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.
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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Valentine’s Day is almost here!! I want to give you all a quick overview of the activities we did to celebrate. Don’t forget to read through the whole post because I’ve got the FREE heart craft template ready for you to download and the link to the FREE Heart Alphabet Match. Take a look!!
Play Dough invitations-to-play are always so fun. I love how by switching out the cutters, colors and loose parts, you essentially set up the same activity over and over but it feels brand new. These play dough stations are also so fun for a range of ages. My 2 and 5 year old were both engaged for a significant amount of time.
Our loose parts were all things that I had already in the house. Acrylic table scatter from craft and party stores is a favorite loose part to include. Emmett, my 5 year old, actually found an acrylic maple leaf in the playdough, hidden from the last time he had a loose parts tray. We also had Valentine’s Day gems that I probably bought on clearance after Valentine’s Day last year. Other items to include could be colored straws, beads, or Valentine’s Day string necklaces cut up into different lengths.
Sensory bins!!! I did the sensory bins a little differently this time. This was actually the first time I tried dyeing the rice beforehand. I usually set up my bins at the last minute and forget to leave time for the dyeing process. This time, I set aside some time to buckle down and do it and it was so easy!! I used a 1 cup rice to 1 TSP vinegar ratio and just experimented with the dye. The first batch of rice was just different concentrations of red dye. The second batch I mixed in different shades of pink and purple. The last batch I left plain so that I could reuse it for another theme. The kids loved it!
We had a friend over to play during our Valentine’s Day activity time so I decided to make 3 separate sensory bins. Having one bin for each preschooler worked out so well. These bins are from the Dollar Tree so it didn’t cost me much to set up. All the other items in the sensory bins I’ve collected over the years from Michaels, Dollar Tree and Hobby Lobby. Table scatter, plastic heart containers, felt hearts and large pom poms filled our sensory bins.
Of course, we can’t celebrate Valentine’s Day without a little artwork. I decided to create a couple of large heart stencils and have the kiddos use cotton balls to dab paint into a heart shape. To set this up, I printed out the hearts (you can download the FREE template below) and cut the heart out of the middle of the page without cutting through the outside edge. This created the heart template. Then I lined the heart template up on top of a blank piece of white cardstock and taped these in a stack to the table with painters tape.
Next, I poured pink, purple and red tempera paint onto a paper plate and set up “dabbers” made out of clothespins and cotton balls. I loved watching the kiddos work so meticulously on their masterpieces. Emmett worked very carefully to fill his whole heart template up with every color. He dabbed his paint on evenly and thoughtfully. Lillian, my 2 year old, was so excited to paint, she dabbed all over everywhere! At one point, she got ahold of the jar of purple paint and began dumping it onto her paper! Her template did end up leaking because it got so saturated with paint, so just make sure to tell your preschoolers not to use too much paint or else it will run.
Our finished products! Can you tell which one is Lillian’s?? You could easily add words to this artwork and make it a Valentine or a parent gift. I decided to leave it as is because I like the simplicity of the heart on white paper. I love how we all did the same activity, yet none of the finished products look alike. I’m sure a whole class’ worth of stenciled hearts would make an adorable bulletin board.
If you would like to download the heart template to use with the Painted Stenciled Hearts activity, press the button below.
Our last activity of the morning was a Heart Letter Match. Alphabet games activities are essential to preschool, but sometimes the number of pieces in an alphabet match game can be cumbersome! I decided to add magnets to the back of the puzzle pieces and have the kids spread them out across our whiteboard. This kept all the pieces in place and allowed the preschoolers to easily see all the pieces at once.
The matching aspect of the game was really geared towards Emmett. He didn’t become interested in learning his letters until just this year and he has a few left to learn. Emmett was excited to manipulate the pieces on the white board.
As he found matches and lined them up together to make whole hearts, we took turns saying the letter names and letter sounds. I was able to see which letters he is still confusing and which ones he still needs to learn.
Emmett was so proud of himself when all the matches were made! Towards the end of the game, he even told me to stop taking my turns so he could finish them all. I left the puzzle pieces on display for the remainder of the week for the kids to take apart and do again. Lillian even practiced naming a few!
If you would like to grab this FREE Alphabet Heart match game, click the icon below.
Thank you for visiting my blog! I hope you found lots of inspiration for your preschoolers. You may also be interested in these alphabet activities…
It is freeeezing cold here and we are exploring all things winter, snowmen included. I am excited to show you this Build A Snowman Letter and Sound Match activity!! Not only is it adorable, it can be turned into a cooperative game. Have you ever played the game Hiss with your preschoolers??? If you have, this game will feel familiar.
