Letter T Preschool Unit

Overview

We spent 2 weeks on The Letter T because I wanted to spend a significant amount of time studying trees. At the end of this post you’ll also find a few non-tree related Letter T stuff we did!

T is for Tree

Books

• A Tree Is Nice*
• Everything You Need for a Treehouse
• The Busy Tree
• Tree
• Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms
• Arbor Day Square
• The Things That I Love About Trees
• Kate Who Tamed the Wind
• Maple
• Stuck

Nonfiction Books Used:

• Crinkleroot’s Guide to Knowing the Trees
• The Tree Book for Kids and Their Grown-Ups
• Curiositree: The Natural World
• Nature Anatomy

*From The Peaceful Preschool book list

Phonics & Letter Formation

As usual, here are my go-to resources & activities for every Letter Unit for phonics & letter formation:

• Letter Unit 3-Part Cards
  • Click here for a lengthy post on how I use 3-Part Cards
• Over the Big Moon Letter Identification sheets
• ABC See Hear Do (book and flashcards)
• Handwriting Without Tears letter formation chart
• Salt tray letter formation
• Forming letters with natural materials or play dough
• Sandpaper card letter tracings
• Dry erase write and wipe pouches
• Chalkboard write and wipe
• B is for Breakdancing Bear letter activities
• Stamp it! Write it! Poke it! from Simply Learning
• Letter of the Week item basket (scavenger hunt shown above)
• Beginning sound letter sort (for this week we did C – M – A – T)

This list is LONG! I never feel like this is a checklist where I have to complete all of this or somehow I’ve failed OR that my son isn’t learning enough. It’s OKAY if we don’t do it all.

We also used the Parts of a Tree nomenclature cards from The Helpful Garden and my son used our movable alphabet to make the parts-of-a-tree words.

We turned our Letter T printout from The Peaceful Preschool into a tree.

Also seen here is “Tree Anatomy” from Tanglewood Hollow’s tree bundle.

Counting & Sorting

Tree Part Sorting and Counting

For this activity the kids each would randomly draw a number card (from The Peaceful Preschool), then count out that many pinecones and that many acorns. Then I asked them to count how many total pinecones + acorns there were.

Tree Leaf Sorting and Counting

Together we collected a variety of leaves from trees. Then, they sorted and counted them on to this lacing stand I made. I wanted to to some leaf rubbings on paper but our leaves are still too early and fragile and I thought they would rip apart too easily.

Matching Games

Tree Buds Matching Game

For this activity I collected TWO of each type of tree bud that I was seeing. The goal of the activity was to find the matching pair looking at shape, size, texture, color, and arrangement.

Woodcut Matching Game

This woodcut matching game was fun to play with — they just found all the pairs with all the cards face up. Then, I pulled out 10 pairs of cards and we played a memory game.

Fine Motor Skills

Tree Slice Lacing

I made this tree part lacing stand by putting dowel rods in to a large tree slice base (I drilled a hole the same size as the dowel rod and it pushed in without the need for any glue!). Then, I drilled slightly larger holes in to tree branch slices. The idea here is that there are a variety of sizes so they can make patterns (large, small, large, small, etc.) or they can count how many it takes to fill up the whole dowel rod. Or, they can put the same amount of branch slices on to each rod.

Pine Branch Threading

We randomly found a downed pine branch this week so I took it home, cut it up and my daughter threaded the branches in to this holed utensil holder. This is the equivalent of kids making a floral arrangement (or using pipe cleaners) in a colander.

Tree Cutting Practice & Matching

This is a free printout from Pinay Homeschooler. The kids cut their own trees out and glued each piece to the matching tree on the control sheet.

Art

How to Draw A Tree

We watched the How to Draw a Tree instructional video from Art for Kids Hub a couple times and the kids and I drew trees along with the video. This was really fun!

Tree Bud Collection & Floral Arrangement

We also collected spring flowering branches and branches with spring buds and my son made a fun floral arrangement. This lasted a couple weeks on our kitchen table!

