Preschool Powol Packets

Our favorite preschool songs have great actions, fun rhymes, and tie into our themes!  These dinosaur songs are perfect for singing with one or two kids or for a big group's circle or singing time!  Action rhymes for kids get your preschoolers moving, exercising, and rhyming all at the same time! Anything that combines large muscle or gross motor exercise with literacy improves memory and cognition. Try these fun preschool dinosaur songs out and let me know how your kids like them! #1: Are You Eating, Dinosaur? by: Carla at Preschool Powol Packets Tune: Frere Jacque/Are You Sleeping Are you eating? Are you eating? (pretend to eat) Dinosaur? Dinosaur? (shrug) I can hear you stomp and I can hear you tromp and (stomp and tromp in a circle) Now let's ROAR!  Now let's ROAR! (put hands to mouth and roar) #2: Dino Toes by: Carla at Preschool Powol Packets Tune: Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes Dino head, Dino toes, dino toes, dino toes, (point to he

One of my favorite ways to build a preschool lesson is to start with a book and add an activity that relates to that story. Today I'm sharing a rainforest-themed book and a fun preschool science experiment that go together perfectly! The Umbrella  by Jan Brett is about an adventurous boy who heads into the Amazon rainforest looking for animals.  You meet rainforest animals, like a kinkajou and quetzal, who end up having an even bigger adventure than the boy.  Most of the story happens inside the boy's umbrella, which he leaves on the ground while he climbs a tree! Amazon Affiliate Link: For your own exciting preschool science activity, you will need a large bowl of water, aluminum foil, and a bunch of small, plastic animals. Fold the foil into an "umbrella" and place it in the water.  Estimate and hypothesize how many of your animals it will hold.  Start adding the animals, one at a time. We only had a couple rainforest animals, s

This rollicking rhyme for kids is loaded with action prompts and fun facts about bears! You can do use it with a preschool forest theme, a Letter B week, or just for fun!   Be bears with your preschoolers! We had so much fun with this one that we probably did it ten times! Actions are suggested for each part of the rhyme in italicized type. You can easily adapt a lot of yoga poses into this action rhyme. You can do this activity inside, but it is even more fun to go outside and be bears with your kiddos in nature, just like real bears!  Rhyming activities develop important pre-reading skills that help your children decode, group word families, and predict words when they start reading.  So, here is our... Big, Big Bear Preschool Action Rhyme by Carla at Preschool Powol Packets I'm a big, big bear   (stretch out arms and legs like a modified warrior pose) With lots of hair  (pull on imaginary hair on shoulders) And a super-strong smelling nose!  

Since Brazil is hosting the Olympics this year, I thought it would be fun to try a few games that kids in Brazil might play! My kids are already huge fans of soccer, the most popular game (for kids and adults) in Brazil! The Portuguese word for soccer is "futebol," which sounds a lot like "football! Kids will play it in organized leagues and just as groups of kids in the schoolyard or neighborhood. You can play it with a whole team or as few as two kids--one on each "team." Most kids have a favorite professional team and players! Other games you've probably already tried that kids in Brazil play too include checkers, jump rope, and card games. Here is a game that may be new to you.  It is called Queimada (which means "burned" in Portuegese). It is similar to dodge ball in America. To play queimada, follow these steps: 1- Divide into two teams: Team 1 & Team 2. 2- Set up the field: Divide the field in half, one si

My kids love food they make themselves so much more than anything I make them, so they were pretty excited about their own kid-made patriotic parfaits! They also love to eat themed food, so making a patriotic treat to go with a patriotic lesson, craft, activity, or experiment went over really well!  (See below for our patriotic unit study!) Before I called them, I pulled out our "castle cups," rinsed strawberries, rinsed mixed berries, and yogurt. Our grocery store was out of fresh blueberries, but the frozen mixed berry bag had loads of blueberries in themI like to use plain yogurt with either honey or stevia in it, so when I placed the yogurt on the table it was already sweetened and ready to go! The kids layered the red, white, and blue (patriotic colors for us!) into their cup while we talked about the colors on our flag and what they represented.  It was a great reminder for the reason we have 13 stripes and how the first 13 colonies came together orig

Do you know what color giraffe skin is? Today we're using a capillary action science experiment to make our own giraffe skins in this fun giraffe science experiment project! (Read on...I'll tell you the color in a moment! AND I have a few more fun giraffe facts at the end! Anyway, go on and make a guess before you see the answer!) Fun Spot  Giraffe  Fact:  There are four different giraffe species:  the Masai Giraffe, the Rothschild Giraffe, the Somali Giraffe, and the Nigerian Giraffe.  Each has its own unique spot pattern.  Even more unique, every single individual giraffe has a different spot design.  Just like fingerprints on people and stripes on a zebra, spots on a giraffe are unique in every individual! Giraffe skin is mostly grey. (Were you right?) It's also really tough and thick.  The coat is a shade of tan with brown spots or patches.  Male giraffes actually get darker as they get older! To make our "giraffe skin" we're going to us

Z is for a Preschool Paper Plate Zebra Art Project!  The Olympics are starting soon, and we've been doing different activities to get to know different parts of the world that are participating in the games. Zebras are one of many animals that live wild in South Sudan, a county with athletes competing in the Olympics for the first time this year! South Sudan has only been a country for a few years, since 2011.  You can find it on a map in the middle of Africa.  Inside of South Sudan you can find grasslands, savannas, wetlands, floodplains, woodlands, and high altitude plateaus!  That's a lot of diversity in a small area!  Some of the animals that live there include lions, elephants, giraffes, buffalo, bongo, hogs, chimpanzees, monkeys, and...zebra! Fun Fact: The plural form of "zebra" is "zebra!" For our preschool zebra craft, I wanted to do something with the kids that they could do all by themselves...and still have it look like a zebra! We do