No Preschool November plans yet and it's Thursday afternoon? Here's a LOW PREP way to plan a whole month of fall harvest, turkeys and thankful centers.
The scene: 4:58 PM, Thursday, October 29
The last car has pulled away from pickup. The glue sticks are capped (most of them). You sit down in a chair built for a four-year-old, knees somewhere near your ears, and open your planner to look at tomorrow. Then you turn the page.
November. It starts Sunday.
Halloween isn't even over. There's still a pumpkin in the sensory bin that has started to develop a personality. And a quiet voice in the back of your head says, "Turkeys. You need turkeys. And leaves. And something about being thankful. By Monday."
Things that have definitely happened during November planning
- I searched "preschool turkey activity" at 9:40 PM and somehow ended up watching a video about folding a fitted sheet.
- I printed a beautiful counting mat, then noticed it went up to 100. We are a proud counting-to-10 classroom.
- I bought a bag of acorns for the sensory bin. The next morning I found roughly all of the acorns in the world on our playground.
- I made a leaf craft sample that took me most of my planning period. My class finished theirs before I finished saying "only a dot of glue."
- I planned a sweet "What are you thankful for?" circle time and learned my class is mostly thankful for snack, the class fish and the word "potato."
- I wrote "plan November" on a sticky note. Then I lost the sticky note. In November.
None of this is a planning problem. It's a materials problem. Preschool teachers plan for hands, not just heads, and little hands need stuff: mats, cards, clip strips, playdough pages, something to sort. Making all of that from scratch on a Thursday evening is how a teacher ends up laminating at the kitchen table.
The LOW PREP fix: a Preschool November theme pack you can print tonight
That's why I built the Preschool November Theme Pack: Fall Harvest, Turkeys & Thankful Centers for ages 3-5. It's an 83-page printable PDF plus 15 interactive drag-and-drop slides (PowerPoint and Google Slides), and the teacher guide includes a month at a glance and 4 weekly planners with a Head Start ELOF skill focus. In other words, the plan is already written. You just have to read it, preferably sitting in a grown-up chair.
Four ways to use it this week (well, next week, since Monday is November):
- Tonight, on the couch: read the month at a glance and the Week 1 planner. That's your plan. Fill in the family letter (fillable teacher name and date) and send it home so families know what's coming.
- Friday, one prep session, three centers: print and laminate the 10 counting mats, the turkey letter match and the color sorting mats, then store each center in a zip bag. Use real acorns, buttons or playdough as counters. Those playground acorns finally have a job.
- Monday circle time: put up the November calendar header and day cards, pick a weather card, and teach one of the 4 original songs and fingerplays set to public-domain tunes. Add the 36 vocabulary picture cards to your word wall.
- When the wiggles arrive (and they will): pull out the 8 gross motor movement cards or switch to the drag-and-drop slides on the board. When it's time to settle, the playdough mats, tracing paths and cutting strips are ready to go.
Later in the month, the thankful turkey craft and the "I am thankful for ___" emergent writing page give you a bulletin board without a marathon sample-making session. There's also a class skills tracker and a one-child checklist, so your notes come from what you already watched children do at centers. And the ink-saver counting mats and vocabulary cards keep the printer from staging a protest.
Grab it
Preschool November Theme Pack (Pre-K, ages 3-5): payhip.com/b/TRl3i
Still finishing Halloween week? Halloween Math & ELA Games and Centers for PreK-K: payhip.com/b/jThd1
More funny, practical posts live on The SOAR Classroom Blog.
Now close the planner. November can wait until after dinner.
Written for teachers by Mr. M's SOAR Classroom, a classroom teacher and instructional coach.