Trees by Season Coloring Page

We colored in this free Seasons and Trees activity from Teachers Pay Teachers paired with The Four Seasons control chart from The Helpful Garden.

Nature Study: Trees

Observe Real Trees

It was spring during our Tree study so we looked at flowering trees. After a rain storm we were able to collect a bunch of tree flowers and fruits that had fallen to the ground. We looked them up in The Tree Book for Kids and Their Grown-Ups.

We also found some pollen cones of a Red Pine to take a closer look at.

We also observed a variety of tree bark. But, really we mainly focused on ONE TREE. It’s too much and too hard to try to identify several trees by bark alone (for a 4 and 2 year old), so I just picked a really easy tree to focus in on for the week: Shagbark Hickory. I started pointing them out every time we would come across one. Then, we got to the point where the kids would start pointing them out on their own.

Compare Trees

We explored the difference between conifers and deciduous trees quite loosely, just by gathering a few tree parts, and then read our books to match what we were seeing to what we had collected. This was not a long drawn out nature study—I just explored it with books as much as it held their interest and then we moved on.

We only have White Pine and Red Pine here so we also counted the number of needles to compare (White Pine has 5, Red Pine has 2). If you have more conifers in your area, simply counting & comparing needles is a fun and easy thing to do for preschoolers (you don’t have to correctly ID the trees, just have fun and explore).

Tree Ring Rubbings

This activity consisted of two parts:

1. We did a simple paper & crayon rubbing of a tree slice (this one is sanded and finished), then tried to count how old that tree was.
2. Then, I had the kids draw their own tree slice with rings–I scanned and printed a page from Hello, Nature–they got to pick how old their tree was. My daughter’s (on the left) is “a million years old.”

A Tree Home Out of Play Dough

We made a large scale tree out of play dough and added animals that live in trees, find food from trees, or move through trees.

Making small worlds out of play dough is such a key and regular way in which my kids interact with their small toy animals. We do this so much! It’s a wonderful way to combine play and learning.

Tree Nature Study Resources

• Tanglewood Hollow’s tree bundle
• Parts of a Tree nomenclature cards from The Helpful Garden
• Nature Anatomy
• Crinkleroot’s Guide to Knowing the Trees
• Hello, Nature
• The Tree Book for Kids and Their Grown-Ups
• Curiositree: The Natural World
• The Handbook of Nature Study
• “See That Tree?” activity from I Love Dirt by Jennifer Ward. We talked about animals that live in or on trees, animals that get food from trees, animals that build with trees, and animals that travel among the trees.

T is for Tiger

• “The Tyger” poem by William Blake
• Mr. Tiger Goes Wild
• The Tiger Who Came to Tea
• MAPS (to look at India)
• This is How We Do It (to follow Anu, who is from India)

T is for Tiger Tea Time with The Habitat Schoolhouse.

I supplemented a few things to our Tiger study over the course of 2 weeks. As we read and learned about tigers, we also read “The Tyger” poem by William Blake each day during our tea time. A couple days we explored India further (since the greatest density of Bengel tigers can be found in the mangrove forests there) — we used our MAPS book, did some India themed coloring pages, and cooked Indian food for dinner. We also discovered that one of the children in This is How We Do It is from India, so we followed a day in the life of Anu. We read Mr. Tiger Goes Wild (an all time family favorite) as well as The Tiger Who Came to Tea (which was suggested by The Habitat Schoolhouse and my kids adore). We also watched some BBC videos of tigers online which prompted lots of pretend-tiger play: my daughter started carrying her baby doll around with her teeth like a mama tiger.

Other Letter T Activities

T is for Train Tracing

Anyone have the game Ticket to Ride?? My kids like playing with the little trains from this game sometimes so I thought I would just use them for a pattern-making and tracing activity — they traced some shapes and letters. You could also do something similar with toy wood trains.

Bible Lesson: T is for Treasure

We read the story “Treasure Hunt” from The Jesus Storybook Bible, then hid some treasure (we have a cute little chest with some fun rocks) around the house for a treasure hunt game.

Please see this page for all our A-Z Bible Lessons.