Category: Spring

Alphabet, Book Companion, Counting, phonemic awareness, Spring

Red Rubber Boot Day Activities for Preschool

Lauren Johnson

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:

You may also be interested in these resources from my shop!

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Alphabet, Book Companion, phonemic awareness, Spring

Garden Activities for Preschool *FREE Printables*

Lauren Johnson

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.

You may also be interested in these posts from the Mrs Mama Bird blog…

Alphabet, Counting, Spring, St. Patrick's Day

Rainbow Activities for Preschool *FREE Printable*

Lauren Johnson

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!

You may also be interested in these posts from the blog!

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.

You may also be interested in these posts from the blog!

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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