Category: Seasons

Spring

Rainy Weather Activities for Preschool *Free Printable*

Lauren Johnson

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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Book Companion, Color Fun, Spring

Rainbow Activities for Preschool

Lauren Johnson

March is the perfect time for a rainbow theme in preschool, whether it is to compliment St. Patrick’s Day or go alongside your weather theme. Not only will a rainbow theme enhance color recognition and introduce different concepts of science and weather, rainbow themes are so fun and pretty!!

Whenever I introduce a new theme, I like to make sure there are LOTS of theme related books available in our playroom for my preschoolers to access. I use our local library to gather some ahead of time and I also have a seasonal book rotation for our home library. For this week, I gathered books specifically about rainbows as well as books that focus on color. Today we read A Rainbow of My Own, Elmer and the Rainbow as well as Planting a Rainbow.

Our first rainbow activity was so easy to prep because it involved items that I already had in the house. Ahead of time, I gathered up small toys of every color. You can choose to have your preschoolers help you with this process too by going on a color hunt. Then I prepared the outline of a rainbow on a large sheet of white paper.

Emmett and I took turns rolling a colored dice and placing a corresponding item on the rainbow. Emmett enjoyed arranging his toys according to their color. Once we had one color “win,” we decided to take turns choosing our own color toy to add.

Emmett was impressed with how it all came together. A rainbow made out of toys!

If you have colored letters or numbers, you can reuse this rainbow outline and add a literacy or numeracy twist. These colorful alphabet erasers are from the Target Dollar spot from a while back, but I was able to find them available online. My two year old, Lillian, loves naming letters so this activity was perfect for her.

Our next rainbow activity was a fun SNACK-tivity. I gathered Fruit Loops, jumbo marshmallows, and pipe cleaners and placed them all in a deep tray.

I encouraged the kiddos to string the Fruit Loops along the pipe cleaners to make a rainbow. Then we added jumbo marshmallows to the ends for the clouds. My five year old, Emmett, was really into making his rainbows look authentic. When he was finished, he proudly displayed his creations in his bedroom. Lillian, on the other hand, needed a little more direction and her activity became a snack a lot sooner!

In the end, we ended up with four delicious rainbows. This was a fun way to encourage fine motor development, hand-eye coordination, color recognition and patterning.

Who doesn’t love directed drawings?? Once we were finished with our snack-tivity, I guided Emmett through a rainbow directed drawing. I taught him how to make clouds with “humps” and then we went through the colors of the rainbow together to make the rainbow bands. While I think this drawing could be complete as an outline, Emmett wanted to color it in. My original plan was to paint the rainbow bands with our fingerprints, but Emmett was not crazy about that idea.

Of course, I let him decide how he wanted to color in his rainbow. He chose to fill in the colors with a good old fashioned paintbrush. He had so much fun, carefully managing his brush strokes. He decided to add a sun, a storm cloud and rain to go along with his rainbow as well. We will be sure to hang this one up!

At the end of our morning, I decided to reinforce color words with these fun picture and word color puzzles. These puzzles are part of a larger set of activities that I created for my Planting a Rainbow Book Companion. (Link below!)

There’s just something about vertical work that draws my preschoolers in. So I added magnets to the back of these puzzle pieces and left them all mixed up on the magnetic whiteboard. You may or may not want to offer all the puzzle pieces at once to your preschoolers. I knew Emmett would be up for the challenge because he is my puzzle guy.

Emmett worked one color at a time to construct the puzzles for each color. He got a little mixed up with the word “purple” and needed some assistance. Other than that, he was able to put them together independently and really enjoyed seeing the words associated with each color. I recently started working with him on CVC words, so he was excited when he put together the word “red.” He actually recognized each sound and blended them together. He was so proud of himself!

Here’s a sneak peek at some of the other fun preschool activities that I created to compliment Planting a Rainbow, by Lois Ehlert.

If you are interested in more rainbow and color ideas for early learners, be sure to check out these resources from my shop…

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 any of my new creations.

