Group Play

Most of these work better in a large group but you can still do them in small group.  

Pumpkin feelings.  You can do many different things with these but one of my favorites is head, shoulders, knees and toes with that emotion.  Give each child a pumpkin and let them do it with that emotion (EX. if someone has the sad pumpkin, sing the song as sad as you can!) You can find these pumpkins and lots of other emotion faces here

 

 Rhyming Garbage.  This is a good rhyming/ phonemic awareness game.  The little kid plastic garbage cans with the rotating lid work best but I couldn't find one at the time so I just bought a normal one at the dollar store.  I Just found random things around my house and put it inside.  Let a child come and pick something out of the "garbage" and have everyone come up with a word that rhymes with it (it doesn't have to be a real word).  Example if a child picked up the ball we could rhyme call, fall, tall, all, gall, mall etc...

The rhyming cat/ hat game.  Talk about each hat for a second and see what the children want to call each then hid the cat under one of the hats (they all have felt on the back) and say the rhyme: "little cat, little cat, are you under the ________ hat?" I just found all of these hats on google or clip art! 

Another rhyming/ phonemic awareness activity.  A tisket a tasket.  I found the basket (ha it rhymes...) at the dollar store and just had an extra envelope.  Have the children walk around in a circle (movement activity  while singing the song. Really "drop" the letter and let a child pick it up.
A-tisket a -tasket
A green and yellow basket
I wrote a letter to my love
And on the way I dropped it,
I dropped it,
I dropped it,
And on the way I dropped it.
(Child's name here) came by and picked it up and put it in his pocket.

 

 There Was an Old Lady... another classic. You could also read the book along with the this prop.  The pieces Velcro to her stomach and she also has felt on her back for a felt board.  I found this here.  

 Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See?  You could easily do this as a felt story or add some Popsicle sticks for each child to have one. I found this here

 Down By the Bay.  This is another rhyming story.  All I did was found picture of things that rhyme (bug  rug, goat boat, cake snake, box fox,  frog log, moose goose, mouse house... etc)  and glued them on the front and back of the paper.  You could also add a ? on the back side of one and let the children guess their own word that rhymes with it.

 Old McDonald and other farm stories, felt or stick puppets!  I found these here

 Teaching about listening?  Here is the perfect "listening" boy with printable labels to stick on where they go (ears listen, go by the ears...) I ended up putting this on a over head and projecting it big so I could trace it onto a poster board.  I can't draw but that was really easy!  I found this here