Animals

Ocean Animal Stories

Ocean Animal Stories

There are so many amazing ocean animals that we usually don’t get to see unless we go to an aquarium. Some of these animals live in the icy, cold waters at the North and South Poles, while others live in the warm ocean waters. Visit your library and check out these ocean animal stories to discover who lives in the ocean and whether they like warm or cold habitats.

10 Books about Ocean Animals:

The Pout-Pout Fish

1. The Pout-Pout Fish by Deborah Diesen–

My family loves this is fun rhyming story (with great pictures) about a grumpy fish who realizes that friendship can really brighten our day. It’s written sing-songy and in our house, we really get into this story, with the whole family singing the refrain and acting out the “blubs.” The Pout Pout Fish has many sequels so you can continue to read about Mr. Fish and his underwater friends. The original is my favorite, and I love reading this one out loud at storytime 🙂

Over in the Ocean

2. Over in the Ocean: in a Coral Reef by Marianne Berkes–

My son got this book for his birthday and it is AWESOME! It has fantastic pictures that were formed from clay by artist Jeanette Canyon that perfectly compliment Marianne Berkes’ sing-songy text. You and your little one will want to study these pictures over-and-over again to get all of the details incorporated onto each page. This book introduces a variety of cool sea creatures. It also lends itself well to movement activities that preschoolers will love to do. At the end, there is a seek-and-find activity to search for all of the sea creatures

Nugget and Fang

3. Nugget and Fang by Tammi Sauer —

This is great story about best friends who just happen to be a shark and a minnow. The minnow, Nugget, starts school with the other little minnows and learns that sharks are big, scary predators out to eat minnows and they most definitely cannot be friends. Fang is devastated by the news, and tries his hardest to keep their friendship in tact. It doesn’t look good for their friendship, until Fang saves the little minnows and teaches them that sharks and minnows can be friends. What is 10 minnows plus 1 shark = 11 awesome friends!

The Rainbow Fish

4. The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister–

In this beloved children’s story, the Rainbow Fish learns what it means to be a good friend. The Rainbow Fish has the most beautiful sparkly scales and it was so very proud of its shimmery scales. Other fish want a sparkly scale too, but Rainbow Fish doesn’t want to part with them because they make it such a pretty fish. Hesitantly, the Rainbow Fish shares just one sparkly scale with a little fish. Soon everyone wants a pretty scale. Turns out Rainbow Fish likes sharing. Now the ocean is full of fish with glimmering scales! Even though the Rainbow Fish has only one sparkly scale left, it feels happy having shared and being a good friend.

I'm Getting a Shark

5.  I’m Getting a Shark by Brady Smith —

We discovered this book at our library and it is perfect for young shark fans. It is a cute story about a girl who is obsessed with sharks and she is convinced that she is getting a real one for her birthday! She shares all of her favorite shark facts with her dog as she weighs the pros and cons of which shark species would make the best pet.

Oona in the Arctic

6. Oona in the Arctic by Kelly DiPucchio —

Oona, a mermaid, finds a lost baby beluga whale and sets out to help reunite the baby with its family. Heading north to the icy waters of the Arctic, Oona, her best pal, Otto, and the baby whale brave storms and other dangers. Illustrator Raissa Figueroa does a fantastic job of showing the underwater plants, and real life animals who inhabit the artic. Seals, orcas, and narwhals can be seen in the cold northern waters, as well as on the floating ice. The land pictures are just as stunning as the underwater portrayals, showing the beautiful northern lights and the snowy landscape.

Shark Kiss, Octopus Hug

7. Shark Kiss, Octopus Hug by Lynn Rowe Reed —

This is a super cute picture book about a shark and an octopus looking for some love. You will giggle your way through the story reading the silly ideas these two friends come up with to get the beachgoers to give them hugs and kisses. In the end, the two friends realize that they don’t need hugs and kisses from the beachgoers because they have each other to exchange hugs and kisses with — awww!

Baby Beluga

8. Baby Beluga by Raffi–

Raffi turned some of his best-loved songs into books, including Baby Beluga! This book, illustrated by one of my favorite illustrators, Ashley Wolff, features a busy little beluga whale and many other animals that live in the Arctic Ocean. Read this book and find out what the little whale and its friends do all day! The picture of the baby beluga back with its pod for nighttime snuggles is especially sweet.

