Whether you're just looking for some fun tree activities or you need tree unit study ideas we've got the perfect fit. These tree themed activities are fun and easy enough for preschool.
Into the woods ... in the classroom!
This family theme preschool all about me printables includes activities, family worksheets for kindergarten + family tree worksheets too.
Let's Have a Lemonade Tasting (A Fun End of Year Experience) 8 comments End of Year, Freebies, Lemonade Day, Lemonade Tasting Today we had a Lemonade Tasting, and it was so much fun! I typically do several themed days at the end of the year. We've run out of curriculum, the kids are in summer mode, and it's an easy way to keep them engaged with meaningful learning up until the end. So, what goes into a lemonade tasting? Let's find out! As the students walked in to the room today, they were greeted with these pink and yellow ribbon streamers. To attach them to the door frame, I simply taped them with Scotch tape. Nothing fancy, I promise. Then, I taped a few lemon slice cut outs to the ends of a few pieces of the ribbon. You can grab the lemon cut outs HERE. We started the day by making new words from the words "cold lemonade." Some really great words they came up with include "noodle," "candle," and "melon." This got them ready for the next thing: the lemonade tasting! We headed outside to our courtyard where I served the students small portions of pink and yellow lemonade. Small, as in, those are bathroom sized cups. ;) To add a bit of novelty to this experience, I made drink tickets for the students to cash in when they grabbed their lemonade. This actually helped make sure the process remained orderly. As a student approached the table, he/she dropped his/her ticket in the provided bucket and then grabbed the matching drink. They loved their little tickets! After the tasting, we came inside and conducted a whole group poll to find out which flavor of lemonade was most popular. The students graphed the results and then answered some questions about their graph. I gave each student a wristband (card stock cut into strips and labeled "Team Pink" and "Team Yellow") to represent their favorite drink. This helped them to be consistent during the poll. Second graders sometimes forget their choice when participating in activities like this. Hehe. Plus, they thought it was pretty cool to sport their paper bracelet for the day. You can grab the drink tickets and bracelet templates HERE. After graphing our favorite picks, the students brainstormed words to describe their favorite lemonade and then wrote opinion pieces about which lemonade they liked best. The opinion pieces were written in these super fun shape books. After all that sitting and writing, it was time to get up and move a bit! We played a game of I Spy. We used these lemonade themed money word problem task cards to review our problem solving (and money counting) skills. Finally, we practiced our parts of speech skills by completing this lemonade themed word sort. Some of the words really got them thinking and it was fun to hear them talk it out with their teaching buddies. The question of the day was whether they should put "drink" in the noun or verb category. It was so great to hear them think it out. Ultimately, they decided it went with the verbs so that each category would have an equal number of words. So logical! (But, for the record, I would have accepted its placement in either category). Our Lemonade Tasting was lots of fun! The kids absolutely loved it! Best of all, they were engaged in all of the activities and didn't even realize that they were still learning! All of these activities, plus more can be found in my Let's Have a Lemonade Tasting! pack on TPT. What are your favorite end of year themes? DON'T FORGET IT, PIN IT! Share It:
There's something so serene and perfect about being out in nature-- scenic views, cute woodland critters, beautiful plant life! (I could pass on the bugs) Do you enjoy nature? If so, this forest themed decor set is definitely for you! Perfect for an outdoor or forest themed room! I love all the woodland animals, watercolor pine trees, and rustic touches included in this set. The shiplap backgrounds make the woodland clipart come alive! I tried to include a ton of editable options, so if you feel like something is missing you can create it yourself! Please note, Amazon links at the end may be affiliate links. A lot of the pieces in this bundle can be purchased individually, but you will save money by bundling (plus, you get exclusive bundle freebies!) I've also included digital items (just in case you're teaching from home). Some of the items included: · Editable binder covers & spines · Class birthday display · 3 drawer labels · Book box labels · Large wall calendar (and add ons!) · Class job display · Editable class rule posters · Editable schedule cards · Editable teacher toolbox labels · Motivational posters · Work coming soon Posters · Google Slides & headers · Supply labels · Place value display posters · Desk name tags The bundle also comes with TONS of exclusive freebies (only available with the bundle purchase). Items like: · Cursive & print alphabet lines · Alphabet posters · Editable blank posters · Editable banners · Motivational mini posters · Number line · Color posters · Shape posters · Crayon box labels · AND MORE! I think this decor will make you feel like you're in the outdoors, and your students will LOVE looking at it all year long! You can find the bundle HERE (or by clicking pictures in this post). As promised, here are some of the items I used in my setup: · 3 inch white binders (Amazon) · Plastic storage tubs (Amazon) · Black Toolbox (Amazon) · Teal book bins (Amazon) · White 8 cube shelf (Amazon) · Grey baskets (IKEA) · Bulletin board paper (Amazon) · White picture frames (Amazon dupe-- from walmart) · 3 Drawer organizer (Amazon) · Burlap lamp (Walmart) · Bear statue, Fox statue, and fake fern (Hobby Lobby) · White bulletin board (Hobby Lobby) Lastly, to thank you for stopping by I'd love to offer you the "Mini Motivational Posters" as a freebie! Click HERE or on the pic below to gain access to my FREE resource library (over 30 freebies)! Thanks for stopping by!
