Social Studies Activities for Preschool

We’re working on social studies standards, and the timing worked out particularly well because today’s standard lends itself to Martin Luther King Day. Remember, the Standards that I use every day, and am most comfortable with are Ohio’s Early Learning Development Standards – you can review them here, however I’ve found that even if your State’s standards differ, many of these activities can still be aligned similarly. I’ve rounded up some great ideas today!

Domain: Social Studies
Strand: Geography
Topic: Human Systems

Preschool standards are most concerned with making sure that students recognize similarities and differences between people, families, as well as recognizing characteristics of different cultural groups.  Last year my class was fascinated by our discussion of skin color.  It wasn’t a planned lesson, but after reading a great book on the subject, the students wanted to know more.  

We read All the Colors We Arewhich explains where our skin color comes from in a way that is scientific and developmentally appropriate.  Then we took a picture of all of their hands next to each other so that they could look at the photo and compare