Preschool Activities for Squirrels

Crafts

• Use crafts to enhance a lesson plan on squirrels. Have preschoolers draw and cut out a picture of a squirrel. Cover the squirrel in craft glue and let the children sprinkle dry coffee grounds onto the squirrel pictures to add color and texture.

  Help children make a picture of squirrels gathering food for the winter. Cut a tree out of brown construction paper and cut fall leaves out of red, orange and yellow construction paper. Add the leaves to the scene and cut out a squirrel and some acorns to glue to the picture. The squirrel can be a photocopy of a simple line drawing, so that preschoolers, who probably can't yet draw a recognizable squirrel, can feel satisfied with their craft.

Songs &Rhymes

• Use squirrel-themed songs, rhymes and chants to teach preschool children about squirrels. Make up a chant with hand motions about squirrels for preschoolers. For instance, make up a chant similar to this: "Little squirrel, little squirrel with a tail so bushy and grey, saving up your acorns for a wintry day." Have the preschoolers pretend to swish their pretend tails and gather pretend acorns.

  You can expand the chant and add music to it for a musical lesson. Use a familiar tune such as Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" or "Happy Birthday" and change the lyrics.

Games

• Use games to add fun to preschool squirrel lessons. Cut acorn shapes out of brown construction paper. Tell children they are going to gather and hid acorns, just as squirrels do when they prepare for winter. Hide the acorns in a room. Divide the class into two teams. Send one team out of the room while team one looks for all the acorns that have been hidden. Once the acorns have been found, ask the students to hide them again for the other team to find. Then the students leave the room and the other team comes in and repeats the process.

  Teach children that squirrels have a keen sense of smell which they use to find food. Blindfold children and ask them to smell and identify different things such as a flower, chocolate, garlic and a scented candle. The child who can identify the most smells correctly wins the game.

Other Preschool Activities for Squirrels

• Have the children create squirrel costumes or puppets and put on an original play about squirrels. Other activities include reading books such as, "Nuts to You!" by Lois Ehlert and other squirrel-themed books.

  Create a chart and ask the children to put a check mark on the chart every time they see a squirrel. After a week, have children report their observations.