Are you starting a Western theme in your preschool classroom or homeschool? Keep reading for the most engaging Way Out West preschool activities around!
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WAY OUT WEST PRESCHOOL ACTIVITIES
One of the most rootin’ tootin’ themes to teach (whether you’re homeschooling or teaching in a preschool or kindergarten classroom) is Way Out West. Little ones will have a stomping good time when learning about and participating in activities about the wild west!
Kids especially love to act like cowboys and cowgirls, put on their boots and hats, and ride pretend horses. This leads to interactive play and STEM exploration. So let’s get ready to saddle up and build new skills! YeeHaw!
Keep reading for over 20 western activities for your preschool, pre-k, and kindergarten students. These ideas include literacy, math, fine and gross motor skills, art, and more. Grab your printables for math & literacy here. Oh, and there’s a freebie, too!
If you want a copy of my yearly themes (including an editable version where you can type in your own themes), check out this freebie. (*Please note: You will need to download this file to your computer and then open it with Adobe in order to add your own themes. You cannot add your themes from your web browser.)
WAY OUT WEST ACTIVITIES: LITERACY
Before you get started with your western theme, make sure you have your books all ready to go! You can check out our favorite books for this theme in this post. There are over 20 books for you to choose from! Make sure to request these from your local library (or order them from Amazon) a few weeks before you start your theme.
You’re definitely going to want to start your Way Out West theme with these vocabulary cards! Do your littles know what a cow skull looks like? Have they ever seen a “Wanted” poster? These cards are the perfect way to introduce your little ones to the 15 western related words they’ll be learning about over the course of this theme. You can use these vocabulary cards in your writing center or in a Write the Room activity. Color the Room is a variation of Write the Room, where you hide the vocabulary word cards around the room for your little one to find and have them match the picture to the picture on the activity page. They can choose to color the matching picture or simply circle it. This is a great variation for little ones who aren’t ready to write the words on their own yet.
This is a fun and interactive activity that can be used in many different ways to practice letter identification, letter sounds, and CVC words. Little ones will be making letter soup using letter tiles (or cut out letters) that they add to a real pot (or the picture of the pot on the mat). You can call out letters or letter sounds for them to add. They can also add the letters in CVC words, or you can put many letters in the pot and have them find them and pretend to eat them. This activity can lead to dramatic play!
You will need spinners for this CVC activity (we love these spinners). They will spin to determine the first, second, and third letter of their CVC word. Have them point to each letter and say the sound. Then have them try to blend the letters together following the arrow to say the word. Can they tell you if it’s a real word or a nonsense word?
Before we ever ask kids to write letters, we need to give them a chance to make different types of lines: straight, curvy, wavy, jagged, and more. Have your little one use different ways to trace these lines to help the sheriff catch the crook! They can use their finger, marker, play dough, black beans or small legos. They can then cut the lines with scissors. Always start with the straight lines and work up to the harder ones!
Time to pack our covered wagons for a long journey! The wagons in this activity need to be packed with items that rhyme with the word family written on the outside. Your little one will find a picture card that you have hidden around the room or in a sensory bin, say the word, and place it in or under the correct wagon. (Don’t worry, there’s a picture key so you can help them with what the pictures are showing!)
For this activity, tell your little one they will be making compound words by smooshing two smaller words together. They will choose a hat, identify the picture, and try to find a badge picture that goes with it to make a new compound word (such as “book” and “worm” to create “bookworm.”) For younger little ones, you can say the compound word and have them try to find the hat and the badge pictures that make up the word. Working with compound words helps develop your child’s phonological awareness skills, which is a crucial step to becoming a strong reader.
This activity has your little one giving a name to the bandit on the Wanted Poster. The name must start with the same sound as the bandit in the picture. For example, they might name the monkey “Maverick” or the narwhal “Nelly”. Then they will act like the sheriff and catch each bandit by finding that beginning letter and placing it above the wanted poster. How many bandits can they capture?!
Syllable awareness is an important phonological awareness skill that little ones need in order to become strong readers. This activity asks little ones to put a clothespin on the correct number based on the number of syllables in the word (1-4). Clapping, stomping, tapping, or snapping to each syllable as they say the word can be helpful in determining the number of syllables.
WAY OUT WEST ACTIVITIES: MATH
These number match boots will have your little ones stomping to the beat! They will choose a boot with a number on it and match it to the boot with the correct amount of dots. You can hide the boots around the room or in a sensory bin to make it more fun! You can also have them count out pinto beans for each boot and then put the boots in numerical order.
You will need some colorful pom poms for this activity. Little ones will choose a flower number card and place it on the mat. Using the pom poms as flowers, they will decorate the cactus with the correct number as the number card. This activity can also be used to practice addition by placing a few “flowers” on each cactus, having your little ones count them, and finding the number card with the answer. Are they able to tell you the addition problem they made? (We used these tongs to help develop fine motor skills, too!)
