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.

POTTY TRAIN YOUR BABY BEFORE 2!

Potty training is a challenge that all parents face. In their search for advice on how to potty train their children and live to tell the tale, more and more parents are turning to the internet for advice. Unfortunately, however, typing “How to Potty Train” into a search engine these days, is likely to yield advice that makes potty training more of a challenge for parents rather than less of a challenge. That’s because so many sources continue to perpetuate five myths about potty training, myths that work to the advantage of the diaper industry (by keeping children in diapers longer) but to the disadvantage of both children and their parents.

Here, in descending order, are the top five myths about potty training:

Myth #5: You cannot potty train your baby before 2 because children under 2 aren’t “physically ready” for potty training.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), to actively participate in potty training, children must be physically able to:
• Sense when they need to eliminate
• Delay elimination long enough to get to the potty
• Sit independently on a potty chair
At what age do these skills typically appear? The fact that before the invention of the disposable diaper in the 1960s, children in the United States were routinely potty trained by 18 months is clear evidence that these abilities are available at least by early in the second year. Moreover, even today, parents in over 50 other countries seem to have no trouble figuring out how to potty train their children by 18 months. American children simply can’t be that biologically immature in comparison to children from other countries.

Myth #4: You cannot potty train your baby before 2 because children under 2 aren’t “cognitively ready” for potty training.
According to the AAP, to actively participate in potty training, children must understand what it is they are supposed to do and be able to communicate about it—that is, be able to:
• Associate the need to eliminate with using the potty
• Understand simple instructions
• Signal an adult when they need to go
Again, the fact that children in the past were routinely trained by 18 months indicates that the first two of these abilities are both available quite early and certainly by 18 months. As for signaling an adult, learning simple potty-time signs enables children to do just that even before they can talk. And we know from our two decades of research on signing that learning signs is not only easy, but fun, for children as young as 9 to 12 months.

Myth #3: You cannot potty train your baby before 2 because children under 2 aren’t “emotionally ready” for potty training.
Emotional readiness for potty training means a willingness to cooperate. According to the AAP, the likelihood of such cooperation increases after the first birthday with the emergence of the following:
• A desire for independence and self-mastery
• An interest in imitating others
• A desire for approval
Anything, then, that increases the willingness of toddlers to embrace potty training automatically creates the emotional readiness that the AAP says is essential. So, when parents type “How to Potty Train” into their favorite search engine, what they need to be looking for are products that teach about potty use in such an entertaining way that children become inspired to join the “fun.”

Myth #2: Children over 2 are easier to potty train than children under 2.
This is one of the most misleading assumptions about potty training because the truth is just the opposite: Children over 2 are actually harder to potty train than children under 2! Here are the two main reasons:

• The Terrible Twos: Children under 2 are less likely to have entered the dreaded “Terrible Twos” when oppositional behavior drastically increases and the word “No!” is so vehemently applied to anything a parent wants a child to do—including using the potty. That’s why parents trying to train 2 ½- , 3-, and 4-year-old children so frequently end up in a battle of wills that they can’t win. No parent can make a child use the potty.

• A deeply ingrained habit: The older the child, the longer he or she has enjoyed the convenience of eliminating into a diaper and the more deeply ingrained the habit has been allowed to become. And as we all know, the more deeply ingrained the habit, the harder it is to break—especially if children don’t see any advantage to doing so. Why should they disrupt their activities to do something they’ve spent their whole lives doing totally at their own convenience!

And the #1 Myth about Potty Training: To Potty Train Your Baby Before 2 CAN’T be fun and easy!
Potty training doesn’t have to be a battle ground! If you start potty training between your child’s first and second birthday, make potty time a regular part of your daily routine and provide your child with motivational resources, potty training can be easy for you and fun for your baby.

To gain a better understanding of how to potty train your baby before 2, go to www.pottytrainwithbabysigns.com.
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Author Information
Child development experts Dr. Linda Acredolo and Dr. Susan Goodwyn are the authors of the books Baby Signs, Baby Minds and Baby Hearts and creators of the Baby Signs Potty Training Program. The authors are regularly cited in national parenting magazines and have appeared on Oprah, Good Morning America, The Today Show, The Doctors, Dateline NBC and many others. For program information and links to their research, please visit BabySigns.com and www.pottytrainwithbabysigns.com.