Commotion in the Ocean

9. Commotion in the Ocean by Giles Andreae–

I love this rhyming story about ocean animals! Each animal gets its own little poem that tells something interesting about them. This book covers so many different types of sea creatures, from huge blue whales to small barnacles! Which one is your favorite?

Inky's Amazing Escape

10. Inky’s Amazing Escape by Sy Montgomery —

My son loves this book! It is a true story about an octopus named Inky, who escapes from an aquarium in Australia and makes its way back to the Pacific Ocean. We learned a lot about octopuses from this non-fiction picture book, and we were fascinated by Inky’s journey. My son was so excited when he learned that Inky liked playing Legos just like he does! Out of all of the books written about Inky, this one is our favorite. Sy Montgomery is a gifted storyteller and we were absolutely fascinated by this amazing octopus. I check out lots of library books for my son and I to read together, but this is one book that we felt that we needed to own. We truly love this story and read it over-and-over again.

Disclaimer:

Thank you for reading ocean animal stories with us! Check your local library for these and great books to read together. To help cover the costs of this site, I joined Amazon’s Affiliate program and I provided affiliate links to the books I listed. If you buy an item through one of my links, I may receive a small commission (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for support. Happy reading!

Concepts

Free The Very Hungry Caterpillar Worksheets

Free The Very Hungry Caterpillar Worksheets

Who wants free worksheets for their preschooler? I’ve got a super cute pack of the The Very Hungry Caterpillar worksheets that are free to download. You can print them over and over again (for personal use) so that your child can practice writing their alphabet, numbers, and have some counting fun!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle is a children’s classic! This picture book is a favorite many times over! This is a must read if you haven’t read it yet. Borrow it from your local library, watch this read-aloud from Brightly Storytime, or buy it on Amazon so you can read over and over again.

I love theming my books with worksheets, so here are 9 very hungry caterpillar themed worksheets for your preschooler! Included are alphabet tracing ( 2 pages), number tracing, fill in the missing numbers, counting, I Spy, spot the differences, identify sizes; color fruits page, and follow the line worksheets.

All you need for learning with this very hungry caterpillar printable pack is:

Preschoolers will love learning to count, practicing their ABCs, and working on their fine motor skills!

More Fun – Crafts and STEM!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Magna-Tiles

Add some STEM fun into your little one’s learning with this adorable The Very Hungry Caterpillar Magna-Tiles set. This is the coolest building set! Children get to bring the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar to life while engaging their eye-hand coordination, understanding of magnets, and spatial awareness — plus they are stimulating their creativity. This building set is so much fun and perfect for families looking to add more STEM activities into their little one’s play as their are a lot of shapes and towers to be made!

Check out an earlier post about The Very Hungry Caterpillar that includes some fun fruit themed crafts to make with your preschooler!

Easter, Spring, STEM

Free Preschool Spring Worksheets

I’ve compiled all of my spring worksheets here for you to quickly access! Each worksheet is a free printable PDF. These spring worksheets are perfect for incorporating into your Easter, Vegetable Garden, Flowers, Bugs, and Rain & Rainbow themes! I have lots of other worksheets that are free if you are looking for more: https://imaginationsrunningwild.com/worksheets/

free spring worksheets for preschool

ALPHABET

Easter letter tracing worksheet

Rainbow Tracing: trace the letters in the word Rainbow and then color the picture.

Raindrop Alphabet: trace all 26 uppercase letters in the raindrops.

Easter Bunny Words Tracing: trace all of the letters in the words Easter Bunny and then color the pictures.

Easter Egg Letters: practice making all 26 uppercase letters with this fun letter tracing worksheet.

MATH

carrot counting worksheet

Carrot Counting: count how many carrots are in each box and then circle the number.

Butterfly I Spy: count how many of each butterfly you spy and write the number in the box.

Easter I Spy: how many of each Easter picture can you spy?

Egg Counting and Coloring: color the same number of eggs as shown.

Vegetable — how many of each vegetable can you count?

Jelly Bean Counting: count how many jelly beans are in each box and circle the number.

MAZES

Bunny Circular Maze: help the bunny reach the carrot. (beginner)

Ladybug Maze: draw a line through the maze from the ladybug to the leaf. (intermediate)

SCIENCE

parts of a plant worksheet

Vegetable Find: color the pictures of vegetables. Circle your favorite veggie. (Use this one with your garden theme!)

Plant Life Cycle: color the pictures of a plant’s life cycle, cut them out, and then glue them in correct order.

Parts of a Plant: cut out the labels and glue them on to name each part of the plant.

