activities
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Preschool Activities for Halloween
October is such a fun month in the classroom, and there are no shortage of activities to explore with your students. If you’re planning for the holiday week, then this post will save you some time an effort so that you can get back to the fun! The Preschool Ponderings Shop is full of great Halloween resources for you to check out. Click the photos below to download – and make sure to scroll to the bottom to see my absolute favorite Halloween activity! Ok, you made it this far – here’s my absolute favorite Halloween activity for the preschool classroom: This shape practice set includes three activities to do…
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Gross Motor Activities with Apples
Sometimes we have to get a little creative in order to support gross motor skills, but when it comes to exploring apples, there are tons of ways to incorporate practicing these skills! Here are some of my favorite ideas. Apples are ball-shaped (for the most part) which makes them perfect for tossing and catching – gently of course! They can also be rolled back and forth or used in games like bowling. Apples with stems can be tied to a piece of yarn and hung from a tree so children can practice reaching and pulling (or “picking”). They make excellent items for relay races – balance them on wooden spoons,…
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Fine Motor Activities With Apples
You can’t escape the apple theme this time of year, and for good reason! Apples are a wonderful way to explore the science behind plant life and nutrition, but they can also be a great way to exercise some fine motor skills. Here are some of my favorite ways to use apples: Use a rotating apple peeler (like this one – affiliate link) to encourage wrist movement. It’ll fascinate the children and make quick work of slicing all of those apples so that you can taste them or bake with them. Of course, it does have a sharp blade, so this is a one-on-one activity that should only be done…
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September Preschool Lesson Plans
We have been squeezing the last bits of summer out like it’s our job over here – but it’s quickly coming to an end. As we look forward to September, I know that life isn’t about to get any less busy! I wanted to really dig into one of those resources that makes planning and prep so much easier. Let’s take a look at every single item included in the September Month of Preschool set. I’ll list it all below, and any products that are also available as individual resources will be linked so that you can go see specific images of those. For a video of how to use…
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Bird Activities for Preschool
Studying birds is always a hit with preschoolers – these are animals that can FLY, who wouldn’t want to know more?! Birds are animals that children may not interact with directly, but they still play a role in their daily lives, no matter where your students live. This makes them perfect for exploration AND you can easily personalize the learning by choosing birds that are native to your area. Here are some of the preschool bird activities that I love to do in (or outside) the classroom. Bird watching is a must! Make some binoculars out of cardboard tubes and head outside. You can identify common birds, count the numbers…
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Preschool Volcano Theme
I’m a huge proponent of exploring themes that are relevant to the children you teach, but I also strongly believe that doesn’t always mean that they HAVE to be themes that children interact with in their everyday life in order to be relevant. If children are especially fascinated with a topic, to the point that it has become a regular topic of conversation in their classroom, then it is relevant in my eyes. This is where topics like dinosaurs, space, make-believe, wild animals, far away landscapes, etc. begin to become appropriate classroom themes. This week we’re tackling one of those topics; volcanos! There are so many ways to explore volcanos…
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Airplane Activities for Preschool
Mondays have been tough around here – these summer weekends are busy and we’re feeling it by Monday! I hope that you’ll forgive me for not always getting a Monday post up throughout the summer, I’m really leaning into Mom life and sometimes that just doesn’t leave the time. That doesn’t mean that I’m totally leaving you hanging though! I’ve got so much to share. We’re prepping for a vacation, and it’s a big one because it’ll be my daughter’s first airplane experience. This felt like the perfect time to dig in and explore airplanes. It’s relevant for my family at the moment, but it can be an excellent theme…
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Birthday Activities for Preschool
It’s a big week for us, my daughter’s birthday is this week! We decided to make this the theme for this week because you only get a birthday once a year, we might as well make the most of it. Here are some of the activities that we’ve leaning into in order to explore birthdays and build an understanding of all the different ways that these can be celebrated. Looking at photos from previous birthdays – This would be an excellent activity to do with the whole class. Encouraging children to bring in photos from last year’s celebration, or going back even farther to see images of them as babies…
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Frog Activities for Preschool
This is our first official week of summer! This year we’re exploring a different topic every week, inspired by our love of animals and science, and guided by our favorite National Geographic Kids books – You can read more about our summer plans in this post. Keeping with these weekly themes, I thought it would be fun to share some of the activities and learning experiences that we’re using to understand each topic better. Here are our plans for frog week: Exploring a local pond – whether you take your group to a pond or bring elements of the pond to the classroom, this is a hands-on opportunity to really…
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Preschool Lesson Plans and Activities for June
We’re halfway through the month of May already – I can’t even believe it! Many of you are almost done with school for the year, but I also know that a large group of you will continue working with all of your littles through the summer. It was really important for me to continue these Month of PreK sets for every month of the year so that you would be supported no matter what your school calendar looks like. Here is the great big list of everything included in the June Month of Preschool set. This set has 5 exclusive activities that are only available in the June Month of…