Counting, Spring

Lion & Lamb Activities for Preschool *Free Printable*

Lauren Johnson

March has begun and we are counting down the days until spring! The old saying “In like a lion and out like a lamb” is the perfect way to teach preschoolers about the transition from winter to spring. I put together some lion and lamb themed weather activities, counting activities, and a FREE movement activity for you to use with your preschoolers.

In Like a Lion Out Like a Lamb, by Marion Dane Bauer, is a beautifully illustrated picture book that showcases the symbolism of the lion and winter and the lamb and spring.

To help preschoolers learn the characteristics of the Lion and the Lamb, I created a weather sort to show the different types of weather that each animal represents. You can decide to keep these in tact and use as posters or cut them up and use as a card sort.

I cut the cards up and added magnets to the back for Emmett to manipulate on our vertical surface. He was excited to do this activity right after reading the story. The “Light Rain” card started a conversation about the different types of showers. We looked back into the story to check and found out that the lamb did in fact bring rain showers in the spring, so he moved that card to the Lamb Weather side.

The Lion and Lamb Weather card sort set the stage for Emmett to complete the Lion and Lamb Cut & Paste activity independently. He still gets a little overwhelmed by coloring, so we took turns coloring the weather icons. Then he cut and glued them all on his own.

I had a few items set aside for Lillian and I to explore while Emmett was doing the cut and paste activity. I pulled the lion and lamb animal figurines from our animal set and paired them with the corresponding “That’s Not My…” book. I also prepared Mary Had a Little Lamb alongside a lamb puppet that I was lucky enough to acquire from a retiring preschool teacher. As adorable and fitting as these items were, Lillian was just not that into them today!

I had to improvise to get her engaged so that I could monitor her as well as help Emmett with his activity. I quickly whipped out some blue paint and a gray piece of cardstock and told her to paint a “Lion Storm.” She loved that! Next time I will have some process art handy ahead of time for Lillian!!

Once the paint was all cleaned up, I introduced the Lion and Lamb Action Dice game to the kiddos. There are 6 cards total, 3 lion themed cards and 3 lamb themed cards. Each card states an action that the preschoolers can do to imitate either a lion or a lamb. I just cut the cards out and placed them in my pocket dice. If you don’t have a pocket dice, you can easily put the cards in a draw pile face down or inside a grab bag. Emmett and Lillian LOVED this game!! We took turns rolling the dice and made sure to play until all the actions were done at least once. Emmett’s favorite was by far “pounce like a lion.” The FREE download for this game is available at the bottom of the post!

After our dice game, I set up three counting centers for Emmett. The first center included 12 clip cards featuring different amounts of lions or lambs. Preschoolers can count the number of lions or lambs in the picture then clip the correct number.

Another counting center consisted of two types of number mats. The lamb mats depicted numbers 1 – 10 and the lion mats depicted numbers 11 – 20. Each card had a bubble number for building the number, a tens frames for showing the number and a traceable word for writing the number. I designed these mats with play doh in mind, but you can use any small manipulative that you have handy.

The last counting center was number puzzles. These took a little time to prepare but it was worth it! The number puzzles represent numbers 1 – 20. You can decided to use as many or as few of the puzzles as you want. Each puzzle consists of four pieces, a tens frame, a number word, the ordinal number and a quantity of lions or lambs.

I gave Emmett the choice of which counting center he wanted to do and he chose number puzzles right away. I decided to use puzzles 1 – 10 with him today because this was one of the first times he has worked with the number words so I wanted to start simple. In order to keep track of all the pieces, we mixed them up and put them face down in a pile at the end of the table. Then we took turns drawing a card. Once the number was determined, the card was either placed with an existing puzzle on the table or set down on its own as the beginning of a new puzzle. We took turns until all the puzzles were complete.

At the end of our Lion and Lamb day, we reviewed the characteristics of Lion and Lamb weather. I asked Emmett our question of the day, “Which do you prefer, lion weather or lamb weather?” He surprised me by answering lamb weather!

I designed these quick Draw & Write activities for preschoolers to show their preferences. There is space to draw something that represents lion weather or lamb weather. Then the student or teacher can fill in the sentence, “I like ____ weather because _____.”

Emmett was so proud of his work, he hung it up with our other artwork on his own while I was putting his sister down for a nap. He said he used the rainbow picture from the weather sort to remember all the colors!