Nature Scavenger Hunt: let’s take a look outside and see if you can find all 12 things on the list.

Uncategorized

Salt Tray Writing for Preschoolers

Salt Tray Writing Practice for Preschoolers

Salt tray writing is a fun way for preschoolers to practice making their letters and numbers! Little kids love to touch stuff, so let’s let them with this fun activity! All you need is a tray/pie tin/round cake pan and table salt. Several years ago I discovered this activity and immediately went out and bought way too much salt! You only need to cover the bottom of the tray and really didn’t take that much salt. I still have 2 unopened salt containers –oops.

We used a round cake pan for our “tray.” I dumped some salt until the bottom of the pan was completely covered. I asked my son if he could make the letter A and he immediately made an A. Then he asked if he could make other letters! Absolutely!!! I picked up the pan and gently swished it from side to side so that the A disappeared and salt covered the whole bottom again. My son started making lots of letters and liked being the one to swish to pan after each letter. We practiced uppercase and lowercase letters.

Now that I knew that making letters in the salt tray was something he enjoyed, I asked him to make numbers. He did a great job with his numbers! This activity was a lot of fun and added variety to learning letters and numbers.

In between salt tray writing practice, I kept the tray in a cupboard. When it started to look yucky, I dumped the salt, washed the pan, and then added new salt. As long as your kiddo washes their hands before this activity, your salt should be usable for a while.

Halloween, Math, STEM

Preschool Halloween Worksheets:

Preschool Halloween Worksheets for alphabet and math learning.
Preschool Halloween Worksheets

Add some spooky fun to your learning activities with these preschool Halloween worksheets! Download these free worksheets and practice writing letters, phonetic sounds, counting, and writing numbers 1-25 in numerical order. Read some Halloween books too and make it a spooky day!

ABCs

It’s almost Halloween and the alphabet has never been this spooky!

Complete the Haunted Alphabet: write the missing letters in alphabetical order.

Fall Leaves Alphabet Letter Tracing: Practice writing all 26 letters in the alphabet with this tracing worksheet. Color in the fall leaves too!

Pumpkin Patch Alphabet Maze: color the pumpkins in alphabetical order to make your way through the maze from A-Z.

Spooky Phonics: draw a line from the letter to the word that begins with the same letter.

Math

Pumpkins, bats, and spooky characters make counting tons of fun!

Pumpkin Counting: color the same number of pumpkins as shown.

Halloween Party Math Maze: fill in the missing numbers 1-25.

Halloween I Spy: count of many of each picture you spy and then write the number in the corresponding box.

Color the Bats: color the same number of bats as shown.

More Halloween Fun:

Check out my book recommendations: MONSTERS, GHOSTS, SKELETONS, BATS, and ZOMBIES

Halloween Crafts: Mickey Mouse Pumpkin, Handprint Pumpkin, Coffee Filter Bats, and Dot Paint Ghosts

Science Experiment: make this fall-themed Pumpkin Fizz and watch as the fizz forms when the vinegar mixes with the baking soda!

I Spy Counting Worksheets: my son loves the “I Spy” challenges, so I have made a lot of them. Try the Bat I Spy, Fall I Spy, and Owl I Spy worksheets too.

Uncategorized

10 Preschool Pirate Books:

Enjoy 10 preschool pirate books and a fun, pirate activity that will surely get your preschooler saying “Arrr!”

Preschool Pirate Books

September 19th is Talk Like a Pirate Day! Here are some fun pirate stories to enjoy and a pirate-themed Find the Differences worksheet to try 🙂

10 Preschool Pirate Books

1. Pirate Boy by Eve Bunting. — In this sweet, reassuring story, a mother’s love will follow her son anywhere, even onboard a pirate ship. No distance, no sea monsters, and no unruly pirates will be able to stop Mom.

2. Charlotte Jane Battles Bedtime by Myra Wolfe. — I love this book! It is the cutest story about a young pirate named Charlotte Jane who refuses to go to bed. She has important pirate things to do and sleep just gets in the way. Charlotte Jane loses her “oomph” and her parents form a search party to find the missing oomph. The missing oomph is nowhere to be found. How is she going to have sword fights and engage in other pirate activities without any oomph? Charlotte Jane falls asleep and awakes full of oomph and ready to be a pirate!

