Need a preschool class activity for 2-3 year olds, ideas?

Question

I need ideas for leading an acitivity that doesn't include arts or crafts for a group of 15 2-3 year olds. I would prefer not to sing with them, but like the idea of some activity combined with reading an age appropriate book.

Answer 1

there are lots of activities for this age group...

movement...use music by raffi, greg and steve, and hap palmer...try freeze dance, popcorn dance, use bean bags or nerf balls to go with the music (you can even use basic musical instruments like tamborines, maracas, and drums)

reading/and listening activity....choose an age appropriate book, flannel board story, or fingerplays and tell the story you can give the pieces to individual children after you have read the story a few times and let them help with the story. children of this age are beginning to understand how to listen too and story tapes with a book are sometimes fun if they are not too long...
cooking or science can be done too....usually making things like pudding or jello, even making popsicles works, science projects like rolling items down a long or wide board is sometimes fun too. i even carved a pumpkin with a group of this age....i did have an assistant to be sure no one got a hold of the knife but the children enjoyed helping clean out the seeds and touching and smelling the parts of the pumpkin..

there are some great books for teachers of this age too...my favorite is teachable 2's sorry dont remember the author, but ck in the lakeshore catalog for it.

Answer 2

Well, I have to tell you I'm not too impressed with the answers you've gotten so far. The one's that were serious ideas are not appropriate for the age of the children. Are you working as an student intern in a class? Are you going to be observed? Do you have a particular assignment? I'd be happy to help... Have loads of experience as teacher, director and college instructor and student teacher supervisor - let me know! Pat

Answer 3

My mother was artistically inclined, and she thought I might have inherited some of her talent, so she told my pre-school teacher to try to devise ways to trigger it. I know you said nothing to do with arts and c rafts, but bear with me a moment.. The teacher, who happened to also have some artistic talent, often engaged her young'ns in a little activity that involved being able to identify, and draw, basic shapes..... four-sided shapes (squares and rectangles), circles, ovals, t riangles, and s traight lines, vertical and horizontal.. She also had a lot of them cut out in v arious colored paper and had a picture book with big pictures of simple objects...... a table, a window, a fish bowl, walking stick, ... anything in fact that could be identified with one of the basic shapes. The child had to t ry and match a cut-out shape to one of the pictures in the book. They could be stuck on because the paper was wet -and- stick. I would never forget this, and a few years later, when I was in regular school and being introduced to the fundamentals of math and geometry, I confronted these geometrical forms as if they were "old friends" To this day I still believe this helped me to be less "counfounded" if you will, by these shapes that were involved with the complexities of geometry that was new to me.
I did rather well in that subject, and to this day it amazes me how often I turn to geometry to resolve something I am dealing with in my everyday domestic life. LOL
This may not be of any value to you, but I thought I'd toss it out there anyway.

Answer 4

Check out these websites, we used them when planning lessons for my 2-3 year old preschool class:

http://familyfun.go.com/
http://www.everythingpreschool.com/
http://www.atozkidsstuff.com/
http://www.perpetualpreschool.com/

Have fun!

Answer 5

here is a neat idea, my son brought up to a 3 year old , make flash cards, maybe like 30 of them, and get kids in a circle, you sit in the middle, and flash the cards as you go aroiund in a circular motion to each kid, the cards will have their names on it , point to the card, when the kid stands upthats there name, give them the card, If the kid shakes his head no, Well thats not the kids name, Its called teaching them to reconize their name on cards, If there well enough for directions

Answer 6

You could read a Dora the Explorer book and hide things in the room and go on a treasure hunt.

Answer 7

You can do a movement activity. Get some bean bags- one for each child- have them try to balance them on different parts of their body , then toss them gently in the air and try to catch them, , have them try to toss them into a bucket. Do it to Greg and Steve's Bean Bag boogie song.

Answer 8

Play Peter and the Wolf and have them draw pictures as they listen.

Answer 9

maybe read "The little old lady who wasn't afraid of anything" and have them do the actions along with the story (the gloves went clap, clap; the shirt went wiggle, wiggle, etc.)

Answer 10

Play little piggy went to market, ITS FUN!