During the Winter, we love to explore all things cozy. And one of our favorite things to explore are cozy critters! This Polar animals Preschool theme is packed with Math, Literacy and Fine Motors practice PLUS adorable little arctic friends!
Whether you’re teaching in the classroom or at home, you’ll love how easy it is to bring this festive theme to life without the overwhelm of planning it all yourself. Below you’ll find tons of activities and tips!
Table of Contents – CLICK to jump ahead!
Winter Theme Sensory Bin
One of the easiest ways to add excitement and hands-on learning to your preschool week is with a themed sensory bin. So many of the activities in our Polar Animals Preschool pack incorporate a sensory bin, so it’s best to knock out the preparation early on! Our Winter sensory bin is always a hit—it’s simple to put together and offers tons of playful learning opportunities! Here’s how I like to set ours up!
FIRST, gather your materials. I like to use a plastic storage bin with a lid so I can cover and store the bin once it’s prepared. Choose your filler, like the dry white beans we use in ours. Something about the beans really makes all the colors in our Winter sensory bin activities POP and gives children a very unique texture to experience. Once you’ve chosen your filler, fill your storage bin as much as you feel comfortable with (knowing each individual child can handle working with different amounts of materials).
NEXT, grab some extra Winter themed items like plastic snowflakes, puffy stickers, mini erasers, cotton balls for snow, colorful pompoms, etc. These items make the perfect backdrop for the printable items in our preschool Winter activities! Scatter them throughout your sensory bin filler and watch the theme really come to life!
FINALLY, choose a space that you feel comfortable using the sensory bin with your child. I tuck ours away in our homeschool room with the rest of our Preschool manipulatives, and keep our sensory bin blanket nearby for when it’s time to get to work. The rule with our bins – everything stays on the blanket! This makes clean up SO much easier.
READY, SET, PLAY!!! When your sensory bin is not being used for the printable activities in our Polar Animals Preschool theme, allow children to explore freely! Watch them scoop, pour, dig, and more! I love taking our bin our when I need a little extra quiet time for homeschooling an older child, or honestly if I just need an extra minute to sip my hot coffee!
Polar Animals Preschool Theme Overview
This Polar Animals Preschool theme is sure to give your little learners TONS of fun practice! Children will have 15 center-style activities to choose from – 5 Math, 5 Literacy and 5 Fine Motor centers. In addition, I’ve included book recommendations for 5 polar animals theme picture books and links to their read aloud videos on YouTube!
To use these printables, you can follow the PRE-MADE lesson plans for a week full of fun! Each of the 5 pre-planned days your students will have 1 read aloud, 1 Math activity, 1 Literacy activity, and 1 Fine Motor activity to work on. This is a great pace for little learners! But if you’d like to spread the activities out or rearrange them according your own child’s needs, simply print our provided Build-Your-Own Plans page and make your own plans!
PS See how we use this theme in our Preschool scope and sequence by grabbing our FREE Preschool Curriculum Map below!
Math Activities
This set of printables has 5 fun Polar Animals Preschool theme activities for practicing early Math skills. Children will practice number formation, number identification, counting, colors, and shapes. Our Preschool activities always include the use of small manipulatives for added fine motor skills practice!
One of my favorite Polar Animals theme Math activities is the activity shown above! Who doesn’t love to go fishin’?! With this activity, children choose a penguin number card from their pile. They will identify the number the picked and use fish cutouts from the sensory bin to build the correct amount on the mat!
Want to extend this activity? Guide children in laying out their penguin number cards in number order. Then help them build the correct number of fish below each card, showing how the amounts grow as the numbers go from least to greatest!
Literacy Activities
In addition to the Math centers, this set includes 5 early Polar Animals Preschool Literacy activities! Children will practice skills like letter identification, letter formation, beginning sounds, and handwriting practice with polar animal theme vocabulary words!
One of my favorite Literacy activities from our Polar Animals theme is the one shown above. To use, children choose snowball letter cards from their sensory bin and identify the letters on them. Then they use the cards to cover the matching letters on the mat until all of the letters are covered!
Ready to extend this activity? Once children identify the letters on the cards, guide them in identifying the sounds the letters make and even coming up with words beginning with those sounds!
Fine Motor Activities
When working with little learners, strengthening fine motor skills is a must! Our 5 Polar Animals theme fine motor activities will have your children working hard and having TONS of fun! They will practice scissor skills, mold using play dough, trace using manipulatives, and so much more!
One of my very favorite fine motor activities are these play dough cards! To use, children use play dough to mold the polar animals they see on each card! If they’re ready, children can then trace the animal’s name on the bottom of the cards.
*BONUS TIP – I like to make sure all of our play dough cards and mats are laminated for repeated use!*
And… I lesson planned FOR YOU!
This set of activities (and all of the other 45+ sets in our FULL Preschool Curriculum) include a full week of print and go visual lesson plans! It shows you exactly which books and printables to use each day for a 5-day school week, making lesson planning an absolute breeze!
Want to build your own? Or maybe your kiddos are ready for some of the activities but not all of them? That’s great! Use the included Build Your Own lesson plans page! These thematic centers were designed with growing learners ages 2.5 to 5 years old in mind, so this lesson planning page allows you to choose which activities your child is ready for right now!
More January fun!
Ready to learn with your toddlers or Preschoolers ALL MONTH LONG?! You can save TONS when you grab this set of centers in our January Preschool Curriculum! The bundle includes 3 engaging January themes (like Winter, polar animals, and more!), complete with a week of lesson plans for each! You’ll also get 25 NO PREP Winter themed fine motor skills worksheets and crafts, and 38 NO PREP Math and Literacy worksheets for extended practice!
Let’s hang out!
I hope this post helped you get a better look at our Polar Animals Theme Preschool activities! Got questions? Let me know! I’d love to chat and get to know you better! You can find us below in some of our favorite places to hang out. Can’t wait to chat with you about your Preschooler’s learning journey!
SAVE THIS POST FOR LATER!
Was this post about our Polar Animals Preschool theme helpful? Make sure you can come back to this post as much as you need by saving it for later on Pinterest! Click the image below to save this pin to your Winter Preschool Activities board! Then, CLICK HERE to read about more of our favorite Winter themed activities!
I love the sensory bin penguin idea!!
The penguin sensory bin is adorable. I will have to use that one in my prek classroom next winter!
Thank you so much!