Activities

Read I Can Be Safe by Pat Thomas. Review different situations where the children may need to ask for help. Make signs using craft sticks and pictures of police officers, firefighters and nurses.

Guide the children in creating a story web using a ball of yarn. Each child adds a sentence to the story, holds onto the yarn, and rolls the ball across the circle to a friend.

While reading a story, ask the children about the meaning of unfamiliar words. For example, if the word is “frustrated,” the children might say that it means “mad.” Encourage the children to explain their reasoning (“He looks mad in the picture”).

Using a felt board, tell a story, such as "The Gingerbread Man." Encourage the children to talk about each item as they place it on the flannel board to tell the story.

You need straws, small eyedroppers and papers in different sizes and colors. Cover the table with a tablecloth for easy cleanup. Prepare a few colors of liquid paint (not too watery) and place them in shallow bowls.

Use the plastic lids from ice cream buckets. Cut a hole in the middle, then punch smaller holes around the first hole. Loop ribbon or streamers through the holes and use these as props for music and movement.

Make a ribbon wand for each child by attaching crepe paper streamers or thin ribbon to a wooden paint stirrer or use the streamers from your music props box.

Put a dried up washable marker in a jar of water. Ask the children to predict what will happen and observe what takes place. Have the children journal their discoveries.

Create a street in your classroom with butcher paper and duct tape. Practice crossing the street with the children as you go through each step.

During outdoor time, bring out musical instruments and put out a box or a hat for donations. Have the children who watch them donate “money” in the hat. The children can take turns being the musicians.

Provide each child with a stretchie. As the children move to music, let them make shapes within their stretchies. To make stretchies, use Lycra® or stretch jersey material that is 45 inches wide and cut into strips about 4 inches wide.

Provide each child with a stretchie. As the children move to music, let them make shapes with their stretchies. To make stretchies, use Lycra® or stretch jersey material that is 45 inches wide and cut into strips about four inches wide.

Provide opportunities for the children to string beads onto various objects like pipe cleaners, laces or even spaghetti noodles. For variety, try stringing noodles, cereal or buttons.

You will need some wooden or plastic thread spools and some large rubber washers. Washers are available at home supply stores and comein a variety of sizes and colors. Tie a washer to one end of a length of heavy yarn.

Show the children pictures of animals with stripes, stripes on shirts, even stripes on straws. Go on a “stripe hunt” at school, pointing out stripes wherever you see them. Give the children strips of masking tape in two different colors.

Provide Styrofoam® noodles in various lengths to build a structure in the art center. Dampen the noodles to make them stick together.

Encourage the children to name things in the classroom or from their home environment that often come in numbered sets, such as mittens and socks that come in groups of two or the legs on a chair (four).

Read The Subway Sparrow by Leyla Torres. Discuss how people on the subway reached a common goal without speaking the same language. This could be done in large group. This could be done in large group.

Read The Subway Sparrow by Leyla Torres. Discuss during large group how even though the people on the subway couldn't speak the same language they found a way to reach a common goal.

Cut the bottom of a water bottle off and wrap duct tape around the bottle for additional durability. Next, take a sock and place over the bottle securing using a rubber band.