3. How I Became a Pirate by Melinda Long. — This is a funny story filled with fantastic illustrations by David Shannon. In this book, Jeremy Jacob joins a pirate crew and learns all about being a pirate. He’s enjoying not eating vegetables and having gross table manners. It’s all fun until he learns that pirates don’t do any of the loving things that his mom does, such as read bedtime stories and tuck him in at night.

4. Pirates Don’t Change Diapers by Melinda Long. — In this follow-up to How I Became a Pirate, the pirates return to Jeremy Jacob’s house to look for treasure, but an upset baby stalls their plans. Nobody is able to get anything done until Bonny Anne is happy. In this silly turn of events, the pirates become babysitters and learn that an upset kiddo is even more terrifying then their pirate adventures!

5. Pirates Love Underpants by Claire Freedman. — Preschoolers love books about underwear! Get ready to laugh your way through this silly book as the pirates go in search of the fabled golden underpants.

6. Shiver Me Hook; a pirate ABC by June Sobel. — The pirate crew is embarking on an alphabet adventure. They search high and low for all of the letters from A to Z, with each letter corresponding to something piratey! This is perfect for preschoolers who are working on letter recognition and phonetic sounds!

7. Are Pirates Polite? by Corinne Demas. — In this fun rhyming story, the pirates show that they can, in fact, be polite and say “please” and “thank you.” If pirates can be polite, then preschoolers can too! This book has just the right amount of grossness to keep preschoolers giggling.

8. Pete the Cat and the Treasure Map by James Dean. — Sail along with Pete the Cat and friends aboard a pirate ship. They find a treasure map and set out on a hunt for the treasure. Uh-oh, they run into a sea monster! Is the sea monster going to cause trouble or become a new friend? Preschoolers love Pete the Cat and they will enjoy Pete’s pirate adventure!

9. Arrr, Mustache Baby by Bridget Heos — This is the cutest story about two toddlers, one who is born with a mustache and one who is born with a beard. One day at the community pool, they encounter two pirate tots and the mustache baby and the bear baby turn into pirates, determined to keep all of the loot for themselves. A whimsical battle between the kids ensues. Behaving like pirates does not make their parents happy. As their treasure filled ship sinks, the tots find themselves in a timeout. They learn that sharing is lot more fun than hoarding the treasure and behaving badly.

10. How to be a Pirate by Isaac Fitzgerald. — A young girl named Cece wants to be a pirate, but the boys tell her she can’t be one (mean!). She doesn’t let them stop her and she seeks out her grandfather for advice on being a pirate. Grandpa has tattoos (just like a pirate) and a ship in a bottle, so Cece is convinced he knows all about pirates. He guides her through all of the things pirates need to be, ending with a beautiful conclusion about believing in oneself.

Find the Differences — Pirate Edition

Can you spot differences between these two pirate-themed scenes? Look closely and see if you can find all five.

Did you enjoy finding the differences? Try more Find the Difference pages: https://imaginationsrunningwild.com/find-the-differences/

Disclaimer — this post contains affiliate links to products sold on Amazon. I joined Amazon’s Affiliates Program to help cover the costs of my site. If you buy a product through one of my links, then I get a small percentage of the sale. Thanks your support! Happy reading: )

Uncategorized

Hands-On Alphabet Learning

Alphabet Sand Molds

Preschoolers like to touch and feel things and enjoy learning through physical interaction. I wanted something tangible for teaching the alphabet so that my son could have hands-on learning and I was excited to find these alphabet sand molds. I ordered them right away and they were the perfect size for his little hands.

When we worked on our weekly letters, he could feel the letter, trace its shape with his finger, and really get a visual for what each letter looks like. These sand molds provided so many learning opportunities! My son used them in his sandbox, I helped him trace them on paper and let him color them in, and I used them for a letter matching game 🙂

Letter Matching Game:

I made a game to help him connect uppercase and lowercase versions of each letter. I wrote the lowercase letters with chalk on our patio and had him place the uppercase sand molds on top of the lowercase chalk letters. We went in ABC order until he really got a handle on his letters and then I had him randomly pull out a letter from a paper bag and find its match on the patio.

Alphabet Matching Game

We have gotten a lot of use out these alphabet sand molds. They are great for tactile learning and fun, alphabet play. I hope they will help your preschooler with learning the alphabet! For more ideas and a copy the weekly alphabet learning schedule I used with son, check out my Alphabet page. Please note that I joined Amazon’s Affiliate program to help with the costs of my website, so if you buy something through one of my links, I earn a small percentage of the sale. Thank you for your support 🙂

Animals, STEM

Learning Letter D

Letter D is awesome — Dinosaurs, Dogs, Donuts, and Ducks! This was a fun week for my preschooler. We read books about his favorite animals, ate donuts, danced along to We are the Dinosaurs, and made a neat Froot Loops Tower.

