Shark Paper Bag Letter Review at Preschool

Shark Paper Bag Letter Review

I do an Ocean theme every year for preschool, but I like to change up what crafts we do. You can see other ideas here. This year we had a lot of boys so I thought it would be fun to learn about sharks. To make them, I turned the paper bag upside down so we could make it like a puppet. I drew triangles on white paper for the teeth and blue ones for the fins. The kids cut them out and glued them on as well as the eyes.

One of the kids wanted to make a hammerhead shark so I roughly traced out an image on blue paper for him to cut out. Once the puppets are dry, I cut a slit in the mouth area to feed letter fish to the shark.

We sit in a circle and the kids fish for letters and then feed the sharks when they find the letters. 

I like to try and find ideas for the kids to make a craft and follow directions, while focusing on fine motor and scissor skills, then I take it a step further and try to incorporate letter reviews and a game as well. Pinterest is a great place for a jumping off point when looking for ideas.

Spaghetti Shape Sensory

We recently did Assessments (This is something I sit down with the kids and assess what they know and what they don't so I can lesson plan.) and found that several of the kids needed more work on their shapes. Since it was Letter S day, I boiled some Spaghetti noodles while the kids had their free play time. I traced shapes and slipped the papers into sheet protectors so we could do this activity again in the future. 

I didn't do so good at keeping the noodles easy to handle. They were quite sticky and my impatient kids got a little annoyed with their stickiness. 

I called out shapes and the kids had to find them and then "trace" the letters with the spaghetti.

*Not pictured, were more shapes on the back

Once finished, you can throw the extra noodles in a tub for the kids to explore with containers. My kids ended up eating their piles as they worked. 

Spider Week at Preschool

I drew a spider web on white paper and the kids did watercolor paint to see what surprise was on their papers. Idea from here

The younger group made spider hats. They got to cut 8 legs and learn how to bend them. They cut out eyes and glued them on the front. Googly eyes would have been cooler but I didn't have enough. I always love a preschooler in hats. 

Idea from here.

For our Halloween party, the kids got to do marble painting that looks like a spider web. That marble hopped out quite a bit and would roll on the floor, so beware. 

Not pictured, we did crinkle leg spiders for our older group. They learned how to fold back and forth to get that crinkle look. Then the wrote their numbers on each leg. So one leg had a #1 written on each crinkle, the second leg had #2's written on it, ect. I babysat an older child that afternoon, whose sister comes to the preschool, and she wanted to make her own crinkle leg spider after seeing her sisters. 

As always, we have a lot of books from the Library on Spiders for the kids to look through.