This theme is chosen by my son who is obsessed with all things dragons now. Do you have a little dragon lover at home too? He/she is going to love this shelf! Here’s a summary post of all the Castle and Dragons theme learning activities we did for this month. To read more about how we do learning at home with our learning shelf, I encourage you to read our How HTS Works page first. To know why we love theme based learning, check out this page.
Castle and Dragons Theme Learning Shelf
- Pinterest Idea Board: [theme] CASTLE & DRAGONS
- Unique Hashtag on Instagram: #castledragonshts
- Focus Book: The Knight and the Dragon by Tomie dePaola, How Droofus the Dragon Lost His Head by Bill Peet and The Worst Princess by Anna Kemp
This learning shelf and the activities are created for both toddlers (1.5yo to 3yo) and preschoolers (3 to 6 years old). When I made this learning shelf, my daughter was 2 years 10 month old and my son was 5 years 2 months old. All the activities have been categorized into the six main learning areas (language, numeracy, motor skills, discovery of the world, arts & creative expression, social & emotional development) that I am focusing on for my children.
CASTLE AND DRAGONS THEME LEARNING ACTIVITIES FOR TODDLERS (1.5 TO 3 YEARS OLD)
- Play this simple castle theme graphing game. Go to this post to read more about this activity and grab the free printable. (numeracy, language)
- Count the flags and put in the corresponding number of flags in the TP roll castles. (numeracy)
- Play this fun Dragon Feeding and Color Sorting Game. Throw the dragon die and feed the dragon a pom pom that shows up on the die. (numeracy)
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- Match fairy tale characters puzzle pieces to the outlines. These beautiful wooden puzzles are from The Freckled Frog. (motor skills)
- Sort felt cut outs according to their shapes on the felt board shield. (numeracy)
- Write some letter Ds and other letters with dry erase marker on the laminated dragon footprints printable. Invite your child to find all the D and erase them. (language, motor skills)
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- Color matching dot to dot activity with a dragon theme twist. I told my 2yo that she’s connecting the different colored fireballs of the dragons to their target boards. I attached the activity sheet on a wardrobe door so that my girl will work on vertical surface in this activity. There are many developmental benefits for kids when they work on a vertical surface. This is a good post by The Inspired TreeHouse about the benefits. (motor skill, numeracy)
CASTLE AND DRAGONS THEME LEARNING ACTIVITIES FOR PRESCHOOLERS (3 TO 6 YEARS OLD)
- Symmetry shield. Put felt shapes on one side of the shield and invite your child to complete the other side by making the design symmetrical. (numeracy)
- Make some swords using cardboard. Invite your child to make guesses about the length of each sword and then use a ruler to measure actual length. (numeracy)
- Play this fun Dragon Feeding and Color Sorting Game. Throw the dragon die and feed the dragon a pom pom that shows up on the die. For preschoolers, increase the challenge by 1) including a second number die. They will feed the dragon the number of pompoms that show up on the number die and 2) using chopsticks or tweezers to pick up the pompoms. (numeracy, motor skills)
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- Chinese sight words matching dot to dot activity with a dragon theme twist. My son is learning the Chinese names of six colors (红，蓝，黄，紫，橙，绿) here. His task is to find and dot the Chinese names of each color with the correct dot paint color. Where’s the dragon twist? I told my son that different color dragons breath out different color fireballs and his task is to locate the target board for each dragon. Again, I have this activity pasted on my wardrobe door so that my son gets to work on a vertical surface. (language, motor skills)
- Learn and play with our Castle Theme Chinese Learning Pack Printable. Go to this post to read more about this activity and grab this free printable. (language)
- Count the pompom fireballs for each dragon based on the number on the token picked. Then compare which dragon has more ‘fireballs’ and use the ‘greater than/less than’ symbol to represent the relationship. (numeracy)
- Arrange the castles from the oldest to the newest according to the years that they are built. (numeracy, discovery of the world)
CRAFT PROJECTS, EXPERIMENTS & SENSORY PLAY
- Paint your sword invitation
- Build catapults with chopsticks/popsicle sticks and rubber bands. Check out Frugal Fun for Boys and Girls, they have tutorials to make so many different types of catapults. We made the chopsticks one with this tutorial and the popsicle sticks one with this tutorial.
- Build a castle in the cloud with ice-cream cones and shaving cream. We had some expired ice cream cones at home, alternatively you can use TP rolls too.
Make a paper plate dragon twirler. Dragon printable and tutorial at Red Ted Art blog.
Love this theme learning shelf? Be sure to check out the rest of our theme learning shelves too!
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