Preschool activities for April center around the theme of “Rain, Rain, Go Away.” It tends to be a rainy month here in Texas which also means it can be a very dangerous time of year because we have intense thunderstorms with high winds, large hailstones, and tornadoes. This is a great time to ensure that flashlights are operating with good batteries and placed in optimal locations in case of a power outage for those child care providers that operate in their home. Also, practice getting the children to a safe room such as an interior closet or bathroom. It is important to plan your evacuation route and practice it especially if you have babies and young toddlers that will require 100% of your assistance to get them to safety in the event of an emergency. Make sure that this safe room is equipped with any necessary supplies.

Below you will find preschool activities for toddlers and preschoolers. These activities include science and social studies ideas, imagination play, arts and crafts, reading and math activities, coordination and movement games, and social skills ideas.

Theme: Rain, Rain, Go Away
Letter: R, U (rain)
Number: 4
Color: Blue
Shape: Oval (Raindrop)

1. Holidays:
April 1- April Fool’s Day (wear something silly)
April 12- Easter
April 22- Earth Day

2. April Preschool Activities: Science
Teach the children how to use recyclables to make a compost in celebration of Earth Day. Explain the importance of recycling paper, glass, and plastic and how it helps our environment and planet.

Make April Fool’s Silly Putty. In a bowl, add some corn starch. Mix in some water until the mixture is the consistency of paste. Teach the children about how the mixture goes from a liquid to a solid. (Optional: Add food coloring to mixture. The color of the month is blue.)

Use the rain gauge made in arts and crafts to record the levels of rain on different days.

Go on a nature walk and see what plants, flowers, trees, leaves, and insects you can find to celebrate Earth Day. Collect some of your findings along the way.

3. Social Studies:
Research when the umbrella was first invented (about 4 thousand years ago). Who used them and for what purpose (Egyptians, Greeks, Chinese for the purpose of shade)? The Chinese were the first to make them of waterproof material.

4. Imagination:
Have the children put on raincoats, rain boots, and grab an umbrella. Pretend it is a rainy day and put down blue carpets or blue paper for puddles. The children can go around the room jumping from puddle to puddle.

5. April Preschool Activities: Arts and Crafts
Make your own Little Cloud using blue construction paper and white cotton balls. Let the child make an outline of any cloud shape, then pull-apart some cotton balls and glue them to the cloud shape.

Make a page of leaf rubbings from leaves collected on your nature walk.

Make a rain gauge using plastic soda bottles or plastic water bottles. Remove the cap and discard. Cut off the top of the bottle about 1/4 of the way down. Place the cut off top upside down in the top of the bottle. This will allow the rain to travel inside the bottle to be collected. Mark the outside of the bottle using a permanent marker in 1/2 inch increments.

Use stickers to decorate plastic Easter eggs.

6. Reading:
Read “Little Cloud” by Eric Carle. Talk about what cloud shape each child would like to be and what they like to do on a rainy day.

Read “The Velveteen Rabbit” by Margery Williams. Talk about bunnies and what they like to eat and where they live.

7. April Preschool Activities: Language:
Sing “Rain, Rain, Go Away” and “It’s Raining, It’s Pouring.”

Introduce the letters and letter sounds for R and U. Have the children use blue finger paint to practice tracing over a pre-written R,r and D,d on a piece of paper.

Use an umbrella to teach the opposites of up, down and open, shut.

8. Math, Thinking Skills:
Sort plastic Easter eggs by color or have the children match halves of plastic Easter eggs to make a complete set.

9. Math, Shapes:
Place several shapes on the floor in a circle. Be sure to include a lot of ovals. Play music, as the music plays the children will walk in a circle along the path of the shapes. When the music stops, if the child is not standing on an oval, he or she will have to sit out. The game continues until there is only one child standing on an oval. You may need to remove the number of ovals as the game progresses to reduce the chances of landing on an oval.

10. Math, Counting:
Introduce the number 4 and show everyone how to hold up 4 fingers and count to 4. Let the children string 4 beads, pieces of cereal, or other objects onto a string.

11. Coordination and Movement:
Practice hopping on 2 feet like bunnies. Then challenge the children to hop on one foot at a time. This will require some good balancing skills.

