What is your favorite season? My favorite is Fall, with all the beautiful colors and the crisp night air. One of my favorite preschool studies is The Trees Study for Preschool. You can teach this study any time of the year with great success and fun ideas, but Fall lends itself to a lot of fun activities!
The Trees Study for Preschool lends itself to a lot of fun science projects and discovery. During this study, our PreK classes set up a big discovery science interest area. The students were able to experiment, explore and learn all about trees. The discovery area is filled with books about trees, parts of a tree for the students to explore. Vocabulary is shown through pictures and labels. The students love to look at the pine cones through a magnifying glass !
Our Trees study for preschool usually ends around the beginning of December, so our end of the study celebration is a tree farm in our dramatic play area. The students love picking a tree and paying the cashier or decorating their tree at the decoration station. There is also a hot cocoa stand “next door” where they can warm up. This dramatic play is great for teaching how to plant a tree and opens up a lot of math and literacy teaching opportunities.
Teaching Math Sense and Counting During The Trees Study For Preschool
I found these bottle brush trees in Dollar Tree, Michaels and Walmart. They are perfect for counting manipulatives for the tree study! We count with them, put them in size order and sort by size and color. The kids love these hands on activities and the possibilities are endless.
Math Centers For The Trees Study For Preschool
I also wanted to create quick and easy prep activities that I could teach the children to use during circle time and then put them out at the math interest area for independent work. I wanted to be able to pack the centers and use them year after year. The result…… I created an entire set of math centers with a tree theme.
The centers include a counting matching game and counting task cards. My students love task cards, especially when I let them clip the answers with mini clothespins. I also teach more than, less than and equal to with this unit. The cards are differentiated and so the students can use the cards to match the skills they are working on at their own level.
Literacy Centers For The Trees Study For Preschool
My passion is teaching literacy to students, especially struggling students, so I am creating literacy centers all the time for my classroom. Included in the centers that I created for this study are task cards for working on the alphabetic principle, recognizing capital and lower case letters, beginning sounds and rhyming task cards. I find that in the beginning of the year these are a great review for our kindergarteners as well.
Art, Fine Motor and Sensory Ideas
There are so many fun ideas and different ways you can teach the trees study! In our classrooms we also incorporate fine motor skills, art, social emotional lessons such as friendship, sensory and cutting skills just to name a few.
I hope these ideas have helped you plan a fun few weeks for your trees study for preschool and they inspire you to be creative and expand on these ideas.
Have fun !
– Jeanne
