Family Theme Block Area
Family theme week in PreK seemed like a great week to get out the play house I purchased at Lidl, along with the furniture and people. This was out in the block area all week long with a variety of students playing with it.
During our family theme we also found time to work on our letter focus of letter P (along with all the letters we have covered so far) as well as our Bible lesson of Creation. You will see how we managed this with both my lesson plan that I will include at the end of the post, along with some photos of my centers and sharing our crafts, books, poems, and songs.
Family Math and Fine Motor Centers
Our math and fine motor center also had some literacy activities on it this week. We used the jumbo cubes again this week to review the letter sounds we have been working on as well as adding this week’s letter. I cut out and laminated the letters and pictures and then taped them to the cubes with clear packing tape. For this time I made the game self checking with the same color being for the same letter. Later in the year I may switch it up and mix up the colors. You can find this alphabet letter sound activity to use with jumbo cubes in my TPT shop.
We also used the family counters along with some houses to play a math game with my assistant on Monday and then made it available to play as an independent center for the rest of the week. Students picked a house, rolled the die, and put that many matching color family members in the correct house. I just printed a gray scale house clip art that I liked on colored paper to match the colors of the family counters.
Below are affiliate links to items needed to set up these centers:
Pizza Theme Easel Activity
To go along with letter P, we had a pizza felt board. The students made some awesome and creative pizzas. We also read Pete’s a Pizza (which I will link to below with the other books) and sang the Silly Pizza song during circle time.
Fine Motor Literacy and Family Theme Playdough
This is the first time we have gotten out the letter stamps, so I spent some time showing students how to find the letter they needed by singing the alphabet song while pointing to each letter. Some students also needed to be shown how to put the letter stamp into the ink to use it. As teachers we sometimes forget that this may be the first time students are using these tools. Some students also avoid new centers because they have not used the tools before, so we try to make sure there is time in each day to invite a few children to new centers to show them how they work.
The Alphabet Stamping pages can be found in my TPT shop. They are also part of my alphabet bundle.
We used play dough mats from Sparklebox this week to build faces. I like that this set has a wide variety of faces to choose from. I put different ones out each day, with the entire set available to switch choices if students want to do so.
Creation Theme Activities
Our Bible focus this week was God Created Our World from Cross Connections for Early Learners. We also had our sensory bin be a creation bin that will continue into next week. I added black and white beans for the first day for Day and Night. On the second day I added some blue streamers and cotton balls. For the third day I added some plants and ground. For the fourth day I added some stars. Next week we will add things God created on the fifth and sixth days.
Our main craft for the week was working on a Creation Book that each child will take home at the end of next week. I found the words on this blog. You can find some photos of finished pages in this post.
Groomer Theme Pretend Play
Since pets are part of our family and we will be studying pets the next week, I decided to make our dramatic play area a Groomer. Sometimes I do a combined Vet and Groomer or Groomer and Pet Store, but I decided to go simple this time since it is still the first month of school and it will make for easier clean up for my students. I do not want to overwhelm them with too many pieces and parts and then get frustrated when they have messes that are too overwhelming for them to handle cleaning up.
The printables for the Groomer come from Pocket of Preschool’s Vet Clinic set. If I were going to keep the center for more than two weeks, I would definitely keep adding to it each week for interest. I may add in some pretend cages and a feeding area next week.
Family and Letter P Books
We used many books this week that related to families as well as the letter P. With a new student being added this week we also read our class books both before and after adding our new student’s pages to help the student learn classmates names as well as classmates learning the new name.
Below are affiliate links to the books we used:
We also learned another song from Signing Time! called “Mom has a Mom.”
Family Theme PreK Lesson Plan
For more information about my lesson plans for Family week, please download my complete lesson plan below. Be sure that you have the most recent Adobe Acrobat Reader installed and use CTRL-click to follow links to where all activities and books can be found:
Family Theme in PreK Lesson Plan
You can also find the editable lesson plan form in my TPT shop.
