Teaching Preposition with Snowflakes

Here's a fun, interactive Winter movement activity that teaches prepositions with snowflakes!  Attach paper snowflakes to skewers (let your kiddos make the snowflakes if they can!) and give one to each of your students.  Tell them that it's snowing beautiful snowflakes!  Let them dance their snowflakes around the room.  You can play Little Snowflake from Super Simple Songs on YouTube or The Four Seasons: Winter by Vivaldi while they dance.  After the song, tell them the wind is beginning to blow really hard!  (Maybe even play  wind sound effects from YouTube!)  Start talking about all the places the wind is blowing the snowflakes: ON their hair, IN the garbage can, UNDER the table, OVER their heads, etc.  And let them tell you where their flakes are blowing!

Remember: Children better remember what is taught them when they use multiple senses to learn.

Other Winter Activities:

Arctic Animal Finger Puppets

Arctic Animal Photographs with QR Code Sounds

Arctic Animals Tracing Page

Arctic Animal Shadow Matching

Arctic Animal Shadow Puppets

Winter Music, Activities and Printables

 Hibernation Song and Bear Family Printable

 Melting Snowman Poem and Activity (FREE!)

Using Music to Teach a Phone Number

Activities For Your Classroom Halloween Party

Find Your Halloween Party Activities Here!

Happy Haunting!

Halloween Songs that Teach Little Ones Their Body Parts

Attention Speech Therapists, Special Educators and Early Interventionists!  This post is for you!

Are you trying to teach your little pumpkins to identify their body parts?  Use these fun Halloween songs to engage them in learning!

Click to get the rest of the song lyrics for FREE in our store!

Why Tracing Lines is Important

Being able to form letters for writing is a very complex skill for a young child and there are many other smaller skills that need to be mastered before a child can be successful at writing.  Skills such as the ability to grip a pencil, form a line, start and stop at the correct spots, and to write on a line can be practiced and strengthened, getting a child ready for forming letters.

This brings us to the importance of being able to trace lines.  Holding a pencil then moving it along a line strengthens the fine motor skills needed to precisely form letters.

Our tracing pages are fun, colorful and engaging and available in several themes.  We think the best way to use them is to print and laminate each page and let your child or student trace the lines with a dry erase marker.  When finished, wipe clean and trace again!  A pile of laminated tracing pages available to students during free play or writing centers would provide great opportunities for practice!

Our popular Mermaid Tracing Page is free!

We also have other pages that can be purchased individually or in a bundle. 

Halloween Tracing

Hansel and Gretel Tracing

Reindeer Tracing

Owl Tracing

Thanksgiving Tracing

Valentine Tracing

Reindeer Sleigh Tracing Page

Dinosaur Tracing

Arctic Animal Tracing

Pre-writing Tracing Pages Bundle

Happy Tracing!

Owl Welcome Song

Music and Numbers

Music and Numbers 

In a previous post, we discussed the relationship between music and reading and how that relationship is processed in the brain.

Today we want to talk about ways music can strengthen a child's sense of numbers.  We've included quite a few songs that introduce numbers and counting to young children.

Let's start with an easy one:

Ten Little Indians

Use the tune of Ten Little Indians to count...anything!.  If your students love dragons, sing about ten little dragons!  If it's Fall, sing about ten little pumpkins, counting pumpkin candy corn for a visual. And if it's Halloween, sing about ten little spiders!  Using 10 pictures of a spider or 10 plastic spiders will give your students a great visual of objects increasing or decreasing as you count down or up.

Click here for a free printable for the song!

Over in the Meadow

This sweet little song talks about and counts all the animals found in the meadow.

Click here for these number cards.

The Ants Go Marching

Click here for these number cards.

Jack and Jill

Jack and Jill went up the hill

To fetch FOUR pails of water.

1…2…3…4!

Jack fell down and broke his crown

And Jill came tumbling after.

And the pails came tumbling after.

1…2…3…4…!

Splash!

This Little Piggy

The FIRST little piggy went to market.

The SECOND little piggy stayed home.

The THIRD little piggy had roast beef.

The FOURTH little piggy had none.

The FIFTH little piggy went 'wee...wee...wee!' all the way home!

Fingerplays

These can be so fun!  Here are some original fingerplays, with finger puppets, that we have written.

Click here for all of the fingerplays and puppets.

Click here for all of the Halloween fingerplays and puppets.

Happy counting and happy singing!