Are you looking for hands-on and engaging spring preschool activities for math & literacy? Keep reading to see our favorites!
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SPRING PRESCHOOL ACTIVITIES
Spring is such a happy time of year…birds are chirping, flowers are blooming, and adorable spring crafts are plentiful in preschools everywhere!
Whether you’re celebrating spring at home with your little ones, in your homeschool, or in your early childhood classroom, I’ve got you covered with lots of amazing spring preschool activities!
Keep reading for over 30 spring activities for your preschool, pre-k, and kindergarten students. These ideas include printables for math & literacy, fine motor, gross motor, sensory play, art, and more! Oh, and there are a few freebies, 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.)
SPRING PRESCHOOL ACTIVITIES: LITERACY
Before you get started with your spring activities, 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 30 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.
Phonological awareness skills are the key building block to reading success, which is why they should be practiced a little bit every day. In order to keep things fresh & engaging, I like to use phonological awareness games that go along with my current theme. Click here to check out these spring phonological awareness games that will help your little ones become strong readers in less than 10 minutes a day (and with zero supplies!)
You’re definitely going to want to start your spring activities with these vocabulary cards! These are the perfect way to introduce your little learners to the vocabulary they’ll need for the different activities in this unit. You can use these words in your writing center, as a Write the Room activity, as a Color the Room activity, or as a picture match.
We all know how important it is for little ones to the master the alphabetic principle in order to set a strong foundation for reading. In this activity, your child will work on this skill by matching the letters on the bees to the letters on the flowers. This set includes uppercase flowers, uppercase bees, lowercase flowers, and lowercase bees. You can work on letter identification and sounds with this, or you could use the letters to spell high-frequency words or CVC words. You could also play a game of Go Fish or Memory with the cards!
Letter sounds should be an area of focus in preschool & kindergarten, which is why this activity is perfect for spring! Your child will match the letters on the clouds to the letters on the rainbows (working on mastering uppercase/lowercase letter pairs). Then they’ll match the pictures on the clouds to the letters on the rainbows based on the first sound in the picture. Just a reminder…when doing alphabet activities, you don’t need to do all 26 letters at the same time! Just choose a few that your little one is working on and focus on those.
Don’t wait until your child has mastered all of their letter sounds to start reading…they can start as soon as they know two sounds! This activity helps little ones work on blending two letter sounds on the flower stem and then adding a beginning sound to make rhyming words. Oh, and it’s totally free to download! Click here to check out the post with the directions for downloading your copy.
Compound words are a fun skill for littles ones, and this activity is sure to be a hit! Have your child find the two flies that go together to create a compound word. Then have them swat the compound word on the picture mat (they can use the printable fly swatter I included in this pack or a toy one made for kids).
This is a fun color-matching activity that helps preschoolers work on visual discrimination skills. Have your child match the flowers to the flower pots. Extension ideas include sorting other manipulatives by color, including pom poms or Froot Loops cereal, or adding the cards to a sensory bin!
I love teaching rhyming to little ones, but it can be a tough skill to master. This activity asks students to match the two rhyming words together to form a butterfly. Working on rhyming skills is so helpful for phonological awareness, which is another crucial step for reading development and one that can’t be overlooked!
Letter formation can seem like a boring activity, but there are so many ways to spruce it up! This activity asks little ones to make the shape of the letter using a variety of manipualitves… sunflower seeds, play dough, pom poms, beads, or anything else you can think of!
Springtime always reminds me of bunnies, and what do bunnies love more than carrots?! Click here to read about this super fun sensory bin & download your free printable to practice letters & sounds.
This activity is mixing two skills in one…syllables and fine motor! Your child will choose a card, read the word in the middle, then clap out the number of syllables in that word. They can use a clothespin to mark the correct answer (or any other manipulative they have).
High-frequency words are words your child will see over & over again in text, so it’s important they can read these words quickly. This activity has your child practice common high-frequency words in a fun, hands-on way! Have your child roll a dice and mark off the corresponding word on their graph or tally chart. See which word kite gets to the clouds first and write the word on the line!
One of my favorite spring books is Little Cloud by Eric Carle. I like to do a book project based on this book, which includes the following:
- Comprehension Questions
- Poem: Clouds
- Song: Little Little Cloud
- Art Project: Cloud Painting
- Snack: Cloud Jello
>>>Grab my Spring Preschool Activity Pack to get all these ideas!<<<
SPRING PRESCHOOL ACTIVITIES: MATH
I love teaching patterns to preschool & kindergarten, and here are two ways to do it this spring! You could use these spring pattern printable pictures or use cut-up colorful straws laced onto a pipe cleaner (which will also helps develop fine motor skills). Start with AB patterns and then try AAB, ABB, and ABC patterns.
Here’s a fun way to introduce measurement to preschoolers! Have them use the spring rulers to measure different spring pictures. You can also use standard rulers and discuss the differences between standard & nonstandard units of measurement.
