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Spring Color Sorting Activity that Goes with Your Gardening Theme Then, they would remove the flowers from the foam, returning them to the matching colored pitchers. During our gardening theme we transform our dramatic play area into a flower market. Year after year, our toddlers and preschoolers love this pretend play activity. So this year we extended the flower market into our block area, using our train table as a flower sorting activity....

Invite toddlers to press the flower pieces onto the sticky Con-Tact paper. This pressing motion is great for fine motor development! If you’ve been a reader of my website for a while, you’ll know how much I love incorporating the light table into our activities. The way that the light enhances color and creates object shadows is perfect for hands-on activities such as this spring collaging activity involving Con-Tact paper and flower shaped foam pieces!...

Inside: Toddlers love to move – all day long! This is why we keep a collection of the best books for busy toddlers. They are an essential in our classroom, but would also be just as important in the home. “I cannot get my toddler to sit long enough to listen to a book.” “If I even try to read during circle time, I lose my toddlers.” Yep, I’ve received many messages from parents and teachers who are simply frustrated that their toddlers can not sit through a book....

Inside: These toddler and preschool winter lesson plans are filled with learning activities that you can do in your classroom or homeschool. Let us do the work for you! It’s time to plan your winter theme and we’ve done the work for you with our winter lesson plans! We’ve carefully chosen activities that offer a wide range of math and literacy skills, making sure to incorporate play, imagination, science, sensory and art....

Valentine’s Sensory Play What you will need: Corn starch Water Red food coloring Here is my Privacy Policy

Recently someone sent me a message asking what are my favorite toddler songs. Rather than just replying with my favorites, I decided to post the question on my Facebook wall so that my readers could respond. I was truly curious what my thousands of Facebook readers would say were their favorites. I wrote down their answers and created this collection of 30 favorite toddler songs. I’m a firm believer that music can either calm or distract a busy classroom....

Making Christmas trees out of cardboard is super simple and fun. This time of year many of us probably have some extra boxes at home if there is online holiday shopping involved. At least that’s what happened to me. When a large box was delivered to our front porch, the first thing I thought was, “I’ve got to save that for a school project.” Spoken like a true teacher, right?...

Inside: Work on colors and numbers with this fun gingerbread man matching circle time activity. Children love using props as they match the pieces! The gingerbread man theme is popular in December, and I schedule ours the first week after Thanksgiving. I put together a simple circle time printable for two and three year olds that invites them to match their gingerbread men to the same color house. There is also an option to use the numbered pieces for some math, too!...

Assembling the Pumpkin Water Table Looking for ways to get those hands ready for writing this fall? How about adding small pumpkins and droppers to your water table? Using droppers is one of my favorite ways to strengthen fine motor skills. Some examples: Frog Water Table Spider Web Art Turkey Process Art Farm Animal Washing During our pumpkin theme, I found a nice stash of party favor sized pumpkins and decided to place them in our water table along with droppers....

Inside: These 50+ Preschool Valentine’s Day Activities are sure to add some heart-shaped fun to your preschool classroom. Includes ideas for all categories of learning! Every year when I start to see Valentine’s Day items appear in the stores, I start to get excited. Have you seen the Dollar Spot in Target in February? Pink, purple, sparkly heart-shaped items- it never fails to pull me in! Since it is one of my favorite themes aesthetically, I compiled this mega-collection of over 50 Valentine’s Day Preschool Activities for your toddlers to engage in the fun!...

While learning about squares with our preschoolers, we decided to read the book The Perfect Square, by Michael Hall. I love connecting activities to picture books, such as when we sorted shapes by color after reading The Shape of Things. It brings the book to life and our preschoolers are more connected to it. We make sure to display this book in the classroom where they can revisit it as often as desired....

Inside: Work on simple counting skills while making this fun and easy preschool spider snack. Comes with a free printable sheet! We just wrapped up our spider unit and had a blast! We made spin art spiders, sang spider songs, read spider books, and loved having pretend spiders in our water table. But the highlight (and grand finale) was making edible spiders. I wanted to add some counting to all the other fun spider activities we were enjoying....

Click on the graphic below to get the free pdf: I’ve created a free printable that you can use with your preschoolers during the apple theme: Put the apples on the tree! And there are different ways you can do this, and you might come up with even more than I share here. Make sure to scroll down towards the bottom of this post to get the free pdf....

Inside: The jingle bell theme is the perfect opportunity to add extra music and movement to the toddler and preschool classroom, as well as magnetic activities. Check out all the fun activities we did! We kick off the holiday season with a jingle bell theme that also includes magnetic activities. This year I found some fun new items to add to our toddler and preschool classroom that encouraged the children to explore through play....

Inside: These free snowflake printable circle time props get toddlers and preschoolers engaged while singing winter songs. Works well with winter books, too! Get toddlers and preschoolers engaged during your winter circle time with these snowflake props. These little snowflake sticks can be used while reading books, reciting rhymes, and singing songs! Scroll to the bottom of this page to find the link to the free download! Snowflake Printable Circle Time Props During the first two weeks of January, our themes are snowflakes and snowmen....

Because our preschoolers were so into our tea party dramatic play, I thought I’d search the internet for other ideas. Here are some fun tea-related activities for little kids: . Rainy Day Mum puts together a gingerbread tea party with play dough. Here is a sweet way from The Imagination Tree to have a tea party at home. Buggy and Buddy shares how to throw a fairy tea party play date....

And here are 170+ more Dr. Seuss ideas! When I think of Dr. Seuss activities for toddlers, I think of hands-on, colorful, fun ideas. There are a lot of Dr. Seuss activities out there for preschoolers and older children, but not as much for our younger children. Dr. Seuss’ birthday is March 2, and we celebrate in both our 2s and 3s classes with a Dr. Seuss Week. We keep it much simpler for our younger children, so that is why I was thrilled to find the ideas I am featuring in this post....

You are ready to introduce the alphabet to your preschoolers. You hang the chart. You find some alphabet songs. But then what? You can get them engaged in playful learning through games. Fun, playful alphabet games that preschoolers love! (P.S. It works!) Here are 18 hands-on ways for preschoolers to explore the alphabet! 👉 Scroll down to find FREE printable alphabet cards! CLICK HERE for toddler alphabet activities! If you are looking for alphabet ideas for home, you might like this collection: How to Put Together Toddler and How to Put Together Toddler and Preschool Alphabet Activities at Home....

There are so many fun Mother’s Day ideas for kids to make. All 3 of my children are now grown, but the bottom drawer of my nightstand holds many Mother’s Day treasures from them. When I am planning Mother’s Day ideas with our toddlers and preschoolers, I know that their mamas will appreciate them for years and years! Use a clean jam jar to make a stained glass candle holder....

Inside: 50+ preschool farm activities that include books, sensory, printables, activities, and songs! Do your preschoolers love farm animals as much as ours? Seriously, we could do farm activities all year long! I think that’s why putting together this collection of preschool farm theme activities was so much fun. There’s so much out there! After a visit to a local farm in the fall, we plan farm theme activities with our preschoolers....