This is the section for themes that could encompass an entire year with suggestions for how to break down the themes into individual months incorporate the theme into all aspects of the curriculum.

1. Book Series Theme: This theme would encompass the entire year. Each month will be based on a book series: Examples:  Clifford month, Curious George month, Arthur, Bernstein Bears Peanuts, Spot, Frog and Toad ext. The classrooms would be decorated with scenes from the series of stories. Activities based on specific stories in the series would be incorporated into the art, science, math, and language lessons. For Example, for Curious George month after reading the book Curious George and the Dinosaur art projects around dinosaurs and learning about the various types of dinosaurs would be done. Then lets say the following week the book Curious George Makes Pancakes is read followed by the children learning to helping make pancakes and learning math measuring skills along the way. Furthermore, lessons about the life and times of the Authors of the series of books would be incorporated.

2. Musician of the Month: You don’t have to know how to play an instrument or read music to do this music theme. Each month pick a different musician to study usually from a different genre each month. Make sure there are no objectionable lyrics in the songs you choose to play for the children. The children will learn about the life and times of each musician and about the style of music they play. In addition, I usually try to teach the children the words to at least one of the musician’s songs.  Here are some examples of musicians I have chosen for musician of the month and activities relating to the musician: Beethoven: Have the children make and color in musical notes. Let the children attempt to play a piano while wearing ear muffs so it is hard to hear thus having to play like Beethoven who was hearing impaired in his life. Stevie Wonder: A variation on the Beethoven activity for Wonder is have the children try to play the piano while blind folded. Will Smith and D.J Jazzy Jeff: I had the children make their own turn tables as art projects and come up with their own M.C. or D.J. name. In addition, we wrote a classroom rap song. Below is a picture with some of the musician I have used as musician of the month.

3.Community Helpers Theme: Each month’s theme would be based around a certain community helper. i.e. Doctors/nurses month, Teachers Month, Police Officers, fire fighters, farmer, mailmen, hairstylist, scientist ext.. Dramatic play would be a major part of this theme as the children could pretend to be each type of community helper in the respective month. For each theme, the children will learn all that goes into having that community helper job. Act activities would be based around the theme like making pictures of fruits, vegetables, and farm animals during the farming and making badges and drawing police cars during the police theme. Furthermore, short field trips to or visits from various community helpers could be done from each monthly theme.

4. Historical Times Theme: For each month a different period in history would be selected as the theme. For example, Stone Age, Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, Medieval Times, The Wild West, modern times, ext… the children will learn about how people lived in each period of time. Ample opportunities for art, math, and science projects exist for each them such as projects revolving around pyramids, the sphinx, hieroglyphics, pharos for ancient Egypt or drawing and creating castles, shields, princes and princess, knights ext for medieval times theme. For Ancient Greece a activity that the children have enjoyed a lot is creating their own Greeks Gods and coming up to the front of the class to tell what powers their god has.  Like the community helpers theme dramatic play could be a large part of this theme.