Activities for Teachers of Young Children
education activities for summer and early childhood education lesson plans
for teaching pre math skills and the science skills of observation, prediction
and evaluation. Easy cooking ideas too!
Preschool Activity Theme For SummerIf you're looking for The Ocean and Sea Theme or Camping Activities you'll find them in the Rainbow Resource Room.
Materials: Mural paper
Description: Hang mural paper along the wall. Paint grass and flower stems and, with a marker, draw a few ants, worms, and snakes. Cut out a flower shape (about the size of a coffee cup saucer) and let the children decorate it however they wish. Next, cut out a small picture of each child and place their face in the center of the flower and attach it to the wall on the flower stems.
Now, the children take markers and decorate coffee filters. Teachers lightly spray the the filters to make a tie dye effect. Pinch the filters in the center and slide into a clothes pin. Slip a piece of pipe cleaner for the antennae.
On green paper cut out leaf shapes (long and oval), draw the veins with a black marker and then ask the children to glue a line of colorful pom poms on them to represent a caterpillar. Now you have a caterpillar on a leaf!
Cut out circles from black and red paper (about 3" in diameter) and cut the red circles in half to make lady bugs. Use a large black circle on the bottom, glue 2 red half circles on that (on each side for wings) and a small black circle (1" diameter) for the head.
Finally, ask children to dip their fingers into black paint and make dots!! Take all of these things and attach them to your garden. It's beautiful! I did this project with my 18-27 month olds and got so-o-o- many compliments on how nice it looked!
Comments: This is a wonderful
way to brighten up your class room! You can make
Also include: stripes, sandals, tennis shoes, flowers, a sun dress, blue jeans,Summer Clothing
belt, barrettes, etc.
Comments: This is fantastic for those hard transition times! As soon as I
start to sing all the children listen carefully to see who will be next.
What I Like About Summer
Materials: Large sheet of paper, marker or pen.
Description: During circle time ask each child, "What do you like about summer". The teacher writes down their ideas on the large sheet of paper. Once all the children have had a chance to share, the class turns their ideas into a song.
Just sing, "What I like about Summer is...."
Keep singing the sentence for all the children's ideas. This song
can be used for all of the seasons or other ideas.
children's own contributions of drawings, paintings and
Description: Talk about
summer flowers with the children. Encourage them to
Ask each child to contribute their idea or
piece of work, sticking it into the scrapbook themselves if they want to.
Provide plenty of support for younger children, offering suggestions or
scribing for them. Give each child a label and ask them to think of a few
words to describe their entry and write the words
Ask the children to draw small pictures to stick
on to the front of the
A Summer Fingerplay
Materials: Plates, napkins etc.
Sunshine FingerplayThese are my sun glasses.
This sunny fingerplay from Terry H. also introduces the concept of day and night.
Terry suggests singing You Are My Sunshine and improvising a tune with these words:The sun makes the outside a warm place to play
Materials: Large paper, yellow, white and orange paint. Painting items such as; brushes, swabs, feathers, fingers, etc.
Description: Talk about how summer means many hot days and that the sun provides them. Ask what color the sun is and let children choose the colors they would like to use to make their sunny pictures.
Comments: They love mixing
colors with the different items and their fingers!
Summer Quiet Place
Materials: A small plastic
pool, scissors, blue tissue paper, one or two small
Description: Put a small
plastic swimming pool in a corner of the room.
Comments: This is a good quiet center when talking about water, swimming, oceans and lakes.
For picture book suggestions, take a look
at Preschool Books Listed by Theme.
This song can be sung using a variety of voices
such as how a football player
Cool Cooking Idea:
Ice Cream Sandwiches
Materials: Graham crackers any flavor (we like Chocolate), ice cream (any flavor) and plastic wrap.
Description: Let the ice cream get to a soft stage then take the graham crackers and spread one half with about ½ cup ice cream. Put another graham cracker on top and wrap with plastic wrap. Freeze for about 3 hours. These great summer theme treats are good for up to about 3 weeks!
There are many more cool cooking ideas throughout the 2 pages of theTalking Sun Puppet
When Susan K. introduces this summer puppet project to preschool children this is what she says; "Summertime means lots of sunshine. We love it when the sun shines and we can play outside. The sun makes us feel hot sometimes and thirsty. What else can the sun do? It can burn you too! Please remember to wear sunscreen."
Materials for each puppet:
2. Children paint the bottom of one paper plate yellow.
3. Children cover the bottom
of the second plate with glue. They arrange the hand shapes around the
edge of the gluey plate for the rays of the sun. Teach
4. The children put the top of the painted plate over the gluey plate so that you have a yellow sun with rays all around it. The opening will be the bottom.
5. To make the mouth, push the two
paper brad fasteners into the sun above the
6. Cut two eyes from the white paper. Children
use a black marker or crayon to
7. Children cover the tube with aluminum
foil. Fold the extra foil down into the
8. Tie one end of a 24 in. length of yellow
yarn to the bottom of the rubber band mouth so that it hangs out. To make
the sun puppet look like it is talking, just pull on the end of the yarn.
Comments: The children loved
their sun puppets! They loved the painting and hand prints, and especially
making their puppet's mouth move and "talk".
Sunshine Art Project
Paper Plate middles cut out, several shades of orange and yellow tissue
paper, small triangles cut out from orange and yellow construction paper,
Description: Give each child a paper plate middle. Have the children "paint" the circle with glue and then decorate with the tissue paper. Allow the circles to dry while explaining patterning. After the circles have dried encourage the children to make patterns with the colored triangles by gluing them around the outside of the circle. Easier patterns for the younger children (ABAB pattern) and harder patterns for the older children (AABB pattern, ABBA pattern, etc.).
Comments: I added these suns to my classroom door at "graduation" and combined them with mini graduation caps made with the children's names on them and the heading Our Futures Are Bright.
There's lots of Graduation
Ideas in the Rainbow
Materials: Using pre-printed matching cards or designing your own with clip art found in books or the internet, create a matching game where the children, as a group, must match a picture of an animal with it's track. I created 20 cards using clip art and printed them on card stock.
Description: For preschool
children, non-competitive games are great!
Comments: The children that
play this game with me just love it. They wanted
Preschool learning activities, themes and ideas that enrich year round early childhood curriculum