The Build a Snowman game is designed to strengthen letter recognition as well as beginning sound recognition skills. It has 104 cards, 4 for each letter of the alphabet. To build a complete snowman, you will need a head card, uppercase letter, lowercase letter and picture card (with a corresponding beginning sound). This may sound like a lot of cards, but don’t worry!! I designed this game so that is is easy to cut with a paper cutter to save you precious time.
Players
This game works best with 1-4 players.
Setup
Before you begin the game, you will need to decide how many letters of the alphabet you want to include. I suggest using no more than the cards for 12 letters of the alphabet at a time (48 cards total). This will keep the game manageable as far as space and time needed to play.
Shuffle the selected cards and place them all in a draw pile that your students can reach.
How to Play
Decide who will go first.
For each turn, have players draw one card and decide where to place it on the table or work space.
Head cards can be placed on top of any snowman that needs a head.
The letter and picture cards must be placed with other corresponding letter and picture cards.
If there are no corresponding cards on the table for the card that has been drawn, that card can be placed on the table alone to start a new snowman.
Continue drawing and placing cards until all the snowmen are built.
Because this is a cooperative game, there are no winners and losers. Preschoolers and kindergarteners can work together or independently to complete the task of building all the snowmen. I especially like this format because it keeps the cards organized and sets the pace for the activity.
The cards are designed in such a way so that they are able to be placed in any order, as long as the head is at the top. This makes it easier to match the letters and pictures in the order they are drawn from the pile.
If you would like to add the Build a Snowman Letter and Sound Matching Game to your classroom or homeschool, you can find it by clicking the image below. Have fun with your little learners!
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I’ve got some new winter alphabet activities for you! Just in time for our first snowfall!! These activities are perfect for preschoolers who are mastering their letter recognition, letter sound correspondence, and letter formation.
This set of activities is everything SNOWFLAKES and includes several ways to use these Snowflake Themed Letter cards. I included a set of uppercase and lowercase letters so that you can decide what your preschoolers need to practice.
The Say, Build, Write Mat is perfect for these dry erase sleeves. I got these from the Target Dollar Spot over the summer, but you can just as easily use a page protector with dry erase markers. The mat allows your preschooler to display a letter card, say the name, say the sound, build the letter, and write the letter.
I left the “build” area of the mat open ended so that you can decide what materials you would like to provide your preschoolers to build the letters. Giving the kiddos a choice of materials would also work well. Things like pipe cleaners, mini erasers, play doh or beads are great options.
What is it with preschoolers and dice?? Writing letters can seem like a tedious task until dice are involved. The Snowflake Letter Cards fit easily inside pocket dice. You can choose 6 letters you would like your preschooler to practice writing. Then have them toss the dice and record the letter they land on. This activity works well in partners or independently.
Snowflake Search and Cover miiiighhtt be my favorite activity in this set because it’s just so fun to set up the search tray. For this one, I just tossed a bag of cotton balls into a tray and set the cards up, but you can present them however you like! Make a draw pile, a sensory bin, it’s up to you!
Next, I’ve included a Snowflake Color the Room recording sheet in uppercase and lowercase letters. For this activity, you simply hang the Snowflake Letter Cards throughout the room and have students travel around to find them. As they find the letters around the room, they can color them on their recording sheet. Lillian is just learning pen control, but she enjoyed pointing to the letters and saying their names as we found them around the room.
For those preschoolers who are ready to write, I’ve also included at Snowflake Write the Room Recording Sheet in lowercase and uppercase letters. This is an easy way to differentiate too! Simply give your pre-writers the coloring sheet and your writers the tracing sheet. They will be completing the same activity but fine tuning different skills. Win-win!
The best part of this set of activities is that once you have the Snowflake Alphabet Cards ready to go, all you have to do is print the rest! The cards can be used with all the recording sheets in this resource, so you can get a lot of mileage out of one prep.
If you would like to add the Snowflake Alphabet Activities to your collection of winter themed activities for preschool, just click the image 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.
Emmett and I created a scavenger hunt with the Melissa and Doug Fruits and Vegetables. We also added a pumpkin from our fall décor! Emmett and I hid the produce items around the room. Then I showed him a picture and word card, he located the item and placed it next to the card. He loved this!!
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!!
Mrs Mama Bird 