Great Stuff for July!

Teaching in July can have as many great unit ideas as teaching in October. Here are just a few things to liven up your lesson plans.
DLTK has some great Fourth of July Coloring Pages
as well as some crafts made out of things like toilet paper rolls.

Keeping with the patriotic theme Enchanted Learning has a very easy Stand Alone Star craft that consists of cutting and decorating.
Disney's Family Fun has some easy to make hand fans that could be made even easier with just some star stickers and red and blue construction paper. Here is their fan.

If you don't want to be patriotic all month long Everything Preschool has an entire page dedicated to summertime/beach crafts to make. The feature things like making an ocean in a bottle, making a hula skirt, and making a rainbow fish after reading the book Rainbow Fish.

As long as you are on the fish theme, one of my favorite books to read is Swimmy and use the music "The Aquarium" from the Carnival of the Animals. If you do not have this song, listen to the downloadable mp3 below. Talk to the children about how they add music to movies and cartoons to make the story come alive and then demonstrate this by reading the classic, Swimmy.



If you do an animal unit this summer you may find many more of the songs from Carnival of the Animals useful. There are songs about elephants, kangaroos, donkeys, cuckoo birds, lions and more.