Size order cards are always a big hit with my students! Ask your child to put the cards in size order from biggest to smallest (or smallest to biggest!) Increase the engagement by adding these cards to a sensory bin or hide them around the room for a scavenger hunt!
How cute are these little bees?! This fun math activity asks little ones to match the beehive number to the correct amount of bees. This is great for practicing one-to-one correspondence up to 20.
If your little one is ready to begin solving simple addition problems, this flower activity is perfect for them! Have them solve the addition problem on the stem and place the flower answer on top.
>>>Grab my Spring Preschool Activity Pack to get all these ideas!<<<
SPRING PRESCHOOL ACTIVITIES: FINE MOTOR, SENSORY, ART, & SNACKS
Here’s a great way to combine math and sensory play! Freeze numbers in ice cube trays and have your child use a spay bottle to free the numbers. This activity works on number sense as well as fine motor skills.
Play dough is such an engaging way to work on the small muscles in your little one’s hands, fingers, and wrists. These spring play dough mats are perfect for this, and they also include a traceable vocabulary word at the top of the card.
Have you made homemade play dough before? We are big fans! I love the texture of homemade play dough so much more than store-bought play dough, plus you can add essential oils to make it smell amazing! We made this pink play dough by following this recipe. Then we added pink food coloring to make it fun!
Put those flower letters to use in a different way by making a gel-bag for handwriting! Your child can practice forming letters on the bag in a fun way, and you won’t have a mess to clean up. Win win!
Remember those kite high-frequency words? Let’s add them to a bin of cloud dough! This is so easy to make! Click here for the directions.
Are you studying caterpillars & butterflies this spring? Then you need these free butterfly life cycle play dough mats! Download them from this post.
To go along with your caterpillar and butterfly theme, you could make some cute caterpillar crafts! Read more about these in this post.
Looking to add some spring fun to your child’s day? Try spring-themed snacks! This post has a variety of fun spring snacks made with fresh fruit. I love to add snacks to storytimes to create good feelings around books & reading. Plus they’re delicious!
Want to work on your child’s fine motor skills this spring? Try a paper plate rainbow! You could have them create their rainbow in three different ways: have them use dot markers, have them cut and glue small pieces of paper, or have them tear and bunch tissue paper.
More rainbow fun…this time with Froot Loops cereal! We like to make these for St. Patrick’s Day, but they work during your spring theme, too! You can either lace the cereal pieces onto a pipe cleaner and add marshmallows at either end, or you can draw a rainbow on a piece of paper and have your child add the cereal onto the paper. Both ways work on fine motor skills, patterns, and turn into adorable art projects!
Another favorite activity in the spring is a play dough rainbow! Rolling and shaping play dough is SO good for little hands to develop fine motor skills. We like to pair this activity with this Jack Hartmann song from YouTube.
This is a fun science experiment for the month of March…a Candy Rainbow! All you do is line up candy in a circle on a plate, then pour warm water in the middle and watch the magic happen! We’ve tried this with Skittles (our favorite candy to use), M&Ms, and Jellybeans.
I love this colorful activity to work on different shades of colors. Head to your local paint store and grab some paint samples. Then cut up a little piece of each color and glue them to clothespins and have your students clip the matching colors. You can also read about colors in these books.
Before we ever put pencils in our preschoolers hands, we want them to have opportunities to write in other ways. One of those ways is using dyed rice! Check out this post for the directions to dye rice (it’s super easy!) Then add some to a tray and have your child write their numbers and letters in the rice.
What happens when you put white flowers in colored water? How about celery stalks? Spring is the PERFECT time to find out! These two STEM projects are great for preschool and kindergarten littles to try during spring!
Here are two easy and fun crafts for spring! The butterfly is made from a toilet paper roll and paper handprints. Then we added googly eyes and pipe cleaner antennae. The ladybug is made from half a paper plate, then we glued on black beans and added a paper face, googly eyes, and pipe cleaner antennae. Both of these are a hit with preschool & kindergarten littles!
Have you tried rock painting before? It’s such a simple activity but kids LOVE it! We painted a butterfly on this rock and added it to our front yard. Such a fun way to welcome spring! We like this rock painting kit from National Geographic.
Setting up a simple sensory bin is my favorite thing to do when each new season starts! This one couldn’t be easier. Get all the details in this post!
Here’s another delicious spring snack that’s made from pretzels, m&ms, and vanilla almond bark. Get the directions here!
This sunflower craft always turns out so adorable & requires only a few supplies. You can read the directions here!
SPRING PRESCHOOL & PRE-K FUN
I hope these ideas helped you fill-in your spring lesson plans for your preschool classroom or homeschool! The printables for this unit can be found in my Littles Love Spring Math & Literacy Centers.
What are your favorite spring preschool activities? 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!
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Happy Learning!
