Everything you need for your preschool letter O lesson plan. Including shopping list, to-do list, and itinerary!
This is specifically for a preschool at-home Co Op.
All these suggestions work for a group between 5-10 children, and I cannot guarantee it would work for a bigger group. After all, preschool kids are wild, and I don’t know how to get them to listen if there are too many, LOL!
My Co Op follows a basic Calendar: One day a week, each week is a new letter, (we have a few Holiday activities thrown in), each mom is in charge of one month, and we get to choose our own lesson plan!
As exciting as that sounds, I wish that they just gave me a lesson plan, instead of me searching and creating it from scratch each time.
But my loss is your gain! because I already did the work, you can just follow what I did.
Letter O.
I asked my preschooler what starts with O and he said “Oreos”. So that is where I started.
It’s fun to teach the children cool skills while incorporating the letter, so I decided we’d practice Obeying.
Have you heard of the Marshmallow Experiment? I decided to do it with Oreos instead. With the permission of the moms, I recorded so they could see what their child did. . . But I’m getting ahead of myself!
O THE POSSIBILITIES!
O is for
- Octopus
- Ostrich
- Owl
- Obedience (obey)
- Oreo
- Orange
- Order
- Opposites
Outline for the Co Op Class for Letter O
I find that breaking the assignments up into 15 minute increments helps their attention span. But some of these will take a little longer, some will take a little less time, don’t feel like you need to rush through any section, and if you don’t make it all the way through, that is just fine! They are little children, let them absorb what they can and what they want.
- Children learn how to put things in order, first things first. (15 min)
- Ostrich lesson (15)
- Opposite Game (15)
- Oreo test (15)
- Obedience songs and games (15)
- Orange snack (15)
- Octopus (15)
- Hoot Owl Hoot (15)
List of Items to Buy
- Construction paper (black and orange and yellow)
- glue
- Feathers (order online)
- Pens.
- orange and blue pencils, crayons, or markers.
- sharpie or something that can write on
- Small Oranges (cuties)
- Oreos
- Craft Sticks, Jumbo Online
- Melissa&Doug Alphabet Train (or other game/puzzle that puts things in order)
- Hoot Owl Hoot (optional)
Optional Note: Many people have asked for just the coloring handwriting pages that I made for each letter. You can find each of them for FREE on each letter lesson plan. OR you can BUY IT as a digital download (CLICK HERE) or a physical copy (CLICK HERE)
Prep Work
Week Before:
- Order Materials online.
- Go buy the rest at the store.
Day Before:
- Print Out Octopus Pages for each child (download here)
- Print out One Opposite Page (download here)
- Print out one stop/go page, cut and glue it to a popsicle stick. Color stop red. go green.
- Cut out the squares in the opposite page.
- Cut out a circle, or “O” out of black construction paper for the ostrich’s body. cut out head and legs out of orange paper. draw one eye on the head. (if your kids are capable, you could have them cut out the O) Like this Ostrich here. Except that the kids will be gluing real feathers on the body as well.
- Check out and learn the “quickly I’ll obey song” so you can sing it easily to the kids. (it is religious on the third verse, but you don’t have to include that while teaching)
- Check out the youtube videos about ostriches and octopi, and decide if you will include them.
- Check out Youtube video about marshmallows. We will be doing something similar with oreos.
- Double check and gather all items into a box.
Morning of.
Prepare your work stations. Usually in a home, this would be at the dining room table, and in the living room. If you have more rooms available, (front room, breakfast room, etc) consider having things set up in each room so you don’t have to clean up and set up while the children are there.
Set up tv for the youtube videos if you plan on doing those.
- Living Room 1: First set up The Melissa and Doug Alphabet Puzzle on the living room floor.
- Dining Room 2: Set up the ostrich craft at the dining room table with each setting having an ostrich O, head, 2 legs, a few feathers, and glue. (glue sticks worked fine for my kids, but elmers glue would help it stick better, but it’s messier).
- Living Room 2: Set up the opposite game. If you just have a few children who can gather around the matching game on the ground or table, do that, but if you have many, consider putting tape on the matches and taping them to a white board or wall.
- Dining room 2: Set up Oreos on plates, with a tripod, or phone propped up somewhere that can get a view of all the children at once.
- Living Room 3: Stop/Go sign
- Dining room 3: Octopus printable and orange/blue crayons and a pencil for each child
- Living room Bonus: Hoot Owl Hoot
Letter O Preschool Welcome: Putting the alphabet in order.
Have a play area set up for the kids to play together while you wait for everyone to arrive. Have the children start on the Alphabet puzzle as soon as they get there.
