November Preschool Activities: How Animals Get Ready for Winter, a Four-Week Plan

Week 1. Harvest

Color the squirrel acorn market and the piglet vegetable harvest, and name autumn fruits and vegetables.

Question: “Which autumn vegetables do we eat at home?”

Week 2. How animals spend the winter

Animals get through winter in different ways: some hibernate, like bears; some store food in autumn and then hibernate, like chipmunks; and some migrate somewhere warmer, like many birds.

Color the bear on its mushroom walk, then sort colored animals into three boxes: hibernate, store food, migrate.

Week 3. Birds and winter food

Color the squirrel filling a bird feeder and talk about helping birds when food is scarce. Decorate the window with paper feeders.

Week 4. Getting ourselves ready

Color the penguin with cocoa and the bunny’s lantern walk, and think about warm clothes and warm food.

Question: “What keeps you warm on a cold day?”

Keeping it going

• Color on the first day of each week, then talk, sort and make things for the rest of the week.
• Bind the colored pages into a class “November book”.
• Younger groups pick single-animal pages; older groups pick scenes.