Menu
Today’s post shares several activities to do with you preschoolers and kindergarteners when homeschooling during the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) related school shutdowns, including a hand washing demonstration and weather words game. As a certified K-5 educator who taught kindergarten and first grade, I am more than happy to share what we are doing in our home to stay on top of curriculum while quarantined at home.
PLEASE NOTE: Life is busy as a work-at-home / stay-at-home/ homeschooling mama right now, so my directions here will be brief! Please follow me on Instagram @babblingabby where I will be sharing my daily activities and saving them in a story highlight!
Today is St. Patrick’s Day, so we started off with some green-themed activities, though you could easily use most of these at any point during the year!
Before we started coloring our Shamrocks, we went through our crayon basket and pulled out all of the green crayons. We talked about shades of colors and the different names of the crayons. “Fern” and “Tropical Rainforest” are fun!
Our neighborhood participated in a Shamrock Walk as a way to get outdoors, have fun, and be socially distant. So, we colored Shamrocks, cut them out (fine motor work) and hung them on our front door for others to see. (This was not my original idea and the image below was from my neighborhood Facebook group. If you know the original creator, please email me so I can give credit!)
Later on, we walked our neighborhood and located the ones other families had made. This would be fun to do, quarantined or not!
Also, if you do not live in a neighborhood, it’s too cold out, or there is bad weather, just do this around your house! Your kids will love it regardless. The download below includes large and small shamrocks.
I gave each of my kiddos a brown paper sack and wrote the color word ‘green’ on it. They copied the word and then went on a hunt to find all things green. They spent about five minutes filling their bags.
This could easily be down with any color word, any day of the week!
We continued working on letter formation today. Download an entire set of uppercase and lowercase letter handwriting practice sheets right here.
More dancing with Koo Koo Kangaroo today! Find them on GoNoodle or Youtube!
In light of current events, we did a quick and easy handwashing demonstration that I happened to see shared on our local news.
MATERIALS:
DIRECTIONS:
Explain to your children that the water represents their skin and the pepper is germs. When they squirt soap or hand sanitizer into the plate, the pepper recedes to the outer edge of the plate (like germs running away!). My kids LOVED this so much we did it twice!
There is definitely a more in-depth science lesson to be taught here, but considering their ages and attention span, we stuck with the germs analogy!
For older kiddos, I created some observation sheets where they can record their findings! Download by clicking the graphic below!
Today in math, we watched and listened to The Very Freezing Cold No Number Day on Vooks (click here to get a month for FREE – it’s a streaming site for popular children’s books).
We followed it up with a math activity sheet to review the number zero. We’re going to be doing a lot of number review the next several weeks!
We will be using this math curriculum pictured below to work on numbers and quantities 0-20.
As a follow up from yesterday’s introduction to the sight word “a,” today we wrote the missing word on a premade sentence strip. Again, we practiced one-to-one correspondence and reading the words. My kids wanted to cut these out and make them into books like yesterday, so we did that afterwards! DOWNLOAD SENTENCE STRIPS HERE.
Today was all about weather words pertinent to the spring. It was nice and gloomy outside, so it was the perfect segue into a discussion about weather!
Afterwards, we played a dice game where they rolled a weather-words die and then said and dotted the weather word on the empty game board. The goal was to fill one column completely. This was a big hit and much anticipated at the end of our time today! DOWNLOAD VOCAB AND GAME.
If you’re interested, this weather activity is actually part of a larger weather unit that we’ll be using, too! Look how much fun there is to be had! (Also, this unit is definitely for the K-2 crowd, so if you’re in primary it’s perfect for you!)
My friend Cara and I collaborated on an entire science curriculum that we’ll be pulling from frequently, actually!
If you find yourself struggling with what to teach your kiddos as we navigate this time, fear not! I can help! I have been creating teaching resources for over a decade and have a whole library of them HERE.
If you’re fighting boredom and want to do something educational, if you have popcorn on hand, I highly recommend checking out this post! Your kids will adore you and they’ll be learning!
I hope this post was helpful in sharing more ideas for you to use at home while you’re homeschooling your kiddos, including the hand washing demonstration and weather words game! Be sure to tag me on Instagram @babblingabby if you use anything!
These FREE resources are an instant download upon a confirmed subscription.
Abby is a former kindergarten and first grade teacher who channels her passion for education into creating engaging activities and resources for the kindergarten and first grade classroom. When not dreaming up or working on her next project, you’ll find her enjoying her family – most likely in her minivan on the way to a soccer field.
Help your students build their phonemic awareness with this simple segmenting activity. Get 25 FREE practice pages sent to your inbox today.
©2022 Babbling Abby. All Rights Reserved.
