This lesson plan for preschool aged children, either at home, in daycare or preschool, is centered around the letter Aa. The animal that I have chosen to represent the letter Aa in this lesson plan is the aardvark. The fact the word aardvark has two As together will fascinate your preschoolers, as well as the silly nose of the aardvark! You and your students will have great fun with this letter Aa lesson plan.
Books for Lesson Plan: Aa is for Aardvark
A is for Aardvark by Yale Bernstein
This book features an animal for each letter and the first animal is, most appropriately for this preschool lesson, the aardvark! By reading this book to your preschool class and letting them take turns looking through it themselves, you are introducing them to a fascinating new world of animals.
You should fill your reading center with this particular book, as well as any others that you can find about aardvarks and anteaters. The books don’t necessarily have to be geared toward preschoolers. As long as they are books that are not precious to you and that contain great illustrations of aardvarks in their natural habitats and at zoos, then they will delight your preschool students.
Also, you can have each of your preschool students make their own aardvark books. Provide each child with cover page that has an illustration of an aardvark for them to color. Of course, write or have them write their names on the cover page as the authors and illustrators of the books. Provide pages that say things such as My aardvark’s name is _____. and My aardvark likes to eat _______. You can write the words in for your students or they can trace the words that you have lightly written on the page.
Either staple the books together and send them home with the children, or laminate their personal aardvark books and keep them in the reading center for the remainder of the lesson plan.
Artsy Aarvarks
Believe it or not, there is more than one way to decorate an aardvark. The foundation of any piece of aardvarkian art is, of course, a paper cut out of an aardvark. Provide your preschoolers with large and small, fat and skinny, short and tall aardvarks. Now let them decorate the aardvarks with paints, crayons, stickers, sequins, yarn…and whatever other supplies you have on hand. Each preschoolers aardvark is his own masterpiece and should be hung with pride from the classroom rafters! Or at least on the bulletin board.
Aardvark Sensory Play
Stock up on a generous supply of those sticky hands that you can purchase for a minimal price at a dollar store. Place small paper ants that you have cut out on a table and let your preschoolers try to catch them with their aardvark tongues (the sticky hands).
Adios, aardvark lovers!
