For my homeschool preschool Co Op, I was in charge of teaching the letter S to little children ranging from 2-4, with superhero crafts and activities
Welcome to Preschool Co Op! If you are wanting to know how to start an at home preschool co op, go here for beginning instructions. If you are all set, and just want to hop into the Letter S preschool co op lesson plan, then let’s go!
S Is Super Hero Day!
Because SuperHeroes are very busy being active, there are more activities and less crafts, for today.
Today it is all about the story. You will lead the superhero school to do heroic activities and save the day!
- Welcome Play (Rescue The SuperHero)
- Introduction to the letter S-Superheroes Saves The Day
- Suit up!
- Superhero Stretches
- SuperHero Swat
- Introduce Letter S and Handwriting
- SuperHeroes Matching Upper and Lowercase letters
- Superhero Reward Snacks (scooby snacks?)
- Celebration Time For Saving The Day!
- Optional Story Time: SuperHero Books from library (like SuperFriends and Brain Freeze)
Supplies to Buy at the Store or Online
- Handwriting helpers for little hands (optional)
- Pens
- Printing Paper and Ink
- Markers/crayons/or colored pencils
- Scissors
- Tape (love double-sided)
- Snacks
- Sticky Notes
- mini water cups
- Buy, rent from library, or find online: Superhero Readers
- 2 fly swatters (dollar store)
- 1-2 poster boards
- Optional t-shirt capes (any old t-shirt, any size, will work) and “rings of power”
- Masks super cheap!
- Ice trays
- Figurines to freeze (online) find around house, or second-hand stores usually have a bag of random figurines for a couple of dollars.
- Circle Cutter Optional
- Optional Capital Letter Stickers for poster circles.
- WAY OPTIONAL: I went ahead and made an alphabet handwriting coloring book that has all the letter printables in one place. You can download it free of course, but if you’d rather just buy the whole set at once, I wouldn’t complain 🙂
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: go over supply list and buy all the online items.
2 days before: Go on a shopping trip to pick up the rest of the needed supplies.
Day Before:
- Print Off Superhero Yoga (superhero poses) paper
- Printables: Download and print 1 handwriting S coloring page per child
- Find superhero toys around house (or other toys that can be frozen) and put each individual piece in bowl of water and freeze. Or put just the feet in ice cube trays, and freeze them standing up (1 for each child)
- Optional Cape Craft: Cut used t-shirts into capes, (no sew). This is for dressing up like superheroes: cape, mask, rings with power in them, give each child a long pair of adult socks to wear over their clothes up to their knees. They’ll feel incredibly authentic
- Letter Circles: Grab a cup or other circular item roughly the size of the palm of your hand. take a sharpie and outline 26 circles on the poster board. write (or put stickers) in each circle the uppercase letters A-Z. Cut out each circle. TIP: This takes a LONG TIME! I finally wised up and bought this circle cutter. Incredible! put double sided tape onto the back of each circle and put them (random or ordered) on the wall, make sure it’s the right heights for the preschoolers to touch each one.
- Set up Youtube with dance along songs
Preschool Words Starting With S:
Superhero, Saves, Swings, Swat, Snakes.
Welcome Save the Citizen from Ice!
Hello everyone! I am so glad you are here, there is someone who needs your help! A supervillian has frozen the toys and you need to use your powers to rescue them!
Show them the frozen action figures, and hand them plastic utensils and warm water to melt the ice off.
Tips on making this work:
The night before I froze an action figure for each child in water (it could be any hard toy). Then when they came, i had emptied the frozen bowl onto a plate, and gave them some tools to help take it out. In hindsight, I would do this a little differently. I got the idea from here. But it took a really long time, and the pieces were really solid. little 3-4 year olds lost interest after 15 minutes. I would have tried to use ice trays, and just put their feet in the ice, or if it is a nice day outside, I would have them do the activity outside with possibly a hose to help melt the ice. Expect them to get wet.
Introducing the letter S for SuperHero!
Gather everyone into a circle.
Whew! That was tough. Do you remember what letter we did last week? Letter R? So do you know what this week is? I’ll give you a hint. . . the ssssound is in sssssuperhero and ssssaving people.
It’s S!
Now there are a lot of words that start with S. Can you think of any?
But today, we will be concentrating on just one. SuperHero
Suiting up!
“Everyone, that was a super job you just did saving those poor people who were frozen. That shows me that you are truly ready to be superheroes.
And all superheroes need. . . A SSSSECRET IDENTITY! And a SSSSSuper SSSSSuit!”
Everyone gets to pick a mask (and a cape, rings, long socks, etc,.)
Note: I had so many masks, I let them take a couple home with them. They can also keep the t-shirt capes. . . But I made them give me back my long socks
Tip: After they pick, take all of the extra masks and put it up. Or else they will be distracted the rest of the time changing their masks.
Help them to pick superhero names. Some want to be their favorite, like batman, some want a unique name. Try alliteration with their name: “singing susan” “trainwreck trevor”. use their superhero names as often as possible throughout the day.
SuperHero Stretches
“Now that you are dressed up with your secret identity, you need to get ready to save the day by doing superhero stretches or poses.“
Read off the super hero stretch list, but let them then choose poses for their own superheroes, and everyone copies them. It’s hilarious the poses they pick! Just make sure that you keep them away from accidental improper poses! Now they are ready to be armed!
Super Hero Swat!
“Oh no! I think I hear the Super Villains coming. How good are your reflexes? Do you think you can hit them fast?”
Seperate into two lines. This is a really good oppourtunity to teach taking turns.
The first two get a clean fly swatter each, and are facing the letter circles on the wall. Different letters on each side. (I got the idea here)
“Quick! The Villain J and E are coming to attack. Swat him now.” (alternative: you can give the letter sounds for older children). “Quick, hand the swatter to the next two heroes!” (pick two other random letters and let them swat at them, then switch).
Play this till they are done.
Letter S Handwriting and Coloring
Next have them calm down a bit by sitting at the table and doing their S paperwork.
Optional Read Out Loud Books: Super heroes
SuperHeroes Saves the Children
Go back to the wall of letters. (Tip: during the paperwork, to make this more interesting, you can hide the letters on different walls around the room)
“Alright superheroes, you did an excellent job with fighting villains, and doing paperwork after. But something sad happened. A lot of little alphabet kids lost their moms, and need you to help them back to their parents. Here is little lowercase a. (write lowercase a on a sticky note) which superhero can take little a to his mom Uppercase A? (have a child take the sticky note and stick it on or around the circle A) Wonderful! They are so happy now. Who can help lowercase b? (one by one, let each child put lowercase letters to uppercase.)
Note: I did this in real time. I sat on a chair with a pen and a stack of sticky notes. The kids would come up to me 1 at a time and ask for a sticky note. I just went through the alphabet and as many times as the kids came back, I gave them another one, till they were all saved. The kids kept coming back, so the mama alphabets had several kids each next to them.
SuperHero Snack Time
Wow! you all did such an amazing job helping the lowercase letters. You all deserve a super Hero Snack!
SuperHero Celebration Dance Party
While they are eating their snacks, set up the celebration party!
Hooray! the superheroes saved the day, and now get to have a dance party!
Play the youtube videos at the beginning of the post. You can pick more than this, or just repeat the songs. kids LOVE repetition. We did this till the parents came to pick them up.
This was an exhausting activity. But the kids ADORED it!