If you would like to use these fun Lion and Lamb activities with your preschoolers, grab them by clicking the icons below!

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Alphabet, Winter

Snowman Alphabet Activity for Preschool and Kindergarten

Lauren Johnson

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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Alphabet, Winter

Snowflake Alphabet Activities for Preschool

Lauren Johnson

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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Winter

Preschool Mitten Activities *FREE Printable*

Lauren Johnson

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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phonemic awareness, Winter

Mitten Rhyme Match for Preschoolers *FREE Printable*

Lauren Johnson

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!!

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Christmas, Counting, phonemic awareness, Winter

Gingerbread Activities for Preschool *FREE Printable*

Lauren Johnson

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!

Download Gingerbread STEM STation signs here

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

If you don’t want to miss out on the latest FREEBIES, follow me on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest by clicking the images at the top of the page. Thank you!!!

Counting, Fall, Halloween

Halloween Counting Activities for Preschool and Kindergarten *FREEBIE*

Lauren Johnson

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.

click here to download

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!!

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Fall

Pumpkin Patch Letter Sound Match *FREE Download*

Lauren Johnson

Are you visiting the pumpkin patch with your kiddos this fall?? Here’s a fun way to help them practice beginning letter sounds while pretending they are “picking pumpkins” in a pumpkin patch. This activity is perfect for introducing phonological awareness in preschool or strengthening those skills in kindergarten.

I decided to set this letter sound match center up like a pumpkin patch. I used kinetic sand as the ground and spread it evenly in a deep plastic tray that I purchased at Michaels. Kinetic sand is one of my favorite sensory activity mediums because it isn’t sticky!!! It doesn’t dry up if you leave it out. And if it does fall on the floor, it vacuums or sweeps right up. Kids love it too which is really the most important part.

Next, I cut apart the pumpkin sound cards and positioned them in the “ground” as if they were growing in a pumpkin patch. They are staggered so that they are easy to view for the child sitting at the center. Each card depicts a pumpkin with a different picture in the middle. This activity focused on the beginning sound of each picture. In order for my preschooler, Emmett, to keep track of the letter sounds he found, I printed the letter mat and set it next to the “pumpkin patch” of pumpkin sound cards. This kept Emmett’s sound cards organized as he picked each pumpkin and identified the beginning sound of the picture.

As you can see, the letter mat does not include all 26 letters of the alphabet. I decided to include 16 of the most frequently used consonants in this activity. This is simply because Emmett just started learning letter sounds last month and I did not want to overwhelm him with the whole alphabet. We worked on this activity together as a pair by taking turns. If he came across a picture card that he wasn’t sure about, we talked it out together. On my turn, I purposely picked cards that I knew he would be less familiar with and modeled how to make the beginning sound and match it to the corresponding letter. I also kept his Alphabet Linking Chart handy so that he could refer to it as he worked. He frequently confused the letter sounds with the beginning sound a letter makes when you say it (i.e. He said M makes a short e sound). Having that linking chart handy was very helpful to him!! If you need an alphabet linking chart, click the button below to grab one from my shop. It’s FREE!!!

Alphabet Linking Chart

After we were finished picking all the “pumpkins” from the “pumpkin patch” we took a moment to look back over our finished sound mat. We said the pictures and their beginning sounds aloud again to reiterate the matches. Emmett was very pleased with his success and continued to play with the kinetic sand for another half hour or so.

If you have little learners who are still working on letter identification and are not quite ready for a letter sound matching activity, you can simply print the letter cards twice and have your kiddos match the letters to each other.

Speaking of letter identification and sound activities, you may also be interested in the pumpkin themed literacy activities for preschool and kindergarten from a previous post. These activities focus on phonemic awareness, alphabet knowledge and beginning writing. Plus they are super fun and adorable!!

Pumpkin Themed Literacy activities

Wait!! Don’t forget to download your copy of the Pumpkin Patch Letter Sound Match Activity for FREE. Just click the button below and it is yours. As always, thank you for stopping by! I appreciate your interest and would love to hear what your kiddos thought of the Pumpkin Patch Letter Sound Match activity when they are done!!

Pumpkin Patch Letter sound match