this time, but maybe next time!
I designed three different variations of the counting game for you. The first one is 1 – 10, the second one is 11 – 20 and the third one is 1 – 20. Each variation comes with traceable numbers in the pumpkins or blank pumpkins. This allows you to decide if you want your preschoolers or kindergarteners to compose the numbers on their own or with guidance. You can download the file by clicking on the button below.
If you’re interested in pairing this activity with a book, Five Little Pumpkins is an obvious choice. Emmett loves Pete the Cat so he chose that version to read.
Of course, I wanted storyboard elements to go along with the rhyme, so I scoured the internet for a resource that matched what I had in mind. Luckily, I found another talented educator that had already created exactly what I was looking for. AND she was offering it for free on her blog, Primary Playground. Perfect!
You can snag your own set HERE. There’s also a color and cut activity available too if you’re interested!
I used this Grid Game to reinforce Emmett’s counting skills. He was able to do this independently while I worked with his older brother for a little while. This came from Prekinders and you can find it HERE. This is a website I often go to first when I am planning a new theme or skill. I love Karen’s style!
I hope your preschoolers and kindergarteners enjoy counting with the help of these fun activities! If you decide to share on Instagram, don’t forget to tag me @mrsmamabird and include my hashtag #learnwithmrsmamabird. Thank you!!
Mrs Mama Bird 