Preschool Noah's Ark Thematic Unit
Noah's ark is a fun theme for learning about animals. If you are a religious family that has Noah in your belief system, it allows you to combine religion with academics. If you prefer a non-religious animal theme, see the featured box to the right for a link to a zoo theme.
Set-up for Noah's ark theme:
Obtain banner paper and draw a very large, very simple ark. You don’t have to be an artist to do this. Let your child color it and add scenery.
The first day, put Noah and his family on the ark and teach the story. You will want to repeat the story throughout the month, and there are many books to help you do this.
As you learn about specific animals, place them on the ark. When you finish the unit study, your ark will be ready to float. You may want to follow up that unit study with one on water or weather.
On Noah's Ark by Jan Brett
Brett’s pictures are wonderful and her website often has enrichment material to go along with her books that are appropriate for home preschool and kindergarten homeschooling. She has coloring book style pictures for your mural (you may want to enlarge them):
Check each section of her website for more resources.
Each day introduce a new animal.
Need a math lesson? I have a counting lesson plan featuring animals.
Online Resources about animals:
Animal Coloring Pages: meant for teaching the alphabet.
Animal videos (has ads)
Lions:
One great thing about animal lessons is that they have such great get up and move potential. After showing your children some lion pictures, get up and pretend to be lions. Put on some jungle music and talk about how lions might move. Then move to the music.
Lions are hunters. Teach your children to play hunting games. Hide lion pictures in a room and help your children find them. You can use the words hot or cold to tell them if they’re getting closer, or you can give clues. Little children usually aren’t ready for competition, so if you’re playing with several children, find ways to avoid having winners and losers. Let them all be on the same team. It’s also a good time to introduce Hide and Go Seek, even though they aren’t very good at it. For a toddler, you can “hunt” by naming places he couldn’t possibly be. “Is Jacob in the flower pot? Is he in the lampshade?” Pretend you don’t see him right away. Another hiding game involves hiding something that makes noise—a ticking clock or a wind-up toy. This teaches small children to follow sound, which is surprisingly hard.
If your children watch Between the Lions, visit their website together.
Most of the lion crafts on Danielle's Place are too hard for preschoolers, but you might like to make the visor or other items to use in your lessons.
Check out the right hand column for lion books.
Monkeys:
Nothing is more fun than a barrel of monkeys, as they say. And you can still buy that game in some stores and from Amazon. (See link in the right hand column.)
Monkeys are great imitators. Play Monkey See, Monkey Do with your child. Say, “Monkey See, Monkey Do. Monkey do the same as you!” Then do something your children can imitate. Have them be the leader next. Try a monkey follow the leader game—make sure all movements could be done by monkeys.
Your older little monkeys might like to start learning to use the monkey bars, with a little help from dad or mom.
If you’re learning the letter M, use your barrel of monkeys to form a large letter M. If your child can’t imagine a monkey-made M, cut out a thick letter M and then set the monkeys inside it.
Draw a giant M on the driveway and let your children pretend to be monkeys traveling the shape.
You can’t do a monkey day without Curious George! Teach the color yellow when you read these books, in honor of the man with the yellow hat. Then make yellow hats to wear.
How about a supplemental banana theme to go with your monkeys? Make some banana recipes to accompany Raffi’s banana song.
Rainbows:
You might want to finish your unit study with a day on rainbows. Rainbows are great for teaching colors. (Lesson plan coming soon.)
Visit the Zoo theme ideas for more animal lesson plan materials.