Practice counting with this fun, hands-on Apple Count to 10 Playdough Mats. Such a fun apple themed math activity for preschoolers.
After Jack and Annie spent an afternoon in the Amazon rainforest dodging mangos and facing perhanas, crocodiles, vampire bats, and army a...
FREE printable sorting activity featuring the Four Seasons. Great for preschoolers to do in the Spring, Summer, Fall, or Winter!
These Rainforest Picture-Word Cards include 15 printable cards with rainforest/jungle animals: monkey, tree frog, lemur, poison dart frog, snake, toucan,
This worksheets will give you lots of ideas for your preschool apple theme. Letter A Worksheets FREE Worksheets Apple Ten Frames WorksheetFill in the ten frames to match the numbers on the apples. R
I'm trying to incorporate more science experiments in my classroom this year. My 1st and 2nd graders had such a wonderful time with our Apple Experiment. An apple experiment is a great way to tie your fall activities together, especially if you are planning a trip to the apple orchard. Here is what you need to do your own class experiment. 4 jars oil vinegar water an apple magnifying glasses a knife to cut the apple recording sheet (available at end of blog post) Place a quarter of the apple in each jar. Have the students add oil to one jar, vinegar to another, and water to the third. Leave the fourth one to have only air. We labeled the jars and observed the apples for a week. My students were constantly checking on the apples throughout each day. This picture shows the beginning of the experiment. This picture shows the end of the experiment. What happened? The apple,exposed to air, started to oxidize. The apple in the vinegar had brown spots all over it. The apples in the water oxidized a bit, but compared to the other apples in liquid it wasn't that much. In the oil, the apples also oxidized a bit. Another liquid to use in this experiment would be lemon juice. Definition of oxidize-when the apples come in contact with the oxygen in the air and begin to react by turning brown. When we were finished we documented the results. My little guys have begged for more experiments ever since! Click here to get this document for free.
Hi There! Lisa here, from Growing Firsties & I'm going to share a little bit about Growth Mindset today, which is based on Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck's work. Heads up that I do have some Amazon Affiliate links in this post. Should you choose to use the links, I'll earn some "circle money" as my daughter calls coins. :-) Half of my affiliate proceeds are for paying it forward - each month I receive earnings I give to my local food pantry/outreach services organization. The other half is spent on books and items for my classroom. With a growth mindset, people believe that through effort and practice, they can develop and improve their talents and abilities. In a fixed mindset, people believe that their talents and abilities are fixed...and that it's talent (not effort) that creates success. Woah. Years ago, I first began to think about mindset in terms of working with struggling students...those students where the learning is hard. Students, who, if they don't have the mindset to keep trying, will give up. Then what will they learn? My thinking expanded as I witnessed students labelled as gifted hitting a struggle academically and not knowing how to handle the struggle when they are unfamiliar with the resilience and effort needed. Then I realized that mindset, resilience & perseverance are critical for all of us. Regardless of age. #helloIhatecardio #gottadoitanyways You may have seen this Growing Firsties post from a few years ago, containing this freebie download. Or maybe this post from last summer all about perseverance. I am blessed to work at an amazing school! Some talented colleagues ran a book study on Dweck's Mindset book this year and it was such fun to re-read and discuss mindset with like-minded teachers! I also added Mindsets in the Classroom (by Mary Cay Ricci) to my collection. We read aloud some great books and I expanded my collection beyond the wonderful texts from Peter H. Reynolds (Ish, The Dot, Going Places...) One of my teammates asked me if I had a printable for our work on mindset and that gave me the motivation to put my swirling thoughts to work....Here's a little peek at the inside... Scroll down to download this freebie! :) You might be interested in reading an article by the always eloquently-thought-provoking Alfie Kohn "The Perils of Growth Mindset" education. You can get to it {right here}. Carol Dweck, author of Mindset, has written this EXCELLENT article...you'll definitely want to check it out! You can get to it {right here}. I have a Pinterest board called Mindset and I love pinning to it! You can check it out by clicking here or the screen shot below. You should really check out the Famous Failures video! It's amazing! We'd love to hear what you do to help build a growth mindset with your learners!
