Preschool: Letter H

I taught Caleb’s preschool today, and it was a little nutty. I was glad to see that Caleb was completely comfortable being himself around his preschool friends since he usually clams up in groups, but it also meant he required more than the usual amount of intervention.  I’m so thankful that he’s making friends!

Here was what I came up with for the Letter H:

Opening play time: Build houses using boxes.  We used various sized boxes to make houses for elephants, giraffes, big puppies, little puppies, and even frogs.  Part of this time was spent hiding in the boxes as well…and spinning with boxes over their heads.  Boys….

Introduce the letter: Read the letter.  Say the sound.  Repeat for hat, hug, and hop.

Story: Heaven.  Since we had been building houses just before this, I started off by saying heaven is Jesus’ house.  We also read an abbreviated story about heaven from The Jesus Storybook Bible.  Heaven is a wonderful, exciting, happy place! 

Heaven Sorting Activity:  What is in heaven?  What is not in heaven?  I loved seeing the kids imitate the happy, sad, and angry faces.  Hilarious!

Song:  Big House, originally by Audio Adrenaline.  We used a kids’ version.  I took the time to introduce some hand motions before playing the song, and the kids actually followed along and did the actions as the song played.  Usually, when we’ve tried songs, I see a lot of “deer in the headlights” faces. 

Craft: Heaven’s gate.  We spent a lot more time talking about what is in heaven during the craft (along with monitoring glue stick usage).  The kids glued on things they thought would be in heaven like Jesus, angels, toys, good food, trees, and musical instruments.  Then we glued a door on top, showing that Jesus is the only way to heaven.  On Caleb’s, I think Jesus got buried under the Christmas tree and piano:

Bathroom break

Game: Hide and Seek with the letter H.  Our kids are too young for full-blown hide and seek, so I simply hid an “H” cut out of construction paper and had them find it. 

Snack time: Honey Nut O’s.  Before snack time we talked about how God Hears us all the time, whether we whisper, shout, or just think.  so we practiced by whispering, shouting, and then thinking, “Thank you for snack.”  Whispering and shouting went really well.  Not so sure they got the “thinking” part.  We also spent time talking about what kinds of foods would be in heaven.  Foods like Halloween candy, oatmeal with “flies,” mac and cheese, and ice cream.

Craft (again): Thank you card for the guy in charge of the Paint-A-Plow program. (By this time the kids were done with crafting!)

Show and Tell: Each child brought something that started with “H” and told us about it.  Honda, helicopter, horses, hammer, heart, hot rod.  This is another time when Caleb needed some intervention…to not hammer on his classmates. 

Counting by Hundreds: I had written 100, 200, 300, etc. on different sheets of paper.  We read the numbers together, and then I laid the sheets of paper on the floor and had them find different numbers that I called out.

The end.  They were done and ready to play, and moms were starting to come. 

If you’re still reading, you must be my mom.  It takes quite a bit of planning to keep 6 active preschoolers engaged all morning long!