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My Home/Family Life

Fine Motor: Head of Hair Cards: Cut head shapes from posterboard (well, actually, head shapes that have the shape of a head of hair).  Draw in facial features, color in the hair, etc.  Then place the "head of hair cards" in your Small Manipulative or Games Center along with various hair pins and hair clips that children can clip/attach to the edge of the cards at the hair section. (Often, you can find head patterns in coloring books.)

My Home: (Creativity Within the Limits of a Theme): After discussing "our houses and homes," provide children with collage and drawing materials.  Instruct them to make a picture of their homes, giving several options (maybe you want to make a picture of your bedroom, or a room inside your house.  Or, maybe you want to make a picture that looks like the outside of your house with a street or a driveway, or trees).  Tell them you want them to "think in their heads first" about what kind of picture they want to do.  Have them tell you about their completed pictures.  Print their exact words on their papers.

Pre-Math: Sorting: Provide magazine pictures of items for babies and pictures of items for older children (clothes babies would wear versus what older children might wear, foods babies would eat versus what older children might eat, baby bottles versus forks, etc).  Have the children sort the items into two groups (babies and older children/adults).
 
Creative Art Center: Provide children with different sizes of human figure cutouts to represent both the adults and children in families (I often use gingerbread patterns).  They can then collage the figures any way they choose -- adding facial features and clothing.  This is a great project to keep on-going in the Art Center throughout this unit.  It gives children the option of creating various family members over several days during Free Choice Play if they wish.
 
Sensory Activity: Sound: Have children listen to a recording of voices and then determine which are those of an infant versus an older child or children versus adults.
 
From Sheryl Bauer in Wisconsin:
"What's Missing Books": Memory Game: Find any "home/house/family" related picture from a coloring book and copy it several times (or create your own picture from black and white clipart and copy it).  Using liquid paper eraser, white out something (or delete something) different from each of the copies.  Leave the master original picture as it is -- whole and intact.  Next, color the pictures exactly the same throughout the stack.  Laminate to preserve them, punch a hole in the corner of the stack, then place them on a metal ring.  To use in class during Group Time, have children look at the "whole" picture (the original), encouraging them to try and remember everything that's in it.  Then sing a little song like "What's missing, what's missing, please tell me."  As you flip through the pictures that have items deleted, the children try to guess what's missing.  This can be adapted to any theme as long as you have a picture to start with and it's fairly simple to prepare.

I love this idea from Lorene in Utah that requires children to "think" and teaches the concept of "Opposites":
Hh Is For My House: For each child, begin with a picture of a large house in the middle of a sheet of paper leaving some space around the house (Lorene got her picture from a clip art CD, but you could also use the outline of a house from a coloring book).  Also provide each child with two separate sheets of paper that have small pictures on them, one sheet having items found "outdoors" (sun, tree, swingset, fence, etc), the other having items found "indoors" (sofa, bed, dining table, etc).  The children cut out all the small pictures.  (To lessen the cutting difficulty, draw a basic triangular shaped frame around each of the pictures and let the children cut out the "triangles."  This also reviews the shape of the month.  If you're doing a different shape, use that one instead.)  They then decide whether the pictures belong outdoors or indoors and glue them onto their house picture accordingly.  (Be careful not to provide too many small pictures for the children to work with so as not to overwhelm them.)

This is truly one of the best ideas I've ever received, sent to me from Patricia Jacobs, in West Grove, Pennsylvania who teaches preschool children with special needs:
Hi Stormie.  Here's an idea I can share with you.  When I do my "Home/Family" theme, I send 2 empty film containers home with the children.  I include a note asking the parent(s) to fill the canisters with some sort of familiar and/or favorite scent from their house.  With the collection of assorted scents (coffee, perfume, spices, furniture polish, etc.), we play a little guessing game.  It is a wonderful language opportunity and fun to see if the children recognize these scents from their own homes.  I remember one time a little girl opening her canister, and after smelling, she said, "Daddy."

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