Summer/Beach Theme

Our Preschool finishes our school year before Memorial Day so it is rare that we have time to cover many summer themed activities unless I tie them in with my seasons and weather themes. At times I tie my beach theme in with my animal theme and we cover ocean animals as one of many groups of animals. A fun name activity for a Summer/Beach theme includes drawing a large yellow sun with each child's name on it. Then writing the letters of the child's name on yellow rays, one letter per ray, and having the students place them in order around the sun.
Our Fine Motor or Literacy Centers include writing letters and our names in sand or in mud. We have mixed dirt and water to create mud and we have also played with chocolate pudding as mud.

For Gross Motor play, we spend more time playing outdoors using bubbles, beach balls and sidewalk chalk.
We practice measuring items like ice cream cones or sea shells in our Math Center.
Our Dramatic Play Center has an ice cream stand that includes writing the ice cream orders, creating the ice cream orders and counting ice cream scoops.
Our Science Center has sand and seashells for the students to feel and investigate.
Some good books for a Summer/Beach theme include:
*"Commotion in the Ocean"
* "A House for Hermit Crab"
* "Mister Seahorse,"
*"The Relatives Came"
* "Jabari Jumps,"
*"The Watermelon Seed,"
*"The Very Lonely Firefly"

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Fine Motor Activities

Fine Motor strength is so important to develop in order to prepare students to write. We have a lot of fun fine motor activities and centers that we use. We find different materials to cut. We use a vertical surface to draw, color and paint. For this activity, we painted blueberries with clothespins and blue pom poms. Mini erasers can be used for many things such as tracing letters and sorting. Giant pushpins can be used with supervision to make our names or letters, numerals and shapes. Q-tips make a fun paintbrush that uses a different hand motion then swiping. Many literacy and math games also use fine motor skills like this pie sorting game. We also practice fingerplays and draw in our journals to strengthen our fingers to get ready for kindergarten.

Daily Preschool Schedule

Our Preschool runs a half day program so we have a morning class and a completely seperate afternoon class. Here's the lesson plan form that I have tweeked and found to be helpful in fitting everything into our short day. Class Name_________ Week #____ Day #____ Theme_____________ 9:00-9:25 Arrival and Free Choice Play 9:25-9:30 Clean Up 9:30-9:45 Morning Meeting and Music 9:45-10:00 Gross Motor Play 10:00-10:15 Math Circle Time 10:15-10:20 Brain Break and Movement 10:20-10:35 Fine Motor Table Work 10:35-10:55 Snack and Quiet Time 10:55-11:10 Literacy/Science/Social Studies Read Aloud Read: Focus: 11:10-11:25 Centers 1)math center: 2) art center: 3) fine motor center: 4)language arts center: 11:25-11:30 Clean up and Dismissal

Body and Senses Theme

I usually spend a day for each of the basic five senses and then further the theme by spending a few more days covering the basic parts and functions of the body such as heart, lungs, skin, and brain. For the sense of taste, I give each child something sour (lemon drop), something salty (pretzel), and something sweet (a piece of chocolate) to eat. We discuss the tastes and which they like the best. Then we discuss our tongues. Each student can be given a mirror to look into to see their tongue and the taste buds on it. We read "Jamberry" and try some different flavors of jam. For the sense of smell, I place items in film canisters and allow each child to smell each item and guess what it is. Then we graph which smells we like and do not like. A follow up activity is to ask students to determine which items will have a smell and then walk the items around and have students smell them and determine if their guesses were correct. I use things like mustard, a comb, or...

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