Teaching with a Transportation Theme and Letter T {complete TEAM lesson}

The Transportation Theme is always fun with preschool age students! 

Who doesn't love things that go? 

Despite my initial excitement, it was surprisingly difficult to come up with a variety of activities to connect to this theme and the letter T!

After a little brainstorming and Pinterest searching, I came up with some fun exciting for the kiddos!

Activity 1: Letter People T Puppet, Song, and Air-write 

          Every week, the students meet a new letter person. If you have access to the Letter People curriculum, I highly advise you use it. Although we do things a little differently, the students love meeting our new letter person each week!

If you don't have the Letter People, you could always use another puppet and play the song from the YouTube videos available!

Activity 2: Airplane Writing in Shaving Cream

            Because we are developing fine motor skills and several students have sensory difficulties, this activity is great! Not only does it tie to the theme of transportation and the letter of the week, T, but it also engages all of these other areas. Students were given a blue paper plate to mimic the sky which was filled with shaving cream. I "hooked" students by asking them if they wanted to be pilots and fly their airplane (finger) through the clouds (shaving cream).

Activity 3: Transportation Engineer (Shape matching)

I printed these templates on construction paper and cut out the corresponding shapes on different colors of construction paper. Students had to match the shape to their mode of transportation and glue the pieces. For enrichment, I had my higher level students write a short sentence to say whether the transportation they selected traveled in the air, water, or land (which was our key focus for this theme).

The Shape Template for matching and the Transportation Template for the transportation blueprints can be found for FREE by followng these links to my TpT store

Activity 4: Transportation Sort {land, air, water} and "We All Go Traveling By" Song

To learn more about this activity and the script and activities for introducing the Letter Person T, please download my Complete TEAM Lesson.  

The kids loved this theme and learned so much with all of our activities! 

I hope your students have just as much fun!

Stay tuned for more, Teaching in the A.M.!

Teaching with Apple Theme {activities and door decoration}

Each week, the preschool class in which I was completing my student teaching had a new theme. 

The theme a few weeks ago was apples, so we had a week jam-packed with all types of apple taste-testing and apple activities. Keep in mind, I have two different groups of students and each group only comes two days a week for half of a day, so the number of activities we can do are limited. 

Activity 1: Apple Taste Test (red, yellow, green) and Graphing with Dotters

Activity 2: "Libby's Apples" by Discovery Education and Painting with Apple Halves

Activity 3: Story time with Apple Books and Taste Test Apple Sauce and Cider

Because we had such great crafts created from the Painting with Apple Halves activity and Graphing Taste Test activity, I decided that I would create a door decoration that would allow me to display their hard work. 

Door Directions

The door is covered with blue paper and our phrase was "Best of the Bunch." We are required to have a view through the window, so I cut out a square and scrunched red tissue paper in the shape of an apple to hide that ugly cut out. I used green tissue paper for the leaf and twisted brown construction paper for the stem. 

Then, I cut out the apples that the students created by painting with apple halves as stamps. Because I have two different groups, I had one group create single apples. I needed more of the single apples, so I asked for volunteers in the second group. Those that did not volunteer created the baskets with three apples (which coincided with the video and our number of the week).

The upper corner of the door also contains part of my tree which was created using tissue paper and the directions provided below for the large tree. 

Tree Decoration

Let me just say, I have never gotten so many compliments on a door decoration, and it was all because of this tree which is actually easy to create! For the trunk, we used a thick, brown paper similar to butcher paper. They had it in our gym to cover the floor for dances and special events. We cut it to size and scrunched. I was not hopeful when we finished scrunching, but do not be discouraged. Once you get everything else up, yours, too, will look fabulous!

Next, I used green paper and cut out the shape of the top of the tree. From there, it is so simple! To create the tree, I used four different shades of green tissue paper cut into small squares. I covered one section of my template at a time with a large glue stick. Then, I crumpled up each tissue paper square and stuck it on. It is literally that simple! Just glue, crumple, and stick until your tree is full. When I finished, I had a few areas I wasn't happy with so I added extra "leaves" as necessary by taping up extra sections until I was happy with the overall shape. 

Hope you enjoy this as much as my class (and school) has enjoyed it! 

Every teacher and student that walked by stopped to gawk!

Stay tuned for more, Teaching in the A.M.!