Download our free tree template that's perfect for making seasonal crafts for kids - or a whole four seasons craft!
The Fall Preschool Unit is packed full of hands on math & literacy activities as well as no prep worksheets for easy lesson planning.
Wacky Wednesday was a super success today! We have been working through our Family Unit over the past couple of weeks and Wednesday is our day for the big projects. We call it Wacky Wednesday because our schedule is different because of an early release and everything is just a little bit....OFF. It is a perfect day to mix it up and throw in all the science and social studies we can manage! Question of the Day: Where do families live? Question of the Day: Where do families live? We had some fun answers like treehouses, igloos, RV's, and of course houses. I forgot to take a picture of our updated anchor chart though! This question gave us a great jumping off point to talk about homes around the world. Then we introduced some fun STEM activities to build homes of our own. Students did so great with this! I used some new STEM bins from Brooke Brown at Teach Outside the Box. I saw a video on Sunday, fell in love, and put them together Monday afternoon. Our study of homes was perfect to break out the bins! If you would like to check out our unit on families you can see it here. Just click on the picture! Next week we will be talking about what families ARE (loving, caring, supportive....) Want to pin these ideas for later?
The last thing you want is to pick an outdated theme for your big day. According to experts, you can skip these 7 that are out for next year!
Oh my, it is nearly two years later and I am FINALLY posting pictures! I have seriously got to get a handle on that! We have SO much fun putting together our Epic vacation bible school every year and I wanted to share with you what we have been up to! With it nearing VBS season again I thought I would take a trip down memory lane and share with you some great ideas that you can use for your own VBS! This year (2014) the theme was Wilderness Survival. The vision was to decorate the church with both desert and jungle themes! This was my first time in the role of "lead decor" and I had NO idea what I was doing (picture having to keep this all in fire code, yikes!) but luckily it all came together in the end! I will try to explain my technique for making things as I go... Here we covered the wall in kraft paper (Lowes or Home Depot in the painting section). Using tan wall paint and a large rectangle sponge, we "stamped" the wall to create bricks then went back and outlined sections in dark brown to make them stand out. It goes really fast if you stick to groupings of stone instead of every single one. The "sand" is just tan fabric by the yard from Joann's. I believe we ordered a few bolts online. The camel prop was ordered from the VBS catalog (we have since created out own VBS curriculum). The rocks are painted pieces of styrofoam. Keep going to see how we did the palm trees and vines. This large hallway I wanted to look like a cave! We used brown paper bags (amazingly cheap on dollartree.com) and crinkled them up and stapled them to the wall. WARNING: this took forever so I would suggest you stretch them as your staple to cover way more wall with less bag. And MUCH less staples! The effect in here was amazing! Here are our palm trees! We used pool noodles to create these. Cut a hole in a box a tad smaller than the noodle (so it stands up), cut the bottom off brown paper bags, and string them onto the noodle! I put a large paper plate on top to tape the leaves to. The leaves are just traces and cut from a roll of non-fade green paper. Drape the base in burlap or tan fabric to look like sand. That last picture is of our class photo area! The vines were my favorite craft! We used plastic table cloths from the Dollar Tree in a couple of different shades of green. These were really easy and each table cloth yeilds a ton of vines. Fold your tablecloth the long way a few times will it is about 5" wide. Trim the sides so you end up with long strips. Cut diagonal lines to the middle. TIP: make sure you stagger them so you dont ever cut all the way through! And even if you do you can always use short vines too! We used these EVERYWHERE! They were great fillers and really tied the theme together! As you will see in the second picture, we also used nets and hula skirts (dollartree.com) everywhere! The monkeys were also ordered online and below I will tell you how we made the rope vines... These rope vines were made using cut, twisted and staples brown paper bags. If I did this again, I would use skinny strips of rolled kraft paper instead. If would have gotten done much faster! We stapled leaves (again cut out of the non-fade paper) when we were done. These also went everywhere and were great for covering large expanses like the ceiling in the cafe. We also wrapped them around the check in area. Also on the ceiling you will see colorful paper lanterns. These are from Oriental Trading Company. This giant tree was my biggest project! The frame is made from PVC. It ended up being 12 feet tall! We used the rolls of brown kraft paper here as well. It is simple... roll it out, wrinkle it up, stretch it out, and tape it on top to bottom! The last picture shows you what it looked like from the inside. The branches were made the same way but left wrinkled and twisted. I wanted to add more but we ran out of time! This hallway is always the kids favorite. The black light hallway! Luckily one wall was already dark, the other we wrapped with a roll of black non-fade paper. The volunteers had fun make fish, octopus, turtles and other sea creatures using white paper and fluorescent paint! These were then stapled onto the wall. The floor was covered in clear balloons that we squirted with the florescent paint on the inside. The jellyfish are paper lanterns lightly painted with fluorescent paint, with streamers and white string hanging from them. The ceiling also had streamers and nets. The openeing to this hallways was made to look like a waterfall. We used clear celo wrap, paper bags (done in the same way as the cave hallway) and the flowers were made using more non-fade paper. And because the nursery kids are important too... we gave them a little decor!