Monday — D is for Dinosaur

  • Writing Practice: write uppercase D. For this letter, we used a worksheet from AtoZteacherstuff.com:
  • Book: Crunch the Shy Dinosaur by Cirocco Dunlap. This is a fun, interactive book that really engages with the reader. Young children will have a blast getting to know Crunch by saying hello, singing Happy Birthday, and introducing themselves. It also encourages the reader to take into consideration that other people (and dinosaurs) might be shy when you first meet them and to let them have some quiet space to adjust to new people.

Check your library for Crunch, the Shy Dinosaur, or buy it on Amazon.

  • Craft / Activity: Dinosaur Coloring Page — use your creativity and color or paint an awesome dino picture! Then, Find 5 Differences between these 2 dinosaur scenes:
  • Song: This was great excuse to sing along to our of my favorite preschool songs, We Are the Dinosaurs by the Laurie Berkner Band. Watch the music video on YouTube and march along!

Tuesday —

  • STEM: Build a Froot Loops Tower. This project is great for working on fine-motor skills!
Froot Loops Tower

Supplies needed are Play-Doh, a dry spaghetti noodle, and Froot Loops cereal.

First, make a mound out of Play-Doh to use as your tower’s base.

Second, stick a spaghetti noodle into the center of the base and make sure to really smush the Play-Doh around the bottom of the noodle so that it stands up.

Now it is time to make the tower and work on fine motor skills! Take your Froot Loops and carefully drop each down the noodle, making a tower as they stack. Have fun making color patterns. Bonus, you get to eat the cereal after your are done making towers 😉

  • Air Writing: Ask your child to hold up a hand and trace letter shapes with their finger in the air. I was skeptical of this at first, but my son really got into it and I found him air writing his letters all on his own.
  • “Dog I Spy” Worksheet: practice counting with this cute dog-themed I Spy picture.

Wednesday — D is for Dog and Donut

  • Writing practice: write lowercase letter d.

I found this worksheet online from PreschoolMom.com: https://preschoolmom.com/wp-content/uploads/PMom/AlphabeWorksheets/D2.pdf

  • Books — We read dog stories! My son loves Karma Wilson’s book, A Dog Named Doug. Doug the dog is a digging machine. He digs a holes to everywhere and gets into a bit of trouble along the way. The book ends happily with Doug digging a hole into his family’s bedroom for a bedtime cuddle. My son loves this book and he laughs every single time we read it. We have checked this out from our library numerous times, and we hope you will check it from yours too! It is also available on Amazon if you want to buy it.

We also read Laura Numeroff’s If You Give a Dog a Donut. Turns out if you give a dog a donut, a great story ensues! This cute story is a fun read-aloud and good introduction to sequencing. Find a copy at your library, or buy on Amazon.

  • CraftPaper Plate Donut. Supplies needed are paper plate, light brown watercolor paint and paintbrush, construction paper (we used pink), scissors, white glue, and sprinkles.

1. First my son painted the entire plate light brown.

2. While it was drying, we picked our construction paper for the donut icing. We went with the classic pink for our donut, but also strongly considered brown for a chocolate icing. I cut out a wavy shape in the pink paper.

3. After the donut plate was dry, I cut out the center to give it the donut shape.

4. My son used white, school glue to attach the icing to the plate.

5. Last, he glued on sprinkles to complete his paper plate donut 🙂

  • Songs — For letter D, we sang the “Donut Song.” If you don’t know this song, you can check it out on YouTube. My son loves this song and he sings it all of the time!

Thursday —

  • Salt Tray Writing: cover the bottom of a shallow tray or pie tin with a layer of table salt. Your child can take one finger to trace letter shapes in the salt. Make bother uppercase D and lowercase d.
  • Worksheet: Draw a line from the lowercase d to all of the uppercase D letters.

Friday — D is for Duck

  • Book: Little Quack’s New Friend by Lauren Thompson. The whole Little Quack series is adorable, but I am partial to this one because I love the new froggy friend. This Little Quack story embodies preschooler’s shyness about meeting new people, but children’s innate playfulness and curiosity wins over and everyone has fun playing together. Plus, this story is full of fun sound words to say!

