How I used a sand castle poem to create an amazing toddler lesson plan
The hot weather makes it a perfect time for a beach theme! We are having a blast doing all kinds of beach-themed activities. My daycare kids’ favorite activity this week was a sand castle poem. In this blog post, I will be sharing a toddler lesson plan I created using a sand castle poem.
Five Little Sand Castles Poem
I always like to start a classroom activity off with a themed book. We read Hide and Seek Harry At The Beach by Kenny Harrison. This was a great way to introduce my toddlers to sand castles and get a discussion going on who’s been to the beach and building a sand castle.
Next, I read them the Five Little Sandcastle poem. They each got to take away one castle at a time from the printable as I read the poem.
A great way to set up this activity is to attach the sandcastles to the shore using velcro dots. Velcro dots are sturdy enough to hold the sand castles to the paper, but still easy for little students to remove from the printable.
To reinforce counting skills, I asked my toddlers to hold up 1 finger as I held 1 sandcastle in the air. We continued doing this activity until we got to number 5.
Simple Sand Castle Ideas
I added a few more simple sand castle ideas to this lesson plan for some added fine motor practice. My students love to play with play dough. Play dough is such a great activity for toddlers to work on strengthening small hand muscles, those same muscles will be needed for future writing skills.
As a group, we played Smash the Sandcastles. I placed a ball of playdough on each sandcastle card. The children would tell me the color of the flag found on the sandcastle. Whoever got it right first got to smash the playdough, pretending to smash the sandcastle. They would have played this all day! This was a simple sand castle idea that was a lot of fun!
Classroom Beach Theme
I hope you enjoyed this sand castle poem activity and were inspired to add it to your classroom beach theme. If you are looking for more beach-themed infant, toddler and young preschool ideas check out my 5-day Sand Play lesson plan.
