Preschool Lesson Plans: Earth Day Theme

Well, We are still working on the Earth Day theme, supplementing with fundamental concepts.

After we read a short online story, Drippy the RainDrop about the water cycle, we worked on our Hooked On Phonics for a bit, and then practiced with a file folder game I printed from Preschool Printables.
Monkey girl really enjoyed the game, and showed how well she recognised the letters.

We then moved on to vocabulary words. This is new and, unlike what you remember in elementary school, I don't expect her to read or spell the words, just have a basic understanding of them. I have them written out because the more print you expose children to, the better. The more they see letters grouped into words, the more concrete the idea of reading and writing becomes.


Emily decided she wanted to practice writing so she practiced on her dry erase board. She is doing well with p, e o, and c right now.

Then we made a recycling collage by taking old magazines and cutting them and gluing them into an art collage. Of course artistic Emily loved this. She loves cutting and gluing. And it reinforced the theme of recycling. (Her geeky dad was excited she picked the Star Trek ad to put on her artwork.)


Finally, we talked about recycling and our trip to the local recycling center we will go on next week. we are starting to recycle in our house and will be graphing this. Graphing reinforces math concepts of more, less, and equal to in a very visual way that is understandable for preschoolers.

Math in Your Preschool Lesson Plan

When we think about our little preschool students, we don't always think they are capable of "math". But we must incorporate math into our preschool lesson plans. there are lots of things that we can do that can strengthen those pre-math skills.

One is graphing.I tend to use bar graphs because it's a lot more visual and obvious to the kids. You can graph anything- hair color, eye color, who has pets, and the list goes on. When using graphs you talk about more and less, you count how many people have on red shirts. You are expanding their knowledge of numbers and mathematical concepts.

Something else you can do is patterning. When preschoolers learn that there are patterns to things, they learn the principles behind math concepts. When they learn to predict the sequence of patterns, they learn skills that will transfer to math later.

Also, math skills can be exercised by sorting, counting of course, and recognizing sizes and shapes. Math is a skill that if nurtured early, can help a child succeed later in our life.

In our technology and science based culture, strong math skills can take them far. It's important to give children that head start.