There are many cute stories in the Little Quack series. Hopefully your library has this one and others. It is available for purchase on Amazon.

  • Craft: Color and Feathers Duck Craft — supplies needed are duck coloring sheet, crayons, white school feathers, and glue.

Here’s the coloring page we used. I found on getcoloringpages.com. Feel free to draw your own duck or cut out a duck shape from construction paper if you don’t like this one.

We used crayons to color our duck. My son worked hard to color within the lines!

Then we picked out feathers for our duck and attached them with white, school glue.

  • Song: Raffi’s Five Little Ducks. I really enjoy doing hand movements to this song. We hold up fingers on one hand for the five little ducks, folding down fingers as the ducks go over the hill. The other is our mama duck and we keep our fingers together and move them up and down to touch the thumb to make a mouth movement for the quacking parts. If you don’t know this song, it’s available on YouTube.

Uncategorized

Learning Letter B

Monday — B is for Butterfly

  • Writing Practice: write uppercase letter B. I found a worksheet maker at AtoZteacherstuff.com and made a letter B worksheet.
  • Book: Waiting for Wings by Lois Ehlert. First off, Lois Ehlert is an amazing author and illustrator. This is a sweet, gently story about a flower garden awaiting the arrival of the beautiful butterflies. The book uses a rhyming format to teach about a butterfly’s life cycle in short, but informative text. My son and I love the pictures throughout this book. They are so bright and vibrant! This book not only uses color well, but it also utilizes paper as an artform within the book. There is a smaller book inside the book, and less wide pages that utilize the larger pages’ artwork. — this makes reading this book more of an experience. At the end, there is a section that shows each caterpillar, it’s chrysalis, and matching butterfly. My son and I love to look at this part — it’s perfect for young biologists 🙂

Lois Ehlert is a popular author and illustrator, so there is a good chance your local library will have this book. We checked it from our library and my son fell in love with it; we now own a copy. It is available for purchase on Amazon. To help cover the costs of this site, I joined Amazon’s Affiliate program, so if you purchase a book through my links, I get a small portion of the sale.

  • Craft: Mosaic Butterfly — Supplies needed are multiple colors of construction paper, glue stick, white school glue, scissors, a pipe cleaner, and a pencil. I have a sandwich bag filled with scraps of construction paper that we use for making mosaic crafts. So if you don’t already have small pieces of paper ready to go, cut some out in a variety of sizes and colors.
  1. Pick a color for your butterfly. My son is obsessed with the color blue, so he chose blue paper. I folded the paper in half and drew a basic butterfly shape and then I cut it out.

2. My son glued the butterfly to the orange background. Next, he covered his butterfly in glue from his glue stick and added the mosiac paper peices.

3. Once he was happy with the mosaic look of his butterfly, he picked a pipe cleaner to make the butterfly’s antennae. He folded it in half and used white school glue to attach it to the orange paper.

Tuesday —

  • STEM: Butterfly’s Life Cycle — have your child act out a butterfly’s life cycle in 4 steps. (1) EGG: child curls up in a ball on the ground; (2) CATERPILLAR: child hatches from the egg and wriggles on the floor like a caterpillar. Baby caterpillars are hungry so pretend to munch on leaves; (3) CHRYSALIS: stand and place palms together above head to be the hanging chrysalis. Close your eyes and pretend to be asleep; (4) BUTTERFLY: emerge as a butterfly and flit your beautiful new wings.
  • Air Writing: Ask your child to hold up a hand and trace Letter B’s shape with their finger in the air. I was skeptical of air writing at first, but my son really got into it and I found him air writing his letters all on his own.

Wednesday — B is for Bee

  • Writing Practice: write lowercase b. I found this worksheet on AtoZteacherstuff.com:
  • Book: Read The Honeybee by Kristen Hall. This is a truly educational book wrapped up in gorgeous pictures. In this book preschoolers will learn about the importance of bees, how honey is made, and a year in the life of a bee. In addition to all of the great things your preschooler will learn about bees, this book also provides a great look the four seasons and lends itself well to conversations about changes in weather and hibernation. The end of the book provides bee facts for further discussion.

This book got a lot of “buzz” in the library world, so your local library should have a copy. Check it out and enjoy it with your preschooler. It is available for purchase on Amazon. To help cover the costs of this site, I joined Amazon’s Affiliate program, so if you purchase a book through my links, I get a small portion of the sale.

