Preschool Sports Theme with Crafts and Bulletin Board Ideas
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Activities and Crafts

There are lots of opportunities for sorting with a sports theme. Students can sort different types of balls or hats (football helmet, baseball cap, visor, etc.) They can sort by color, size and texture. You could also provide pictures of different sports to sort in different ways like team and individual sport, indoors and outdoors, sports that use and don’t use balls, etc.

Place a variety of small balls into a paper bag or a shoebox with a hole cut in one end and let students use their sense of touch to guess the different types of balls. You could use a softball, a golf ball, a tennis ball and a ping-pong ball.

Observe different types of balls and then place them in water to see which ones sink and float.

Laminate cut outs of baseball gloves and footballs. Punch holes around the edges of the gloves and down the center of the footballs. Give your students yarn to practice lacing in and out of the holes.

You can use old golf balls and tennis balls for a fun painting activity. Roll the balls in paint and let your students roll them on a large piece of paper to make painting. Your can also put a piece of paper on a cookie sheet and put a few drops of paint on the paper. Then place a ball in the cookie sheet and tilt the cookie sheet to roll the ball around in different directions to paint the picture.

Use die-cuts to make different balls and other sports equipments out of constructions paper. Give your students glue and let them glue the shapes on a piece of paper to make sports collages.

These sports fingerplays work great during circle time.

Bulletin Board Ideas

Here’s an easy way to display student’s work. Take pictures of your students and put each picture onto the shape of a baseball or star. Place the picture on your bulletin board with a clothespin glue under each one. Title the board " Mrs. Smith’s All Stars" and hang student work on the clothespins.

For a math bulletin board make ten brown baseball gloves. In each glove place a different number of dots from one to ten and small piece of Velcro. Then make baseballs with the numbers one to ten written on them and a small piece of Velcro on the back. Hang the gloves on the board and put the baseballs in an envelope or folder for the students to match up the numerals with the correct number of dots.

Make a “class jobs” bulletin board with the title “Looking Who’s Pitching in!” Write the job titles on baseballs and put the students’ names on figures of baseball players or on baseball bats.

Try some of these activities and your students are sure to have a “ball” while learning!