Back to School-What to do with your Preschooler this fall!

Are you looking for the perfect homeschool curriculum for the first week of school? Are your preschool students excited for school and all things Autumn? Below you will find lessons perfect for three and four year old students ready to dive into their education. Get ready for a one page stop for back to school curriculum for preschoolers. Looking for direct links to Chaos Manager Curriculum?- click here

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Favorite Back to School Book Titles

Are you looking for the perfect book for your Back to School curriculum for preschoolers? Look no further than this list (I am an Amazon Affiliate and may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you!)

The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn

The ultimate tear jerker for a parent sending their child off to school for the first time…or a sweet story of a little Racoon going to school.

Time for School Mouse by Laura Numeroff

A quick board book with everyone’s favorite little mouse. Looking for a longer Mouse story? Check out If You Take a Mouse to School!

Here are some other great Back to School titles for preschoolers:

Time for School Little Blue Truck
We Don’t Eat our Classmates
The Pigeon HAS to go to School
Llama Llama Back to School

Back to School Curriculum for Preschoolers: By Subject

Math:

Back to school is synonymous with crisp air, crunchy leaves and apples! The math lesson for this week involves apples and one to one counting skills. One to one counting means that a student understands they only count each item in a set once. In this activity we will be counting apple seeds! This is a great opportunity to have a healthy snack of an apple and use the real apple seeds for math. What a great sensory experience! If you aren’t able to eat in your classroom or just don’t have time to pick out seeds, feel free to make your own out of paper ahead of time. Use the linked worksheet to put the appropriate amount of apple seeds on each labeled apple.

Click HERE for the Apple Seed Worksheet!

Science

To continue using apples as a part of the back to school curriculum for preschoolers let’s delve into some science! Learning about life cycles is an important part of curriculum for most young students. Plant and animal life cycles are usually included in state guidelines and are great fun to study in childcare and homeschool arenas as well. Here are two great activities!

This Apple Life Cycle Book from Education to the Core

This apple life cycle sequencing activity featured on my Teachers Pay Teachers store!

Pre-Writing/Reading

One of my favorite subjects to teach to my older kids is always literature. I’m not quite there yet with my little guy since he’s still learning to read! In order to get him on track with reading, as well as writing, I used these ideas for my back to school curriculum for preschool aged kiddos.

I chose to focus on a new letter of the alphabet each week. For the very first week of school we used the letter S (for school!). Good for anytime of year is this FREE letter S dot marker worksheet from my store on TeacherspayTeachers.com

Another fine motor pre-writing activity is to use a dry erase marker to trace some S’s! Slip a worksheet or piece of paper with handwritten S’s into a dry erase pocket like the one below and your child will be able to practice over and over again.

One last activity to exercise little hands and increase letter recognition is to make playdough (check out the recipe for apple scented dough below) and guide the preschoolers to make snakes…they may just notice that snakes can look quite similar to the letter S!

Motor Skills

I’ve mentioned a few back to school curriculum for preschoolers activities above that are also excellent fine motor skill builders. If your classroom (or house!) is anything like mine though, you’ll also be in need of gross motor lessons to get out some extra energy. For this first week back I suggest finding a few small school buses. Then, using masking or painters tape, make a track along the floor. Have the students trace the tape routes with the school buses. You could even create a few stop signs to make it a little more of a challenge!

Art

Last, but not least is the back to school art focus. Did you know that by age 4 most children will include a head, body, eyes, arms and legs in a drawing of a person? If your child isn’t quite there yet that’s ok! Everyone learns at their own pace and from their own experiences. Encourage your students to look in a mirror and draw a self-portrait this week. This is a great back to school curriculum for preschoolers, as you can also include it in your lessons at the end of the school year too. The progress will amaze you!

Would you love all of these ideas in one convenient place? Check out my lesson bundle on teacherspayteachers.com! Included are all of the worksheets mentioned above, a printable (super cute for classroom display) version of the curriculum activities PLUS I’ve thrown in my toddler Apple theme lesson plan too! Updated September 2023: I now have an entire apple themed bundle available too! Check it out here.