  • Craft: Toilet Paper Roll Bee — supplies need are an empty toilet paper roll, marker, yellow paper, black paper, white tissue paper, pencil, scissors, glue stick, and stapler.
  1. Measure the yellow paper so that it completely covers your toilet paper roll and then cut it out.
  2. I stapled the yellow paper to the toilet paper roll, but you can glue it if you prefer.
  3. I drew lines on black paper and my son cut out the stripes for his bee. He also cut out the 2 antennae from the black paper.
  4. My son drew on a cute happy face for his bee 🙂
  5. I cut out a rectangle from tissue paper. We scrunched in in the middle and glued it to the back of our bee. Then I trimmed the edges of the wings to make them rounded.
  • Song: Sing along with the Laurie Berkner Band to Bumblebee (Buzz Buzz). See it on YouTube. You can’t help but be up and buzzing around for this one 🙂 We love the Laurie Berkner Band and there is a very real possibility that if someone was to drop by unexpectedly, they’d find us dancing around the kitchen to their songs!

Thursday —

  • Salt Tray Writing: cover the bottom of a shallow tray or pie tin with table salt. Your child can take one finger to trace letter shapes in the salt. Try drawing both uppercase B and lowercase b. Can you make a butterfly shape in the salt tray too?
  • Worksheet: color all of the boxes with Letter B b.

Friday — B is for Bear

  • Writing Practice: write uppercase B and lowercase letter b.

My son practiced writing letter B with this worksheet from K5 Learning: https://www.k5learning.com/worksheets/kindergarten/printing-letters-b.pdf

We're Going on a Bear Hunt (Classic Board Books)
  • Book : We read We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen. This books takes the reader on a great adventure through all sorts of obstacles in search of a bear. It is super fun to make all of the noises in the book and act out the story as the book progresses. Every time we read this, my son acts out the story on his own afterward, often using toys or pretending to have his own bear hunt outside as we walk through our neighborhood. You can substitute anything for “bear” and go on all sorts of adventures!

This book is a beloved classic and should be available at your library. My kiddo loved it so much that we bought it. It is available for purchase on Amazon.

  • Craft: Cardboard Bear: supplies needed are cardboard, brown yarn, googly eyes, pompom, scissors, pen/pencil, ribbon/cord for hanging, and white glue.

1. I drew a bear shape on part of a cardboard box and cut it out.

2. We taped the end of a piece of brown yarn to the back of the bear and my 3 year-old wound the yarn around the bear to make it fuzzy.

3. My kiddo picked out yellow googly eyes and a yellow pompom for a nose. The googly eyes were sticker so they were easy to attach. We used white glue to stick on the pompom nose.

4. After the glue was dry, I punched a hole in the top of the bear with a pen. My son picked out a blue cord and I tied it on so he could hang up his cute, fuzzy bear. He really wanted to give his bear to his grandpa, so it ended up being a cute present.

  • Song: Sing The Bear Went Over the Mountain. Super Simple Song’s version is available on YouTube.
Uncategorized

Learning Letter A

Here’s what my son and I did for Letter A — we read about apples, ants, and anacondas; learned about our 5 senses, made fun crafts, enjoyed an apple taste test, and sang some fun songs!

Monday — A is for Apple

“The Apple Pie that Papa Baked” by Lauren Thompson
  • Writing Practice: Write Uppercase A and lowercase a.

My son used this Letter A worksheet that I found on K5 Learning: https://www.k5learning.com/worksheets/kindergarten/tracing-letters-a.pdf

  • Book: The Apple Pie that Papa Baked by Lauren Thompson. I love Lauren Thompson’s books! (Try her Little Quack series if you haven’t’ discovered them yet — they are too cute). In this apple pie book, the cumulative and lyrical text create a sweet story that teaches preschoolers about nature and the apple’s life cycle.

Check you local library for this book — it’s a great read 🙂 You can also buy it on Amazon. I joined Amazon’s Affiliate program, so if you buy an item through my site’s links, I get a small portion of the sale to help support this website.

  • Craft: Tissue Paper Apple — supplies needed are a piece of paper, pencil, glue stick, and tissue paper in red, green and brown (or orange).
Tissue Paper Apple Craft

I drew a rough outline of an apple on a piece of paper and then I cut red tissue paper into 1-inch squares.

My son and I both scrunched up the red tissue paper squares together — great for preschool fine motor skills. After we had a lot of of tissue balls, my kiddo covered his apple shape in glue and then glued the tissue all over his apple.

