As a new preschool teacher, I wanted to find fun and easy ways to teach important math, literacy and fine motor skills as we were going through the Clothes Study for Preschool from Creative Curriculum. I found that my students needed help specifically with sorting, vocabulary, pre-writing and fine motor skills and pattern awareness.
I wanted to create different and fun activities that would teach these skills and even decided to take the clothes study a bit further by adding some science discussion and discovery.
Sorting With The Clothes Study For Preschool
Because sorting is a very important early math skill, the first activity I developed was a sorting activity. The children could sort clothes by color or season. Another option, would be to bring in clothes from home and have them sort them into piles by season or color . I love to teach this skill to children because it trains them in:
Matching items
Classifying items
Recognizing and creating patterns
Understanding relationships between items
Comparing and contrasting (looking for similarities and differences)
Science Center For The Clothes Study For Preschool
Since we were learning about clothes, why not accessorize?! My students loved sorting clothes and dressing paper dolls with colorful clothes for each season. It was a great science lesson, as we discussed how the weather changes during the four seasons.
Vocabulary For The Clothes Study For Preschool
The Creative Curriculum studies also give a great opportunity to teach new vocabulary in context. The children get a chance to see written words on pictures (of clothing) that they recognize as items they see every day. As children develop oral language, it is important for them to see words that they speak in print.
I have two activity centers using the clothes with the words written on them. For the first activity, I took the pictures of the clothes, laminated them and cut them out. I made a clothesline and hung the clothes on the line with mini clothes pins. The children take down a piece of clothing and read the word or name the piece of clothing. You could also do the reverse, after the child reads the word or names the picture, they can then put the clothing on the clothes line. This is also a great fine motor activity when the are pinching the clothes pins open and hanging the clothes.
Pre Writing Skills
The next activities are the pre writing skill tracing mats. These are differentiated because I start with easy basic lines and then use more difficult lines for children to trace as they become proficient and need a challenge. Pre writing activities are so important for preschoolers and Pre K students. The important skills used in these tracing activities include:
teaching pencil grip
hand eye coordination
visual perception
hand dominance
Pattern Awareness
The next important skill included is pattern awareness and creating patterns. Pattern awareness is so important for so many reasons. In my previous blog post, click on picture below) I discuss how explicitly teaching pattern awareness prepares the children for so many future math concepts. Pattern practice is a must in the preschool and Pre K 4 class. I even continue to teach it in my Kindergarten classroom. In these activities, the children can name the pattern , name the pattern rule and then finish the pattern.
Dramatic Play
Dramatic Play is a fun and engaging way to teach social, math and literacy skills in the preschool classroom. Your students will love a well planned dramatic play area with many different activities that will encourage them to use their imagination and interact with their peers. My students were so excited and engaged in our laundromat dramatic play area that I created for our clothes study.
Literacy Centers
After I had used these activities in my classroom the first year, I realized that I could use the clothes theme in my literacy station. I created eight centers increasing in difficulty for differentiation . The first two activities are for letter recognition. I included one for capital letters and one for lowercase letters. I used these in three different ways. First, I printed two sets of the capital letters and two sets of the lower case letters and had the children match the letters. I also split the cards in two piles and had the children play a memory game with the first half of the alphabet and then the second half of the alphabet.
The second activity is matching the capital letter with the lower case letter. I used pictures of a sweater and jeans and my kids loved matching the sweaters with the correct jeans. For even more practice with letter recognition I created clip cards, which my students love to use. Again these also serve as great fine motor practice. I use three sets of clip cards. The first match capital letters, the second lower case letters, and with the last set, the children match the capital letter with the lower case letter.
Another very important literacy skill is recognizing beginning sounds. I created a fun activity matching t shirts, one with the letter and the other with picture of something that begins with that sound. The kids love identifying the pictures, deciding the beginning sound and then matching it with the t shirt with the correct letter.
The last activity is a missing letter activity. Here the students have to recognize the letters given and then identify the letters that come before and after in the alphabet. I cut these in strips, laminate and let the children fill in the missing letters with dry erase markers. They love any activity with dry erase markers, it makes them feel like “big kids”.
Math Center Ideas
There are so many important math skills that can be taught during the clothes study! Teaching number sense and counting are so important at this age. One center idea is to have a container of large buttons at the math center for the children to count and build patterns with. You can give the children patterns to copy and then allow them to create their own. Another idea is to buy baby socks at the dollar store and have them count them or pair them by matching the colors or patterns.
My students absolutely love clip cards and task cards. I created these centers to print and laminate. The students can either use a mini clothespin to clip to the answer or you can provide a dry erase marker for the students to circle or write the answer. I also use dollar store baby socks as erasers to be used with the task cards, they will be a big hit with your students!
I have had great success with these activities and know that your students will learn a lot from each activity. To make life easier, I have put all these activities in a PDF and have uploaded them to my store on this website. Let me know if you use any of these activities and if they helped your students learn some important skills for every preschooler.
– Jeanne