12. April Preschool Activities: Social Skills
Hide the plastic Easter eggs that the children made during arts and crafts. Have each child pair up with a friend to find the Easter eggs. The children will have to cooperate to work together to find the eggs.

Applesauce cinnamon dough is a fun, creative activity for young children to explore. With just some plain applesauce and ground cinnamon, children can make play-doh that can be shaped into anything especially if they use cookie cutters.

To make the applesauce cinnamon dough, you need equal portions of plain applesauce and cinnamon. In a mixing bowl, start with 1 cup of plain applesauce. Slowly mix in 1 cup of cinnamon, a little bit at a time. If the dough is too sticky, add a little bit of flour or additional cinnamon.

After mixing the dough, let the child play with it or use cookie cutters to create certain shapes. The child’s creations can be set in a warm location such as on a paper towel placed near a sunny window to dry over the next 24 to 48 hours. However, depending on the size of the creation, it can take even longer. Be sure to allow it to thoroughly dry.

After it is completely dried out, it can be embellished in many different ways. Just use care and caution as even a dried creation can be very fragile. Consider letting the child paint, paint with glitter paint, glue on buttons or rhinestones, or use stick on foamies. The possibilities are endless. These can even be made into ornaments at Christmas time.

Not only is applesauce cinnamon dough fun to play with and make, it will continue to smell delicious for some time.

*Remind children that the dough is not for eating. Although not harmful, it will be very bitter with all the excess cinnamon.

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How to Tie-Dye a Canvas Tote

Have you ever wondered how to tie-dye a canvas tote?  Well, my daughter just celebrated her 9th birthday.  She had a sleepover party and we planned some fun activities for her and her friends to do during the course of the day and evening.

One of the things the girls made was a tie-dye canvas tote.  We used plain white canvas totes and bought a tie-dye kit that had 3 different colors:  vibrant purple, lime green, and deep blue.  We laid down newspaper to protect the counter space we were using and the girls put on aprons to protect their clothes.  The kit came with plastic gloves that the girls were able to wear. I regrettably did not wear any gloves and I still have dye on my hands after 3 days.

Preparing to Tie-Dye Canvas Tote

We tied the rubber bands at each of the 4 corners.  Then, we tied a rubber band on each side right in the middle which gave us sort of a star shape.  We laid out our bags and the girls took turns passing around the bottles of dye.  Two of the girls saturated their bags canvas totes with color and the other girl preferred to leave more white space.

Applying the dye

When they were finished, we wrapped each tie-dyed bag in a plastic grocery bag and set them aside for 7 hours.  At the end of the 7 hours, we removed the rubber bands to reveal what the bags looked like.  They were still damp and, according to the directions, needed to be washed and dried individually.  We did just that and all the girls were very proud of their creations.  Take a look my daughter’s finished product:

Tie-Dye Canvas Tote

I love doing crafts with my kids and their friends although they don’t always turn out as I envisioned them in my head. I wasn’t sure how to tie-dye a canvas tote or if I would be able to help them do it properly. But, I’m glad that we gave it a try because the smiles on their faces said it all.

Tie-Dye Canvas Tote

Homemade Play-doh Recipe #1:

1 cup cold water
1 cup salt
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
2 cups flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
Food coloring

In a large bowl, mix together water, salt, oil and a few drops of food coloring. Mix flour and cornstarch and add 1/2 cup at a time, stirring constantly (you may need a little more or a little less than 2 cups flour so make sure you stir in until it is the right consistency). Knead for a few minutes with flour on your hands. Found at: Easy Kids Recipes

Homemade Play-doh Recipe #2:

* 2 cups flour
* 1 cup water

Mix together well. You can put dry Kool-Aid or Jell-O in the mix if you want colored dough.
Found at: Teachnet

Once you have made the play-doh, you are ready for some fun preschool activities. First, the homemade play-doh can be used to help teach children about colors. Ask the children to identify the colors of the play-doh by pointing to them and naming them. Then, ask the child to find a particular color and hand it to you or say, “Roll the red play-doh into a ball.” You can also help the child roll several balls of each color. Then, ask the child to sort the balls into piles of each color.

