Preschool Project: Thankful Collage

I have been a preschool teacher for 8 years.  Each week I will share an idea with you from the same lesson plan that I have used in my 4 year old classroom during the week.

Preschool Project of the Week: Thankful Collage
Preschool Skills: Fine motor, gluing, cutting (if you choose to let them cut pictures out themself), observing their surroundings and relations to other people and things, learning gratitude

Of course with Thanksgiving coming up, our unit in class last week was “Taking Time to be Thankful”.   One thing we do every year is make a collage of things we are thankful for.  Since I teach a class of 12, I go through magazines ahead of time and cut pictures out.  Then spread them out on the table and let the children choose.  (This is a great use for all those FREE magazines you get!)

The one on the right is one I did a few years ago to show the children as we discuss what we’re thankful for, I can show them then things that I am thankful for.

The one on the left is the one I did with Bug this year.

Ideas for pictures to cut out:

food
clothes
houses
people (to represent family or you can use actual family pictures like I did on mine)
toys
animals (pets)
beds/pillows/blankets
flowers / nature pictures
favorite vacation spots (beach, mountains)

Kids are naturally going to go straight for the toy pictures and want to do all toys (or some like to do all food).  I limit them to 2-3 of the same category of picture and encourage them to think of allll the things they have to be thankful for.

I always use a “Bible thought” (the condensed preschool version of a Bible verse) at the top.  This one is “Give thanks to the Lord” Psalm 118:1  You can give it your own title or quote.

I used this project when I taught three year olds to.  It’s also good for older ages as well.  Older siblings may enjoy going through magazines and helping younger siblings pick and cut out pictures to use.

I hope that you will check back each week for a new preschool project!