Sarah Chesworth

Preschool Themes for Every Month

If you are planning your school year, you definitely need to check out all of these preschool theme ideas! Let’s start by talking about preschool themes.

If you are planning your school year, you definitely need to check out all of these preschool themes! Preschool theme ideas are included for every month of the year. Themes are a way for preschool teachers to organize and plan learning activities for their students.
If you are planning your school year, you definitely need to check out all of these preschool themes! Preschool theme ideas are included for every month of the year. Themes are a way for preschool teachers to organize and plan learning activities for their students.

What is a theme in preschool?

Themes are a way for preschool teachers to organize and plan learning for their students. A theme is a concept that students will focus on and experience across subjects. Themes are usually chosen based on the time of year and experience that students may be having in their world. For example, pumpkins may be a theme during the month of October. 

What are good preschool themes?

The best preschool themes are those that preschoolers are interested in and can relate to! Children are very concrete, so it’s best to choose concrete themes that will allow hands-on and real-life learning experiences. Themes make it easy for teachers to integrate content across various subject areas.

Why are themes good for preschoolers?

Themes are good for preschool students because they help them make connections and experience real-world connections across subject areas. Themes also make learning fun and engaging for preschoolers! 

How often should preschool themes be changed?

You always want to keep your students excited and engaged with learning, so themes should be changed when students begin to lose interest. The most popular options are changing themes monthly, every two weeks, or weekly. 

Tips for Planning Preschool Themes

Start by looking at a calendar of the school year and plan based on the time you have with your students. 

Pay attention to holidays and the culture of your school and community. Does your town have a huge county fair with farm animals? It might make sense to plan your farm unit around that time since many students will have the experience to tie their learning to. 

Allow for flexibility. You never know what themes your students will absolutely love and might need a few extra teaching days. Definitely make a plan, but understand that it could change! 

Choose broad themes and think about developmentally appropriate activities that you can do with each theme. 

I think it’s best to avoid using skills (like shapes and colors) as themes and instead incorporate those skills throughout the year. 

Share your themes with parents! Usually, parents love to help out where they can and may even have some great resources available to help! For example, if your theme is airplanes maybe a parent is a flight attendant and could bring pretzels as a fun snack

An Example of a Preschool Theme

Here is an example of what a themed unit might look like in a preschool classroom! Let’s pretend the theme for the week is Pumpkins! Here might be some of the themed activities students enjoy across subject levels:

  • Making pumpkin pie play dough
  • Testing if pumpkins sink or float 
  • Reading pumpkin-themed books
  • Singing songs about pumpkins (5 Little Pumpkins)
  • Looking at different pumpkin types
  • Planting a pumpkin plant and observing its growth 
  • Sorting pictures of different colored pumpkins
  • Making a pumpkin craft
Are you teaching your preschool, Kindergarten or first grade students about the life cycle of a pumpkin? This post has printable pumpkin activities to keep your students learning the month of October including a pumpkin life cycle book, pumpkin books, pumpkin planting, pumpkin counting and more pumpkin learning activities!
Planting pumpkin plants is a fun activity for a preschool pumpkin theme! Children are very concrete, so it’s best to choose concrete themes that will allow hands-on and real-life learning experiences. Themes make it easy for teachers to integrate content across various subject areas.

Preschool Themes

Anytime Preschool Themes

Some preschool themes can be enjoyed any time throughout the school year! Here are a few themes that can be planned at any time during the school year: 

  • Animals
  • Balls
  • Baking
  • Birthdays
  • Books
  • Camping
  • Construction
  • Circus
  • Community Helpers
  • Dinosaurs
  • Family
  • Five Senses
  • Fruits and Vegetables
  • Nursery Rhymes
  • My Body
  • Music
  • Pizza
  • Pets
  • Popcorn
  • Post Office
  • Rocks
  • Space
  • Teddy Bears
  • Transportation or Things That Go
  • Zoo
  • Western Theme 
Do you love creating class books with your preschool or Kindergarten students? These class books can be used throughout the school year and focus on skills like letter recognition, name recognition, number recognition, sight words, environmental print, and more! They are easy to print and use during your writing workshop time and make wonderful writing workshop mini lessons. Also, a class book bin label is included that can be used in your classroom library.
If you are a preschool teacher, these class books are just for you! Many of them fit in perfectly with popular preschool themes! You can download them for free and read more in this post Creating Meaningful Class Books.

