Spring is a time when new life and beginnings live; it’s the time of the year if you live in a place that is cold during the winter months that feels like the true new year. Springtime allows us teachers to feel more creative and may have more opportunities to provide quality activities for learning. Outside it is now open most of the time and getting outside is not a struggle compared to the winter gear needed what seems like yesteryear. There are so many themes that come to my mind during spring; pond life, plants and gardens, butterflies and insects, and farms are just some of my favorite preschool spring themes to teach.
These spring activities for preschool will be the main focus of this post. The skills that we can teach within these themes might seem daunting to a new teacher or even a parent. Let me show you and explain why planning activities and incorporating vital developmental skills can be simple, easy, and painless. You my friend have come to the right place to learn more about activities that you can implement in your classroom, learn skills that correlate with those activities, and have peace of mind that you can teach and do all the things with your sanity intact.
Spring Activities for preschoolers
I love using matching activities to learn new theme content. Matching skills teach vital concepts like sorting and the same versus different. These skills we use without thinking on a daily basis. Matching activities can provide you the teacher to label the items that your students see which helps with language and communication skills and cognition. When we teach matching we are doing much more than what meets the eye. Another benefit of matching activities is that it helps our short-term memory.
Matching Activities
Some of the spring activities for preschoolers that help build matching skills are the simple matching of key theme items, file folder games, puzzles, and I spy activities. File folder activities are great for individuals to be able to work on their matching skills without their peers. These activities show a child’s skill level and where they need help. For the small group matching activities these assessments might not be as accurate for the individual child as compared to the file folder game. Puzzles can give your students a fun method for matching and also aids in hand-eye coordination, problem-solving, and fine motor skills. These activities can be both individual or small groups in nature.
The I Spy activity is a great small group activity. These activities can foster turn-taking and language skills. To add further learning with the I spy activity you can count the pictures to see how many of each the class can find. Matching activities can be by kind, color, shape, and type. This kind of activity can be the easiest to add to any unit of study since they help teach the new concept while gaining many other skills without being too redundant with activities for the day.
Design Activities
Design activities for preschoolers help the teacher gain what the child might be thinking or feeling. The design activities are much more diverse than just art and creating with various media. I love to create a design a scene for various units of study. These activities will help teach your preschooler to have an imagination, learn to be creative, and work on problem-solving skills. They will learn what they like from their design and what needs to be changed. The design-a-scene might be one of my favorite spring activities for preschoolers.
This also teaches that there might be more than one way or method that works. Teaching the concept that there are topics or situations that might not be black and white or right and wrong can be vital skills for the child’s future. Allowing children this new freedom and variety will help aid them when a peer has a toy and they need to wait to have a turn.
More design-type activities include building activities such as the build-a-flower activity. The kids can spin the wheel to build a flower with the various pieces or they can just make their own. Building something with materials can fulfill a sense of accomplishment for children. Our students need to have opportunities to feel a sense of accomplishment whether big or small. These accomplishments will help to foster a sense of oneself and confidence for future activities.
Literacy Activities
I love teaching themes with the use of literacy. Literacy allows the reader to work on listening skills, build a vocabulary, and even work on comprehension. These skills are easier to work on with the use of books and other concepts about print. Books help to bring any theme alive and help to foster inspiration. The spring activities for preschool give many literacy opportunities to help build these skills for your students. There are various easy readers to help introduce the many topics related to spring.
The pond hop and say activity bridges literacy skills and movement into one activity. The students can see the pond animal and see the word that represents the picture. The kids can hop on the lilypad and say what they see. For younger students, the teachers can say the word to build emergent literacy skills and reinforce that letters make-up words. Whether it’s a book from the bundle or a book from the library; reading should be a foundational skill that is encouraged and entertained daily in the classroom.
Movement Activities
Incorporating movement into your theme-based activities can help with motor coordination skills and energy output. I love incorporating movement games that link to the learning theme. For example, there is a pond animal movement game that has correlating movements of the various pond life in nature. These movements will build your student’s motor coordination skills while imitating the animal’s movements.
Some movement activities work on whole-body movements while others might work on throwing skills or kicking skills. These activities can help foster a sense of independence, work on turn-taking, and build emotional regulation skills. Adding some movement activities into your daily activities can help to build attention, memory, and decision-making skills. When we add movements to learning kids learn new concepts while improving their retention of skills at the same time.
Spring Preschool Activities
The themes that I can think of for spring preschool activities tend to be great topics to foster science and math skills. These two learning areas can either be used in a productive manner or seem to be left alone in the preschool setting. Math and science do not need to be hard learning areas but they do require many times for teachers to be involved and set the tone for how to use materials and guide learning in the environment. Teaching some basic math like counting, shapes, and patterns can be easy to teach and guide to be able to foster independence as the school year progresses. Graphing skills can also help teach kids how to count once the graph is completed.
For the science area, teachers need to teach how to use the tools in this center for use and treatment. I teach kids how to use magnifying glasses, test tubes, x-rays, and other tools. These skills may need multiple supervision and aid when using these tools for learning. Most science activities can be fun and also include experiments these activities are fun but certain rules must be in place for everyone’s safety. Some of our easier science learning for spring themes include the life cycles of various creatures such as butterflies, frogs, and plants. Teaching how the life cycle works help teach kids about the stages and chapters of life.
Preschool Theme Spring
These spring activities for preschool might have you thinking about your class and what you might want to teach your kids during this time of the year. This is a fun time to be a teacher to teach about life in any form. There is a newness in spring that brings with it excitement and eagerness to learn. If you need help in preschool theme spring ideas you have come to the right place. Whether you pick a matching, design, literacy, math, or science activity your kids will have a greater understanding of the theme and unit of study and be engaged. If you are thinking of teaching a butterfly, pond, farm, or garden theme maybe the Spring Bundle is for you. To learn more about the activities mentioned in this post click the image below. Which spring activities for preschool will you teach in your classroom?
More Spring Activities
From ABCS to ACTS 10 Spring Activities. These activities include butterflies, insects, and gardens https://fromabcstoacts.com/10-spring-activities-for-toddlers/
Pond Theme Activities from natural beach living. This post brings out the science of the pond unit. Also, there is a free printable! https://www.naturalbeachliving.com/pond-theme-activities-stem-free-printables/
Farm activities by taming little monsters https://taminglittlemonsters.com/farm-activities-for-kids/
