Sensory activities are soooooooooo good for kids!  They help promote social, emotional, and intellectual development!  There is even a positive correlation between sensory development and a reduction in biting in toddlers.  Very interesting!

During my turn to teach preschool we did an awesome sensory activity using spaghetti noodles.   They were so silly about it!  They told me how their parents never let them play with their spaghetti!  I think that made the activity all the more fun for them!

 

 

 

 

 

In the end, all that was left was a big pile of painted noodles!  The kids really liked seeing what colors they could make the noodles when they mixed the colors!  This is a great way to incorporate science into your sensory project!

If you liked this activity you may also like these sensory activities:
Handprint Butterfies 
Painting with Ice
Hand and Foot Print Reindeer
Pine Cone Turkeys
Hand Print Turkey Feathers
Hand and Foot Print Creatures
Sensory Table Activities
Sensory Play 

 

We are getting down to the end of our alphabet here and seems like the last few letters are the trickiest to find activities for.  This week was my turn to teach and we were on Ww.  It took a little extra thought, but we ended up coming up with plenty of fun activities!

We had a very silly circle time for Ww.  We first reviewed past letters and sounds, then introduced the letter Ww.  There are a ton of gross motor activities associated with W so we took some time to do them during circle time using role playing.  Here are a few of the things we did:

• Wiggle like a Worm
• Pretend to be blowing in the Wind
• Swim and splash in the Water
• Pretend to eat a big piece of Watermellon
• Use a magic Wand to turn each other into a Whale, Walrus, and Worm.
• Lay down to make the shape of a W with our  bodies

We made cute watermelons out of paper plates, construction paper, and paint.  These are really easy and do not take a lot of supplies.  The kids really liked making them, especially after we had just pretended to eat watermelon during circle time.  This is a great cross curricular activity as well since you can incorporate both science and math into your art by teaching about fruits and having the kids count the watermelon seeds on their project.

 

We also let the kids paint W’s with Watercolors.  This is a simple, but fun project.  It also looks great as a finished project to add to their alphabet books they have been making!

 

To finish our obsessed Ww preschool day we ate yummy snickerdoodle cookies topped with Whipped cream!  Make sure to emphasize how whipped cream starts with W!!

To see more preschool letter activities we have done, check out the links below!

Letter B, Letter C, Letter H, Letter I, Letter K, Letter L, Letter Q, Letter R.

I found some fun letter K activities to do with the kiddos when it was my turn to teach preschool last month.  Don’t ask why I am just not posting them… life just gets busy!

Anyway, we read the story of Humpty Dumpty during circle time after we had talked about the letter K.  It wasn’t the basic nursery rhyme, but a more detailed story with lots of fun pictures.  I told the kids before the story to listen for someone important in the story who started with the letter K.  The kids are still mostly 3 year olds and needed a few hints before coming up the with the King as the important person I was referring to.

So we made ourselves Kings by cutting and decorating our own crowns and then walking around the house pretended to be Kings.   The kids really had fun with it.

We also painted uppercase and lowercase K’s for our alphabet book.  For each letter we make a nice project that can represent that letter to put in our binders.  When we finish the alphabet we will have our very own home made books to help us remember all our letters.

One of the cross curricular activities we did was a kite puzzle.  Along, with reinforcing the letter K and its sound, the kids matched the shapes and numbers to make the kite.  They also counted the pieces to the kite.

We had so much fun learning the letter L with our preschool class.  (For those new readers, I have a preschool swap program with a couple friends that have kids the same age as mine.  We trade off who teaches every couple weeks.  It really works out great!)  So it was mine turn to teach the letter L.  We had a blast Leaping like a Lion, making our own lion masks, decorating the letter L with Leaves, making L’s with play dough, and making a cute Lady bug take home project.

Ladybug supplies needed:
black construction paper
wiggly eyes
1 paper plate
red paint

Very simple… cut a paper plate in half and let the kids paint it.  Once it is dry have the kids glue it on a pre-cut ladybug head and body.  I used a hole puncher for the spots and crinkled construction paper strips for the legs.  **This is a cross-curricular activity since it covers, art, science, and math.  Take time to help the kids count the ladybug spots and talk about ladybugs and insects!

The kids really enjoyed this one!  Even though it is winter out we were able to find enough leaves to do this.  It was different for the kids so they thought it was pretty cool.

 

Lion Mask Materials
Paper plate
crayons
wide popsicle stick

 

Yep, my turn to teach preschool again.  We had a lot of fun learning H!  There are a lot of things you can do with the letter H since Hand print starts with H.  However, I feel like I have done the hand print projects to death lately so I went another direction.

We talked about our Hearts and how to take care of our bodies.  The kids seemed to enjoy it.  We did a couple different projects this week.

Decorating the letter H with hearts

This was really simple, but is great for fine motor development.  The hearts are small so they had to work to pick them up and glue them on.  I used a heart hole puncher sort of like this one to make the hearts.  I got mine at Michaels for a under $5 though.  I scrap book a lot and slowly like to build up my stash of supplies.

The kids are in the process of making their own alphabet book.  Each week we learn a new letter and do a couple crafts to represent that letter.  They all have their own binders full of plastic sleeve protectors to store their projects in alphabetical order.  When we finish all our letters they will have their own little book to review their letters.

Preschool Letter H Activity – Paint A Heart

Here is the other project we did for the alphabet book for letter H.  It is pretty self explanatory.  They kids loved it… really anything involving paint is a big hit with the kids.

Brrrr!  We really had fun painting with ice cubes! This is such a fun little project!  I even enjoyed participating! All you have to do is fill up your ice tray and put a drop of food coloring in each one.  No need to mix or stir.  Just put in your drop and wait for them to freeze.  Pull the cubes out and let them sit for a few minutes before starting.

We are learning the letter Ii this week in preschool so painting with ice cubes was a perfect project!  This is also a great sensory and science activity.  Make sure to have the kids describe how the ice feels in their hands.

The kids also made igloos to learn about ice and the letter Ii as well.  Just cut out a bunch of white squares and let them create their igloo house!