Monthly Preschool Themes

Here is a list of popular preschool themes organized by month. Many of these preschool themes could fit under multiple months, so definitely read through all of them when you are planning your preschool school year!

January Preschool Themes

Here are some themes that preschools would enjoy during the month of January: 

  • New Years
  • Bears
  • Chinese New Year
  • Winter: There are so many directions that this theme could take! Students could focus on winter as a season, winter animals, or even winter clothes! You can check out a ton of teaching ideas in this post, The Best Winter Preschool Activities.
  • Hibernating Animals: Here are a few animals that hibernate in the winter that you could focus on: bears, bats, box turtles, bumblebees, and skunks!
  • Hot Chocolate: This fun theme leads to lots of hands-on activities such as making hot chocolate! You could also try making hot chocolate play dough! 
  • Penguins
  • Martin Luther King, Jr.: MLK Day is celebrated on the third Monday of January and many communities have events honoring Dr. King
  • Snow, Snowmen or Snowflakes: This is
Are you looking for the best winter preschool activities to keep your class or little ones learning this winter? This post is full of engaging winter preschool centers including winter sensory play, letter recognition snowballs, snowman number building, color matching, and more! These activities are focused on the skills preschoolers are learning like colors, letters, numbers, fine motor skills, and more! You’ll leave with more than enough ideas for your preschool winter theme!
Line tracing is a great pre-writing skill for little ones! These cards can be laminated and used again and again in stations with your winter theme! This activity and many more are included in, Snowman Centers for Preschool.

February Preschool Themes

Here are some themes that preschools would enjoy during the month of February: 

  • Groundhog’s Dog
  • Hearts
  • Black History
  • Health and Nutrition 
  • Presidents
  • Candy
  • Dental Health and Teeth:
  • Friendship
  • Feelings
  • Kindness 
  • Valentine’s Day: Check out this post, The Best Valentine’s Day Preschool Activities for some great ideas!
Are you looking for the best Valentine's Day preschool activities to keep your class or little ones learning this February? This post is a round-up of favorite preschool Valentine's Day centers and activities for Pre-K students. Some of the center ideas included are sensory bins, valentine cards, valentine crafts and centers focused on colors, the alphabet, patterns, and more!
These heart clip cards are focused on uppercase letters, lowercase letters and numbers. They are simple and work on visual discrimination. They are a great addition to your Valentine’s Day theme!

March Preschool Themes

Here are some themes that preschools would enjoy during the month of March: 

  • Spring: Seasons are always an important theme for preschool! Spring is a fune season to cel
  • Easter: Easter falls in March or April of every year. You can check out some fun learning ideas in this post, The Best Easter Preschool Activities. 
  • Trees
  • Birds
  • St. Patrick’s Day
  • Clouds
Are you looking for some fun Easter activities that preschool students will enjoy? This post is full of Easter preschool activities that little ones will love! Activities include Easter letter matching, Easter color words, Easter egg graphing, sensory activities, Easter writing, and Easter crafts! These activities are perfect for preschoolers in the classroom or can be used as at-home activities too.
This Easter-themed pocket chart activity is perfect for little ones learning color words and colors. They will match each color word to the Easter-themed objects that are that color! Simple for preschoolers!

April Preschool Themes

Here are some themes that preschools would enjoy the month of April: 

  • Bugs and Insects: Bugs are a fun theme for preschoolers! There are so many different bugs to learn about like ladybugs, bees, and ants!
  • Bunnies: 
  • Caterpillars and Butterflies
  • Weather
  • Picnic
  • Ponds
  • Mud
  • Chicks: I absolutely love hatching chicks with my class each spring! It is probably the most memorable thing we do all year and it’s such an amazing learning experience for them. If you are thinking about hatching chicks with your class, be sure to check out this post, How to Hatch Chicks in the Classroom.
  • Earth Day: Earth Day is on April 22!
Are you thinking about hatching chicken in your classroom? This post will answer all your questions about hatching chicks in the classroom! It details what supplies you need for raising chicks, where to find fertilized chicken eggs, a chicken life cycle craft, books about chickens and so much more! This post will inspire you to hatch chickens with your students!
Chicks are a really fun preschool theme! If you are interested in hatching chicks in the classroom, be sure to click on the picture to learn more.

