Preschool Powol Packets

Dr. Seuss books and activities are wonderful any time of the year, but since his birthday is coming up on March 2nd, I want to share some preschool math activities inspired by his books.  I just love mixing math and literature!! Studies show that "cross-curriculum" teaching, or using two subjects like math and reading within a common theme (like a Dr. Seuss book) tend to improve learning and increase children's abilities to apply new skills! Each of the pictures below are Amazon affiliate links and will take you to Amazon, where you can learn more about the books.  Purchasing a book after clicking the link never costs you anything more, but we get a very small commission for referring you.   Following each picture are links to fun math activities that tie directly in to the book.  I hope you enjoy them!! Yertle the Turtle Counting With Yertle the Turtle at Inspiration Laboratories Hop on Pop Ho

Abe Lincoln was the tallest president and a great role model in many ways, so we focused on him for our Presidents-themed Poppins Book Nook! Abe Lincoln was six feet and four inches tall!  Do you know anyone else that tall?  One other president (Lyndon B. Johnson) was the same height!  Click here to see the heights of all the presidents...you may be surprised by how tall most of them were! I love to talk about Abe Lincoln with my kiddos for many reasons.  Here are a few: Abe Lincoln was born in one room log cabin in 1809.  He did not have electricity, a car, or the internet! He loved to learn!  He gave himself an education by studying books any many subjects.  He learned so much on his own that he was even able to become a lawyer! He and his family had very high morals. He worked hard.  Even though he did not love farmwork, he did all the "chores" he was expected to do as a young man growing up in a rural community.  "Honest Abe" stories

We gathered up all our Valentine Candy yesterday and had a great time doing simple preschool math with it!   I feel like we somehow collected even more candy this year for Valentines than we did at Halloween time!  Putting it to good use (as math preschool manipulatives!) made me feel a little bit better about all the sugar in our house! You could use candy for these activities at any time of the year, but there are only a few times when we have so much  at our fingertips! Here are the preschool math projects we did: #1.  Graphing.  I drew a graph on a sheet of computer paper, let each child grab a handful of kisses, and then graph which colors they managed to pull out of the bowl.  This was inspired by Fantastic Fun and Learning's graphing activity ! #2:  Patterns.  I put all the kisses in the middle of our kiddos and let each child create a pattern on the back of their graphing page.  The kids made ABAB patterns, AABB patterns, and I made ABB patterns

Peas are a wonderful plant to grow with young children because they grow measurably every single day!  Preschoolers just love to see their own little plant getting taller! We planted out peas on our "Letter P" day, but you could also plant them just for fun, to celebrate Spring, to go with gardening, seed, or plant units! Planting peas is easy!   You will need these supplies: potting soil  pea seeds (we used snap peas) paper cups optional:   {FREE} cute labels Here's the Easy How-to: 1- Scoop soil into the cup. 2-  Place the seeds about an inch under the soil.  This distance is not too important...it can be anywhere from just under the soil to two inches deep. You can print out the {FREE} cute labels here : 3.  Place your cups in a sunny window and water daily!  My kids had a tendency to over-water, so I poked holes in the bottoms of the cups to let the extra water drain out.  In one week, our little pea pla

We'll be spending today celebrating Valentines Day, but I wanted to take a moment first and thank you for being here!  I love sharing our preschool adventures with you and I truly hope you have found some inspiration while you've been here!   Still looking for plans?  Here are 15 super easy ways to make today  memorable: Use a heart cookie cutter to make heart-shaped sandwiches. Cut a bunch of hearts out of paper and tape them up all over your kids room. Put red food coloring in your milk at lunch. Find a "Valentines River" and throw rocks in it.  No really!  Take your kids to a river or lake or canal and throw rocks in it! Go to a park ("Because I love you!"). Decorate sugar cookies. Dip oatmeal cookies in chocolate. Put valentines for your kids in the real  mailbox outside.  Let them check the mail. Roast marshmallows over your stove as a valentine treat. Draw hearts all over a t-shirt with your child.   Or a pair of socks. Make fan

There are a science projects that are  always  popular at our house:  things that change color, fizz, explode, and burn!  This fizzing shamrocks science experiment is perfect for some holiday fun and science! We experimented with these fizzing shamrocks last year, but I didn't have a chance to share it before St. Patrick's Day.  So, this year you get it nice and early!! Before you get started, make sure you have  these supplies :   * school glue (I used Elmer's) * paper or cardboard * baking soda * vinegar * green food coloring * disposable pipettes (I prefer plastic 1 ml pipettes). Spoons also work if pipettes are unavailable. To prepare your fizzing shamrocks , pour school glue into the shape of shamrocks on several pieces of paper.  Then pour the baking soda on your glue shamrocks.  Tip the paper up to pour the extra baking soda off.  (picture #1)  Save this baking soda for more fizzing fun when your shamrocks are done!  The next part works

We have had loads of rain today, so we tried something new: Love-ly Valentine-y Animal Charades!!  And, of course, I'm sharing the {FREE} love-ly animal cards with you today!! Since our kiddos are all pretty young (and have a tendency to over-do competitive games), we just took turns drawing a card and acting it out.  I also let them make sounds.  It helped the 3-year olds a lot!  When someone in the group guessed the animal, it was the next person's turn.  We took turns by going down a line.  If you have older children, though, you could easily divide into teams and keep score as each team takes turns guessing what one person is acting out. I also let the kids help me choose which animals to put on the cards.  The animal clip art is from the very talented MyCuteGraphics.com .   I included two sets in this file: one with just the pictures and one with the animal's name printed on each heart card.  We printed one set for charades and two sets for Memory (o