These Free Printable Forest Counting Clip Cards are perfect for practicing number recognition, counting, and one-to-one correspondence with your preschoolers this summer.
This week, our unit is homes and family – I have found a few crafts that I think the children will enjoy. The one I posted below is fun because they actually get to create a home out of popsi…
You are going to love these adorable Free Tree Play Dough Number Mats Counting 1 to 10! I love using play dough number mats to practice counting skills. Counting mats for preschoolers are incredibly versatile and are a great way to introduce the skill of counting or to reinforce counting skills with older children. Your child will love practicing counting and decorating the tree with play dough apples, lemons, flowers, leaves, or whatever else their imagination can dream up!
Bite into learning with these apple literacy activities for preschoolers and learn through hands-on apple preschool activities.
As teachers, we all have certain items we can't live without in our classrooms. Today, I want to share some of my favorite items with you. I'm sure many of these items are on your lists as well! These are listed in no particular order. Cute Chevron Border on image is from http://frompond.blogspot.com Laminator. When my first laminator broke, I'm pretty sure I cried…actually, I know I did. Through Donorschoose, I was able to get this extra long laminator which is long enough to laminate file folders! Also, couldn't live without my laminating sheets. I prefer to get 5mm thickness to my items are extra durable! Sharpies. What teacher doesn't love sharpies? These are great for anything! (Except when your students think they are dry erase markers and use them on the white board.) Floor Grippers. I discovered these pre-cut floor grippers at the Dollar Tree this year (4 for $1). They are perfect for my little wiggle-worm student whose desks moves half way across the classroom during a 15-minute activity. These have actually worked very well at keeping his desk in the right place! And, I'm happy I didn't have to cut out perfect circles myself! Pencil Sharpener. Love this sharpener from Classroom Friendly Supplies…easy for the kids to use and makes the sharpest pencils EVER! Velcro. Velcro is much needed at every station in my classroom. Whether it is in a file folder activity, schedules, to attach visuals to the wall, or to help students communicate, our world revolves around velcro. To get the most for my money, I usually buy the rolls of velcro tape and then cut it into the right size pieces for each activity. This can be quite annoying when your hands get sore and your scissors are sticky (enter another favorite thing…goo-gone!). Containers and Plastic Baggies. We use plastic baggies to store all the pieces for our file folders, binder work, adapted books and more. Containers are necessary all over the place for work tasks, organization, and storage. I collect containers like crazy. Whenever I see one I like at Target or the Dollar Tree, I buy them. I even store them all inside a giant plastic container! That way, when I'm looking to re-organize, I simply open up my tub and dig through my collection of containers to find something that will work. Wet Erase Markers and Dry Erase Markers. We use dry erase markers for our white boards. For our laminated items, we use wet erase markers (overhead markers). These are super easy to clean off with just a quick spray of water or cleaner. Plus, they have a finer point, which makes them easier for kids to write with. Binders and Milk Crates. I have binders at almost every station in my classroom. They are a great way to store and organize students' individual work. I also love using milk crates from my cafeteria (don't worry, I asked if I could have them) to store and organize the classroom materials. Plus, they are FREE! I would love it if you could share something in your classroom you can't live without in the comments!
This fall themed subitizing math center is a great way to build up number sense and work on subitizing with ten frames with your students!
Hi there! This post is about using your students' names as a beginning of the year literacy theme. In kindergarten, these little stude...
Visit the post for more.
Free 12-Month set of Calendar for students to Write and Color. This set is super cute and features monthly themes and holidays.
Printable autumn word search for kindergarten or preschool aged children. Each of the words to find have a picture above it to help kids be able to read it, doubling as a fun reading worksheet.
Check out all the ways you can use these apple free printables for apple math activities with your kids in preschool, pre-k, kindergarten, and learning at home. Perfect for your apples theme, Johnny
Create a coat of arms with your kids as a literacy, art, and activity with a read-aloud, or as a family bonding craft.
