Alphabet Concentration and Lunch Time Circle Game

Teaching the alphabet is one of our key goals in preschool. One of my readers sent me this "green" idea for creating Alphabet Concentration. I love getting these ideas on ways to recycle and teach all at the same time. The next game is a fun way to spend lunch or circle time with your preschoolers. It involves color recognition and food identification. Try these alphabet concentration and lunch time circle game with your kids.

Alphabet Concentration
This game is a concentration/matching game.
I cut empty cereal boxes into approx. 2" squares. Label them with 26 upper case and 26 lower case letters. Mix up the cards, lay them face down and begin turning them over 2 at a time to find matches.

I have taken this one step further and made doubles of the large case and small case letters. This way I can modify the game and use it with all ages. With my younger ones, I just use the doubles of the large case and only 10-12 letters at a time and see if they can match the letters and challenge their attention span to remember where a letter is to make a match.

Fun Lunch Time Game
Use a set of color cards. Sit in a circle. Let your student pick a color card of their choice, they than pass it to their neighbor. Then they have to guess a fruit or a vegetable of that color. Continuue passing until it has gone all the way around. (We have a chart that is up to help them pick from.) Some of them use it others don't.

Thanks for sharing your ideas. Send me any ideas you would like to share and I will post them on my Blog.


If you like these ideas for preschool, check out the other ideas in the Preschool Planner.

http://www.mypreschoolplan.com/p/ar.html

There are Two Editions now for the Preschool Planner: Basic or Platinum.

Mary
marys.plans@gmail.com


P.S. If you would like to receive my free newsletters for ideas for your preschool class, enter your name and address at the site below:

http://preschoolplanner.com/preschool-activities.html

Indoor ideas for Preschool - Popsicle Painting and Pendulum Play

January in the US for most of us means finding as many indoor ideas for preschool to do that teach, motivate and uses the pent up energy that results from "cabin fever".
Preschoolers need to be active. They learn best when they are physically involved in the lesson.

All of my readers are sending in wonderful ideas to share and here are a couple of them that use the "learn by doing" philosophy that I use every day.

Popsicle Painting
Here is a craft one of my readers sent in that she does with the children in the winter and it is also a science learning experiment.

The children love this. Take water and fill the ice trays. Add food coloring to the water, lay a piece of plastic over and poke a popsicle stick in the middle. You can also use small bathroom cups. We then freeze them and talk about what we think will happen to the water and why. Then in the afternoon or the next morning we pull them out and discuss what happened and why.

Best of all then we paint beautiful pictures with the ice popsicles.

Pendulum Play
String up a tennis ball in a stocking from the rafters.
Have your children construct a building or tower from assorted size boxes, cardboard cylinders, small yoghurt/butter containers, etc. Then let them take turns knocking them down with the pendulum.

NOTE: Be sure to be have this done in a controlled manner and each child gets a turn to knock down a tower. Set a place for the child to stand and have the others stand back so that no one gets hurt.

If you like these indoor ideas for preschool, check out the other ideas in the Preschool Planner.

http://www.preschoolplanner.com/thefullstory.html

There are Two Editions now for the Preschool Planner: Basic or Platinum.


Send me any ideas you would like to share and I will post them on my Blog.

Mary
marys.plans@gmail.com


P.S. If you would like to receive my free newsletters for ideas for your preschool class, enter your name and address at the site below:

http://preschoolplanner.com/preschool-activities.html