After covering then entire apple in red tissue, we scrunched up green tissue to make a leaf. My kiddo added the green leaf, but thought his apple was still missing something. He decided to add an orange stem (I didn’t have brown tissue paper).

His apple turned out pretty cute! We really enjoyed doing this craft together and I love that he added his own creative ideas with the stem.

  • Song: preschoolers love to sing! Don’t worry if your singing voice isn’t great because your child will be having too much fun with you to care. Sing Raffi’s Apples and Bananas song. It is the perfect combination of silly verses and phonetic vowel sounds for preschoolers. Find it here on YouTube. We love this song in our house and find ourselves singing it all of the time 🙂
Preschool STEM 5 Senses Apple Activity

Tuesday —

  • STEM: 5 Senses — we have 5 senses: sight, touch, smell, taste, and sound. Let’s use our 5 senses on an apple! (1) What color is the apple? Do you see any marks on the apple? (2) what does the apple feel like? Is it smooth or rough? (3) Take a sniff. Does the apple have a sweet smell? (4) Take a bite and taste the apple. Is it yummy? (5) What do you hear? Can you hear crunching sounds when you chew your apple?
  • Air Writing: Ask your child to hold up a hand and trace letter shapes with their finger in the air. I was skeptical of this at first, but my son really got into it and I periodically find him air writing his letters all on his own.

Wednesday — A is for Ant

  • Writing Practice: write uppercase letter A. I found a worksheet from AtoZteacherstuff.com:
  • Book: The Ant and the Grasshopper by Luli Gray. This book has bright, exciting pictures that will capture preschoolers’ imaginations! Based on the Aesop’s Fable of the same name, this book shows that it is important to work hard and plan ahead, but that it is also important to be a good friend and enjoy some fun! Check you library, or get it on Amazon.
  • Craft: Egg Carton Ant — supplies needed are a paper egg carton, washable paints, paintbrush, pipe cleaners, sharpened pencil, scissors, and googly eyes.
Egg Carton Ant Craft for Preschool and Kindergarten

Cut your egg carton down so that you only have 3 humps. (Add a quick science lesson by explaining that ants are insects and insects have three main parts: the head, the thorax, and the abdomen. Ants have 6 legs, 2 large eyes, and 2 antennae.)

Pick a paint color and then paint your egg carton. (We painted ours on top of a paper plate to catch all of the paint drips/spills/wild brush strokes!) Let your egg carton dry.

Once completely dry, add your googly eyes to your ant’s face.

Now you have to choose pipe cleaners to make 6 legs and 2 antennae. You will need 2 pipe cleaners to make the legs and 1 pipe cleaner to make the antennae. I thought it would be fun to make rainbow colored legs, but my son stuck with his favorite color, blue 🙂

We used a sharpened pencil to punch the holes for the antennae and legs. We stuck the legs through the holes, and bent the pipe cleaners slightly inside the carton to hold the legs in place. Then, we made “feet” by bending the ends of the pipe cleaners and we were excited that our ant actually stood up!

  • Song: Sing The Ants Go Marching. This song is a preschool favorite — it’s catchy, you get to say “boom,” and counting is involved!

Thursday —

  • Salt Tray Writing: cover the bottom of a shallow tray or pie tin with table salt. Your child can take one finger to trace letter shapes in the salt.
  • Worksheet: Color the boxes with letter A
  • Apple Taste Test: We went to the grocery store and bought different kinds of apples and we had an apple taste test when we got home! It was fun to try to different apple flavors and compare them to each other. Our favorites were Honeycrisp and Fuji.

Friday — A is for Anaconda

  • Writing Practice: write lowercase letter a. We used this worksheet from AtoZteacherstuff.com:
“I Saw Anaconda” by Jane Clarke
  • Book — We read I Saw Anaconda by Jane Clarke with illustrations by Emma Dodd. This a cumulative, lift-the-flap book about an anaconda that eats everything around it. The snake ends up getting sick — ick!

My son says this anaconda book is awesome because it has so many flaps! Every page is interactive and he giggles as the anaconda eats everything in sight. Plus, he learned about some new animals (a stork, piranhas, and a skink).

bubble-wrap-paper-plate-snake-craft-

For this craft you will use the bubble wrap as a stamp to make the snake’s scales. I am a big fan of out-of-the-box paintbrush ideas, so using bubble wrap to make the snake scales is a super cool idea.