Email Us Themes For Preschool

Social Studies

1. Democracy In Action: This activity is best done to coincide with an Election Day, Presidents Day, or Independence Day. Here are the steps of the activity: 1. Ask the children if they know how someone becomes president. 2. Begin a conversation about democracy and voting 3. Tell the children that today we will be voting on…4. Now, here comes the teacher’s choice about how to proceed with the activity. There are different ways to proceed and I will give a few examples. One is to create a ballot where with pictures where the children will circle their favorite between two choices. For example, children will choose their preferred treat cookies or brownies with a picture of both on the ballot. After all the children have circled their favorite the children will assist in counting the ballots on a chart and determining which choice got more votes. The other way to do an activity like this is with a simple hand-raising to vote for a certain choice and then subsequently counting how many votes each choice gets.

Warning: sometimes in activities like this just like in real life election things can get pretty heated and some children can be saddened if their choice loses the vote. One way to lesson the anxiety about a lost vote is to do a lot of votes so every child will be on the losing and winning side at some point. Below is a picture of a sample ballot on food.

2. Where Are We Going Today?: In this activity the children must close their eyes while the teacher spins the globe. The child then points his or her finger on the globe and we see where their finger lands. Where ever the finger lands, the teacher looks in the Almanac to give the children some facts about the country or body of water such as languages spoken, climate, and animals that live there.

3. Current Events: Have the children bring in articles that they have cut out of newspaper or magazines at home with their parents help. Or bring in newspapers or magazines and have the children cut them out at school. I would go through the papers first to make sure there is nothing too inappropriate in them before the children start cutting. At circle time the children will talk about the article they cut out. At activity time the children will make current events picture collages.