May Preschool Themes

Here are some themes that preschools would enjoy during the month of May: 

  • Flowers
  • Mother’s Day
  • Oceans
  • Worms
  • Gardening
  • Plants
  • Farm
  • Memorial Day
  • Sunflowers

Related Post: 12 Best Preschool Graduation Ideas

June Preschool Themes

Here are some themes that preschools would enjoy during the month of June: 

  • Watermelon
  • Ice Cream
  • Summer
  • Father’s Day
  • Camping: Many families enjoy camping together during the summer months, so this can be a really fun and relevant preschool theme for students.

July Preschool Themes

Here are some themes that preschoolers would enjoy during the month of July: 

  • Fourth of July
  • USA
  • Water
  • Swimming
  • Olympics

August Preschool Themes

Here are some themes that preschool students would enjoy during the month of August: 

  • All About Me: The beginning of the school year is a great time to learn all about your students. 
  • School 
  • Family and Friends
Preschool writing journals can be a great addition to your pre-k classroom! This post is focused on how to get starting using writing journals during your writing workshop time in the preschool classroom! It will show you how to easily set up preschool writing journals, preschool writing journal prompts ideas and more ideas for your writing lessons in preschool!
Writing is a good area to think about when you are planning your preschool themes. Writing journals are a wonderful thing to use with preschool students. Students can write or draw to share their ideas. You can read more about journal writing with preschool students in this post, Getting Started with Preschool Writing Journals.

September Preschool Themes

Here are some themes that preschoolers would enjoy during the month of September: 

  • Football
  • Tailgate
  • Fall
  • Owls
  • Grandparents: Grandparents Day is on the first Sunday after Labor Day in September.
  • Apples: 5 Super Simple Apple Activities is a great place to start planning your preschool apple theme!
  • Squirrels 
  • Fall Leaves and Trees
  • Forest Animals
Apples are a fun fall theme for preschool children. There are so many different ways to incorporate apples into your unit!

October Preschool Themes

Here are some themes that students would enjoy during the month of October: 

  • Pumpkins
  • Halloween
  • Fire Safety
  • Monsters
  • Corn
  • Spiders
Are you teaching your preschool, Kindergarten or first grade students about the life cycle of a pumpkin? This post has printable pumpkin activities to keep your students learning the month of October including a pumpkin life cycle book, pumpkin books, pumpkin planting, pumpkin counting and more pumpkin learning activities!
This pumpkin life cycle book is for preschool students who aren’t yet ready to write about the pumpkin life cycle. Instead, they will color each picture and put the book pages in order to read about the pumpkin life cycle. Pumpkins are a fun preschool theme! You can learn more about teaching the pumpkin life cycle in this post, Life Cycle of a Pumpkin Learning Activities.

November Preschool Themes

Here are some themes that preschools would enjoy during the month of November: 

Are you looking for thanksgiving preschool activities to keep little ones busy? This post has Thanksgiving activities just for toddlers and preschoolers including turkey crafts, thanksgiving books, pumpkin pie play dough, thankful writing activities and more!
How fun are these pumpkin pie-themed Thanksgiving play dough mats? They are focused on 2-D shapes so they are perfect for preschool students! These pumpkin pie-themed play dough mats are available in November Toddler Activities as well as other fun activities for this month.

December Preschool Themes

Here are some themes that preschools would enjoy the month of December: 

Are you looking for simple preschool Christmas activities to enjoy with your little ones? Check out these fun holiday activities just for preschoolers! Preschool students will love creating Christmas class books to practice writing simple sentences and creating fun holiday crafts like Santa sacks! This post also includes ideas for literacy and math stations like gingerbread visual discrimination cards!
Santa Sacks are one of my favorite holiday crafts for preschoolers! They are easy to make and perfect for wrapping gifts.

Printable Preschool Calendars

As I mentioned earlier, I think it’s a great idea to f you are looking to plan your school year, or share the themes you choose with your parents. Many teachers choose to simply send their parents a weekly email letting them know what students will be learning. Some teachers like to create a calendar for each month of the school year and share it with parents!

I hope this post gave you some preschool themes to use this school year!

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