Mother Goose Activities for Preschool
Nursery rhymes have long been a mainstay of preschool classrooms. These clever and catchy stories, popularized by the Mother Goose series, have stood the test of time and continue to be some of the first works that children have read to them. Integrate these perennial favorites into your classroom by mixing some Mother Goose activities into your preschool lessons. By doing do, you can allow your pupils the opportunity to actively engage with the material that you have read to them.
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Mother Goose Pictures
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Get your pupils' creative juices flowing with a Mother Goose picture activity. Instead of asking your preschoolers to sit still and listen while you read a Mother Goose tale, a task that often proves challenging, arm them with paper and coloring supplies before you start. Ask them to listen as you read and draw a picture to represent the tale. After you finish, allow pupils to finish their pictures, then engage in sharing time, letting pupils show their creations to their classmates and explain why they drew what they drew.
Mother Goose Puppets
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Encourage creative play by building Mother Goose puppets with your pupils. After reading a Mother Goose tale to your class, give each pupil a brown paper bag and construction paper or a sock and some felt, glue and yarn. Ask the pupils to use these materials to create a puppet to represent one of the characters in the tale. If your pupils seem to struggle, help them decide which features to include and help them sketch out their designs. Give pupils the chance to join together and act out the story with their newly created puppets.
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Mother Goose Felt Board
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Before you read Mother Goose tales with your pupils, create a felt board to accompany the story. To create this felt board, cover a bulletin board with black felt. Cut out characters or objects featured in the tale using felt. Place these characters on the board, allowing them to stick to the board. After the tale, let pupils take turns manipulating these prepared characters.
Mother Goose Memory
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Create a memory game for your pupils using scenes from some of their favorite Mother Goose tales. Copy some of the images out of the Mother Goose storybook that you are using with your pupils, reducing them in size until they fit on a large index card. Create two copies of each image. Glue the images onto index cards. To play, jumble the cards and place them face-down in front of the players. Ask the pupils to take turns turning over two cards at a time. If the pupil turns over matching scenes, he collects the cards. Whichever player has the most matches at the conclusion of the game, wins.
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