HOW-TO GUIDE for Celebrating the New Year with Preschoolers
Follow this how-to guide for celebrating the New Year with your preschoolers. Even though you won’t be with your students for New Year’s it doesn’t mean you can’t have fun celebrating when they return to school!
- Read a New Year’s Book
- Introduce the New Year Number
- Classroom Countdown
- New Year’s Sensory Bin
Read a New Year’s Book
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The Night Before New Year’s by Natasha Wing
This book is perfect to read as a welcome-back book with your students and introduction to the New Year’s theme and traditions before diving into interactive play and learning.
Book summary: A mom and dad decide to let their two children stay up until midnight to celebrate the New Year. The family buys supplies like party hats and sparkly streamers, plays games, and eats too many yummy treats. All of this fun has the kids feeling extra sleepy. Will they be able to stay awake?!
The rhyme and colorful illustrations keep little ones engaged as they follow along as you read.
Introduce the New Year Number
Visuals and interactive activities are the best to help little minds grasp new concepts.
Fill your classroom with several pictures of the New Year number. Play a “seek and find” game and encourage students to practice counting up to ten as they search for the New Year number.
Have your students repeat the New Year number out loud as individual numbers and as a whole number. This targets expressive fluency and helps with the ability to learn patterns.
Trace the number with crayons on paper or using fingers in shaving cream for fine motor practice.
Talk about the math concept of “one more” and demonstrate moving last year’s number to the new one!
Classroom Countdown
10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1… HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
Celebrating the New Year with preschoolers is more fun with a classroom countdown!
Little kids LOVE the excitement that comes with this New Year’s tradition. Even if they’ve done this just a few days before, they won’t care one bit to relive this fun moment. For other students, this will be an exciting introduction to a magical holiday moment they will continue to experience for years to come.
Add some festive confetti, horns, wands, or glow sticks to make this moment even more fun!
New Year’s Sensory Play
Why choose sensory play?
Sensory play is interactive and engaging. It promotes increased imagination skills, coordination, fine motor skills, and working together.
This New Year’s sensory experience incorporates science and multi-step directions in an age-appropriate way for preschoolers.
Ingredients needed:
- Clear plastic glasses (stemmed ones make it more festive and fun but any clear cup will do!)
- Confetti
- Baking soda
- Distilled white vinegar
- Tray
3 steps for magical play:
- Place clear glasses onto the empty tray and add confetti (a little or a lot, it’s up to you!)
- Pour baking soda on top of the confetti
- Add distilled white vinegar, and watch the magic happen!
This New Year’s activity is messy, but kids are supposed to get messy! They learn boundaries with their own body and others as they learn to control small pieces and different textures. MESSES ARE LEARNING EXPERIENCES!
Cheers to celebrating the New Year with your preschoolers!
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