Once everyone is there. gather them around and talk about the letter O.
“Who knows what the letter is today? We did N last week, do we know what comes next? (sing ABC song to help). O. That’s right? What words can you think of that starts with O?
What animals can you think of that start with O?
Ostrich, otter, octopus, oyester, owl.
Who here wants to make an ostrich?
“Did you know that ostriches are the biggest birds alive? how high do you think they can fly? no they can’t fly. How many toes do you have? the ostrich has 2 on each foot. How big do you think their eggs are? Eating one ostrich egg would be like eating 24 chicken eggs! Do you know the mom and dad watch over their eggs together to keep them safe? Would you be brave enough to steal an egg from an ostrich for breakfast?
How can you tell a boy ostrich from a girl ostrich? The boy has beautiful black and white feathers, and the girl has brown feathers. The prettiest boys with the prettiest dancing get to marry the girls. The brown helps the girls hide in the brown desert.
show ostriches dancing
Today we are going to make our own ostriches, but they get to have whatever feathers you want!
Lead them to the table where they do the ostrich craft.
When they are done make sure you write their names on it.
Letter O Preschool: Opposite Game
“Who here knows what opposite means? It kind of means same, but different. Like hot and cold. They are both feelings on your skin, which means they are the same that way, but they are different, or opposite feelings!
We have a matching game with opposites on them. You’ll have to pay close attention to see if you can spot the difference, or the opposite of the matches!
Ready?
(when each child picks one, talk about what could be the opposite. And mention how they are the same)
Continue till they are all matched.
Letter O Preschool: Oreo Obedience.
Have them as a group go to the table, where hopefully you can film them (with parent’s permission). you should only be sharing the video with the parents.
Put a plate in front of each child. And put a single oreo on top. Tell them you are going to test how they can obey. You can choose to eat the one oreo. But if you wait till the timer rings, you’ll give you 3 more oreos! Set the timer and leave the room for 5-10 minutes.
Afterwards talk about obedience and what it means, and how it made them feel when they waited that long.
Talk about how it made them feel to be obedient, or how it felt to not be obedient.
sing the song “When my mother calls me” (here) its a really easy song to memorize. You can add in actions.
- When my mother calls me (put your hand to your mouth like you are calling for someone.)
- Quickly I’ll obey. (act like you are running in place)
- I want to do just what is best, each and every day. (nod head repeatedly)
Sing the song again, but this time use “daddy” you can also use, grandma, teacher, boss, babysitter etc,.
When that is done, say we have a stop and go game of obedience.
Stop and Go Obedience Game
Take the Stop/Go Sign, and they have to stop and listen while you tell them what to do, then when you flip it to go, they go and obey.
Order them to do some fun things that lead them to the table. Hop 5 times. Stop to listen. walk backwards 3 steps. Stop to listen. clap their hands while taking 6 steps. . .etc.
Snack time.
They’ve already had their oreo snack by now, but let’s add a little goodness. Everyone gets an orange, and their next “go task” is to draw as many os on the orange with a marker as they want, then they can eat it.
O is for Octopus Printable.
Have them come back into the living room, (you can use the stop and go sign if it helps) then say we are going to learn about another awesome O animal. The Octopus
Hold up a picture of an octopus (you use the one on the O printable. . .I have a stuffed animal octopus, that I used too)
We are going to learn a little about octopuses! first of all, do you know what more than one octopus are called octopi. Who likes pie? what do you know about octopi? they have three hearts, 8 arms. fun fact, those arms are called tentacles. They can camouflage themselves, they are good at puzzles. they live in the ocean. their mouth is at the bottom. it is like a beak.
(Optional show camouflage octopus on youtube.)
Now we can draw the orange octopus on the ocean. See how many words start with O? color the octopus orange, and the ocean blue. trace the uppercase os and the lower case os. and try writing the os on your own on the last line.
Let them color until parents get there.
Letter O Preschool Bonus: Hoot Owl Hoot
If you breeze through these games, and have extra time, I pulled out this Hoot Owl Hoot game. and let them play. It is ridiculously easy, but with little children, you have to help them take turns. I put 5 or 6 color pieces in front of each child, so they weren’t all grabbing at the pile, and then pointed to each child in turn, and they turned over their own pile and moved an owl to that color. I also took out most (if they are younger, maybe all) of the suns. It is O for Owl and taking turns is going in Order.
Bonus is that the parents will come and be very impressed with how you are still activily teaching their kids all the way up to the moment they got there.
Make sure the kids take their octopus and ostrich, push everyone out the door, and go finish off the oreos, you deserve it!