Theme: Traffic Safety
January Themes: My boys (ages 2, 4) go to preschool twice a week, so I planned our activities for the off days - Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I printed a monthly chart (link to come) as a way to keep organized and stay on track. However, some weeks we just do activities as we go. Here's the third theme at a glance:
MONDAY:
Letter (U is for U-Turn): We painted a U-Turn Sign.
Numbers (My Phone Number): I thought it would be important for my boys to know my phone number in case they ever got lost. I printed "My Phone Number" and wrote my number in the squares. They matched the loose numbers onto the "My Phone Number" worksheet.
Gross Motor (Phone Number Hop): Going along with our phone number today, I drew a phone with side walk chalk outside. I called out my number and my boys jumped from number to number. They really liked this!
Science (Slippery Roads): This was a fun science experiment learning about icy roads and what we do to prevent them. We started with a cookie sheet with frozen ice and my boys moved their cars all around. They could spin their cars and they would spin and spin around easily. See how slippery the ice is? Next we added "salt" (corn meal) to the icy road. We noticed the cars weren't able to slide around and spin hardly at all anymore.
WEDNESDAY:
Art (Paper Plate Police Craft): I loved how our police cars turned out! I am looking back (now almost six months later) and unable to find the picture I took of ours. We got this idea from Terrific Preschool Years and the picture is from their site shown below.
Song/Rhyme (Traffic Light Poem): My boys loved learning this poem and we still say it today (six months later!) We didn't do the craft, we only learned the poem today. This idea and picture below are from Kindertip Colors.
Treat (Traffic Light Graham Cracker): We made and ate these darling traffic light crackers. It's a graham cracker, peanut butter (or nutella) and M&Ms. This idea is from A Fireman's Wife.
Sensory (Traffic Light Painting): We always love doing activities in the tub. I drew a traffic light with tub crayons on our tub wall and the boys painted "red on top" and "green below" just like we learned in our poem today.
FRIDAY:
Fine Motor (Traffic Tape): My boys were so excited to wake up to this in the morning! I taped "road tape" on our floor and we played with our Melissa & Dough traffic set. The goal was to keep the cars on the road to make this a fine motor activity. We talked about all the different traffic signs and what they mean.
Shapes (Traffic Shapes): I never realized how many traffic signs are shapes! I printed a set of traffic signs (from google - sorry I don't have the link. That's what I get for procrastinating in posting) and we matched them to our Melissa & Dough traffic set. We talked about pentagons, rectangles, triangles, circles, and octagons.
Outing (Police Station): We dressed up and went to the police station today! We weren't able to meet any officers, but my boys really enjoyed looking at the all the items in the display cases. We brought our paper plate police craft and left it with the woman at the front desk to give to the policemen.
Traffic Safety Booklist: And of course, we read often throughout the week. We mostly read before our quiet times each day, but we occasionally read during a meal or random time during the day. I placed these books on hold at our local library a week in advance and we enjoyed reading them this week as we learned about snow:
- City Signs by Zoran Milich
- Fire Drill by Paul DuBois Jacobs
- Keeping You Safe by Ann, Thomas, and Eric Owen
- Office Buckle and Gloria by Peggy Rathman
- Police: Hurrying! Helping! Saving! by Patricia Hubbell
- Police Officers on Patrol by Kersten Hamilton
- Red, Yellow, Green: What do Signs Mean? by Joan Holub
- Signs in our World by John Searcy
- Signs on the Road by Mary Hill
- Watch Out! On the Road by Claire Llewellyn
