PreSchool Around the World and Calendar Lessons

CALENDAR:
My son knows the basics of the calendar, but still gets months, days and weeks confused.  So I wanted to come up with a calendar lesson plan to help him out!  Depending on your own student, you may want to combine these lessons into one or two big ones.

Lesson One
Objective: Learn how many months are in a year
Materials:  Individual 2013 calendar months
Procedure: Lay each month side by side on the floor.  Ask how many months are in a year and have him count.  Have him step on each month as he goes through the year, then have him hop to each month while saying the name.  Repeat the exercise three times with a different method (hop, skip, jump, walk, rubbing belly, touching toes, ect....)

Lesson Two
Objective: Continue learning names of months
Procedure: Lay out each month with a label.  Call out the month, in random order, and an action and have him go to that month following the action:

Jan - Jump
Feb - Flap arms
March - march
April - act like an ape
May - monkey walk
June - Jumping Jacks
July - Jiggle
August - Act Angry
September - Sing
October -oscillate arms
Nov - Nod
December - Dance

Lesson Three
Objective: Start learning about seasons
Procedure: Put the calendar months on a stair case (or just in a straight line on the floor) and have him sort clothes based on the month of the year.  Example - give him a pair of gloves and have him put them on which month he thinks you'd wear them.

Lesson Four:  GAME!  Name that Month!
We have a Deal or No Deal board in our home.  My son is obsessed with game shows right now, so I just got a piece of poster board, 12 envelopes and glued them to the board.  We use the board to play Deal or No Deal, but I'm going to use it to play Name that Month - a game I made up.  It's pretty straight forward.  Write out 12 riddles, one for each month.  Put the cards in the envelopes, then have him pick a number envelope.  Let him try to guess the riddle.  Here is an example of my riddle (I gave multiple choice answers)
 Example: This month is very cold.  In northern states, it usually snows.  The first letter of this month is a J.  It is the first month of the year.
         Answer choices: April, july or January.

Lesson Five:  SERVICE
"Love one another as I have loved you"
As a family, come up with a service calendar.  Each month, mark on the calendar what service project you will do for someone else.  It can be something grand, like volunteering in the community, or something inward, like praying.

AROUND THE WORLD:
These are lesson plans I am currently using with my preschooler in order to introduce him to a bit of geography and culture.   For each of these lessons, use some painter's tape, or scotch tape, and make an outline of an airplane on the floor. 

Brazil - Rainforest
It took me forever to get this really simple lesson together!!  I put MEGA expectations on myself to really wow my kid.  I wanted to convert the entire school room into a jungle, complete with trees, vines, animals, flowers, even mist....yeah, that didn't happen.  Instead, I went to this website:  http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/  I searched for rainforest, showed pictures and video.  I did, however, decorate our bathtub like a rainforest...at the best I could using materials we had available.  (The picture is on the main page).  We then read the book The Rainforest Grew All Around by Susan K. Mitchell and Illustrated by Connie McLennan.  This is a really good book for PreK because it's an actual poem/story, not just a bunch of facts (although there are plenty of facts also).

Then, I gave him a bunch of clues that he had to figure out.  Each clue was a type of plant that lived in the rainforest.  Like, you can find bananas, cinnamon, coconut in the rainforest, so I would come up with clues to try and get him to guess those things.

We kept it simple, but he LOVED his bathrub rainforest, and we even stayed in it for the rest of school.

Japan Lesson:
Objective : Introduce Japanese language and culture in a brief but fun manner
                 Learn the definition of "island"
                 Introduce sumo wrestling

Materials : Paint brush, paper, computer, kimono (use a robe, or wrap a shirt around to imitate a kimono), map of the Earth, stickers (to put on the map where Japan is), any stuffed animal to act as a guide, Japanese flag

Resources : Video of Sumo Wrestling:

It's time to fly to Japan!  At the beginning of the lesson, look at a map and explain that the Earth is divided into different sections of land.  Take a moment to talk about the difference between a continent and a country.  Then show them where Japan is and have them put a sticker on it.  Define "island".  Also take a second to look at the flag of Japan. 

Hop in your airplane!  When you get to Japan, you may want to have a guide show you around.  We used one of my son's favorite stuffed animals to give us the tour of Japan.  When you first arrive, make sure that your child takes off his or her shoes, and puts on their kimono.  Explain that in Japan, people take off their shoes when entering a home.  Also, explain that a kimono is something special worn during special occasions.  

In advance, I looked up my son's name in Japanese and then we used paint and wrote it out.  A quick google search should be able to produce your child's name in Japanese.

Now for the best part....sumo!!  Show your child the you tube video about sumo wrestling.  Then it's time to put your knowledge to the test!  We used stuffed animals to create a circle, then duct taped pillows to our bellies and had fun pretending to be sumo wrestlers!

Make sure to say good bye to your guide before heading to the plane and going back!

Australia Lesson:
So I'm going to just give a brief rundown of what I wanted to achieve when I taught this lesson and the activities we did.  In all my Around the World lessons, I follow the basic structure:
Identify the place on the map
"Fly" to the location
Have a "guide" show us around
Do an activity and / or craft
Teach at least two aspects of the new culture

For Australia, we:
 Read a book about Australia that we got from the library
Looked up pictures of Australian animals online such as the koala, emu, kangaroo, platypus, dugong.  Then we went into a little more details about a kangaroo and did the craft on this site :

http://www.dltk-bible.com/butterflysong/kangaroo.htm

It gives you a template to make a paper bag kangaroo.

Then we had a kangaroo obstacle course...super fun!!  I just set up "hurdles" which was just some small piles of clothes.  Then I gave my son an old pillow case that he stepped into, which acted as his kangaroo pouch.  He had to start at one end of the obstacle course and when he hoped to the end, he had to pick up his baby kangaroo (We don't have kangaroo stuffed animals so we just used one of my son's kitty stuffed animals.) put it in his "pouch" and hop back to the start.  I considered making this a race, with each one of us hoping in our kangaroo pouches, but my son is super competitive but if you have multiple kids, you could race!

After this we learn about the Aboriginals.  I recommend going to your local library and checking out some books.  The book I found mentioned that the Aboriginals used to do rock paintings.  So our next activity was to learn some rock painting symbols (http://www.aboriginalartonline.com/culture/symbols.php) then we played Aboriginal Art Memory game.  (Ahead of time, I just drew a pair of symbols on index cards and used these as our memory game cards).

That was it for us, but there are tons of other things you can incorporate into your lesson.  I may even do another Australia lesson later in the year because I wanted to teach about musical instruments and didn't get a chance.  I'd also like to do a boomerang craft because I think my son would get a kick out of it.  We simply ran out of time.

I hope these give you some ideas as to how to get started planning an imaginary trip to Australia!

Hawaii Lesson
So today, we traveled to Hawaii.  I did a quick you tube search to find some good Hawaiian dance moves, both that we could watch and learn.  Check them out on the home page!

 So we learned some dance moves, talked about leis, I showed him pictures online of different ocean creatures that live in the water surrounding, then we "looked" into our own ocean:

I wanted to fill a kiddie pool with water and really put some effort into making it look like an ocean floor.  Instead, I filled a plastic container with water, added some plastic toy fish, sea shells, a "sea urchin" - koosh ball, and an "oyster" - plastic easter egg.

I considered making out own leis, but my son really wasn't into the whole Hawaii visit, so we moved on, but it would be a fun activity if your child is interested!

That was all we did for Hawaii.  It was a really short lesson, and I was a little disappointed that my son wasn't more interested in learning more, but I'm quickly learning that not all my lessons are going to be home runs.

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