Color by Code is always a favorite with little ones! This activity includes 5 different versions of the Color by Code cactus. These variations include: numbers, dice, hands, tally marks, and number words. This allows little ones to practice their subitizing skills as well as their fine motor skills (coloring inside of lines is a great precursor to writing letters & numbers). You can also have them roll a dice to determine which number they will color next!
This activity has your little one learning about different 2D shapes through play! The rope lasso shape cards can be used to play a memory game. Place the lasso shape cards upside down and have them pick two to try to find a match. If they do match, place them on the Yee-Haw mat and find the horse with the matching shape. Then have them say the shape name.
These ten frame Wanted Posters have a different number of bandits on each. After hiding the number puzzle pieces around the room or in a sensory bin, your little one will find them and match them to the correct Wanted Poster. Another idea is to place a number of beans on an empty Wanted Poster ten frame, and then have them tell you how many more they would need to make ten. Can they tell you the addition problem they made?
This activity includes two different cubes with 1-5 or 6-10 tally lasso marks. Your little one will roll the cube and color the circles above the matching tally lassos (or they can place a small manipulative in the circles instead). They will keep rolling and marking until one of the columns wins! If they roll a wacky wagon, have them act wacky while filling in the circle!
This is a great activity for your little one to work on beginning addition and subtraction skills. They will choose a card and place their cowboy or cowgirl on the “start” number and jump forward or back by how many spaces indicated. If possible, have them tell you the addition or subtraction problem they created with the movement. For a more interactive activity, you can make a life size number line on the floor and have them move their bodies the indicated spaces.
Number recognition is a great foundational activity for little ones, and adding in fine motor skills is the cherry on top! For this activity, they will choose a card, say the number in the middle, and punch a hole in all the matching numbers surrounding it. (We like these hole punchers.) They can also practice “even” and “odd” numbers by punching all the even numbers on the nighttime cards and all the odd numbers on the daytime cards.
WAY OUT WEST HANDS ON ACTIVITIES, CRAFTS, AND SNACKS
Riding their very own horse is so much fun for little ones, but not everyone wants to buy a play horse. That’s okay…all you need is a pool noodle, tape, some construction paper for the ears and eyes, and A LOT of imagination, and you can create your very own horse! Your little one will be eager to saddle up and ride off into the sunset after naming their horse!
Gross motor skills are so important to develop in the early years, and they actually lead to better handwriting later on! Give your little one some bean bags and a pair of boots, and have them throw the bean bags at the boots to knock them over! The competition is on! You can try different distances for them to knock down the boots, or they can roll a die and move back that many steps to make it harder. How good is their aim?
This great game is just like “Pin the Tail on the Donkey.” You or your little one can draw a picture of a sheriff on a large piece of paper. Then they will cut out badges to “pin” on the sheriff (we just used tape on the back of each badge). They should be blindfolded, but before they are, have them roll a dice to see how many times they have to spin before attempting to pin on the badge. If they write their names on the badges, they can tell who came closest to the correct placement!
Little ones LOVE to play card games, and this will certainly be a new favorite! The aim of the game is to fill the ten frame with cards from 1(ace) to 10. Jacks are wild and can be used to fill any space, while Queens and Kings cannot be used (they’re “trash”). Whoever fills the ten frame first wins the game!
Who doesn’t love S’mores? The gooey marshmallow and warm chocolate on a Graham cracker make you feel like you’re camping…even if you’re just in your backyard! Your little ones can pretend they are cowboys and cowgirls out on the range camping out. Don’t forget to take turns telling stories to make it even more fun!!
This is another activity that goes great with the Way Out West theme. Little ones love coloring, so you can print out pictures of cowboy hats for your little ones to color! If you wanted to, you could provide them with sequins and glue to glitz up their hats. Great fine motor skills practice, too!
These FREE counting cards can be used for all sorts of counting activities with the western theme… counting cacti, horses, or even clouds! Your little one can count the wheels on wagons or how many cowboys or cowgirls they’ve seen. Have them tell you what they want to count…anything works to reinforce number learning!
This activity (along with all of our freebies!) can be downloaded from the Free Activity Library. If you’re already a member of our email community, you can click HERE to head to the Free Activity Library, enter your password (it’s on your most current email from me), and download your copy!
If you’d like to join our email community & receive the password as my way of saying THANK YOU for joining, you can click HERE to subscribe. Once you enter your information, the password will be emailed to you within minutes.
WAY OUT WEST PRESCHOOL & PRE-K FUN
I hope these ideas helped you fill-in your Western lesson plans for your preschool classroom or homeschool! All of the printables for this unit can be found in my Way Out West Preschool Activity Pack.
What types of western preschool activities do you plan for your littles? Do you have any fun activities that would be great to add to this list? Comment below or find me on Instagram [@littleslovelearningblog] and let me know!
love these ideas? pin for later!
Happy Learning!