The play-doh can also be used for some math activities and shape identification. Get out some cookie cutters and help the child cut out different shapes, then identify the shapes you have cut out. Develop the shapes into real world examples to show how shapes are found everywhere. For example, cut out a triangle, then add other pieces of play-doh to change the simple triangle into a pizza. Or, using a circle shape, add eyes, nose, and mouth to make it into a face. You can do a lot of different counting activities by counting all the different shapes or place a line of rolled play-doh balls in front of the child and asking him to count the number of play-doh balls.

Homemade play-doh can also be used to teach children about opposites and making comparisons. Place a large shape next to a small shape and explain how the opposite of large is small. Or, place 3 shapes in front of the child, a small one, medium one, and large one, then ask the child which is the smallest or which is the largest. You can repeat the same activity with other opposites and comparisons such as up v. down, long v. short, straight v. curvy and so forth.

However, the most important part of playing with homemade play-doh is to have FUN, FUN, FUN!

For more preschool activities and ideas, visit A to Z Childcare Directory.

Planning and organizing a variety of child care crafts activities for the children in your care is essential to their development. While doing arts and crafts activities is extremely fun, it is actually very educational for toddlers and preschoolers. It helps to develop fine motor skills, language, social skills, listening skills, creativity, and self-expression.

Fine motor skills involve the coordination of small muscles of the body that enable us to do such functions as writing and grasping. Holding a pencil, crayon, paint brush or other instrument used for writing and drawing helps to strengthen a child’s fine motor skills. Usually a child begins with scribbling, then moves to more intentional stokes to make various symbols and shapes such as circles or x’s. Eventually, the child will gain more control and coordination to write and print as well as draw more detailed pictures such as faces. At around 4 to 5 years old, most children draw a complete human with a head, facial features, body, arms, and legs.

Child care crafts activities help to strengthen children’s language development. Children are exposed to so many descriptive words, color words, shape words, and names of all the materials used in making child care crafts and art projects. They learn how to use these new words, what context to use them in, and how to apply them in the real world. Children use language to describe and define their artistic creations as well as learn how to politely critique the works of fellow students. Children develop great social skills while doing child care crafts because they have to learn to share supplies, take turns, and work together.

Give step by step instructions with pictures or have pre-made child care crafts activities showing how the project should look at various stages as well as a finished project so the children can grasp an understanding of what their completed craft should somewhat look like. Being able to follow the directions given by the child care provider or teacher during the child care craft activity helps children develop good listening skills.

Don’t forget that it is not necessary to always have organized child care crafts activities. Children love having the opportunity to work freely with a variety of art products that allow them to experiment and explore the world of art. Give children blank paper or coloring pages with crayons and markers and let them decide what colors to use or what shapes and images to draw. They can further decorate their coloring pages or one of a kind pictures with stamps and stickers.

Children also love to use dry erase boards with washable markers and an eraser. They can create, erase, and then create all over again. Painting is another fun activity that allows self-expression. A blank canvas, some finger paints, watercolors, or bowls of paint with sponge shapes opens up the creative mind. For some outdoor fun, there is always sidewalk chalk and other great drawing products from Crayola that can be used to paint on sidewalks. Outdoor products from The CrayolaStore.com!

Of course, what child doesn’t like working with playdough or other modeling clay to form all kinds of shapes while using his imagination. Children love having control over their own choices which develops their self-confidence and independence.

Be sure to allow for enough time to adequately work on child care crafts activities. Some children will work very quickly while others will relish in taking their time to meticulously complete a craft. To save time on set-up, have all necessary craft components ready to go in a Ziploc bag or box so that you can hand everything out quickly. This should also help keep you from forgetting anything, then trying to scramble around looking for any last minute supplies.

Prepare the area that you plan to use by laying down newspaper or using an old plastic tablecloth that can withstand unintentional paint spills or brush strokes. It’s also good to have each child wear a smock or old T-shirt to protect their clothing even if the children are using washable paints or markers. It is helpful to keep wet wipes or damp paper towels, trash can, and/or broom nearby to clean up any messes quickly and without having to leave the children unattended. Also, be sure to allow for enough time to clean up after working on any child care crafts activities.

Most important of all, make sure everyone is having fun while making child care crafts activities! If you would like some ideas or free worksheets to use at your home daycare or child care center, check out my site at www.atoz-childcare-directory.com.