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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