You have come to the right place if you are looking for fun, engaging and exciting Neighborhood themed activities to do with toddlers, preschoolers and kindergartners. Our activities are widely used by teachers, moms, dads, child care providers and more!

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Neighborhood Arts, Crafts and Activities

Picture of the Neighborhood
I give the children black paper. They use colored chalk or crayons and draw a picture of a neighborhood at night. Use foil stars for the sky. Attach all of the pieces of black paper together on a bulletin board. It looks just like a real neighborhood at night!

House Book
Supplies: wallpaper books and magazines Cut simple house shapes as large as possible from pages of wallpaper book. Provide several of these to each child. Let the children assemble their pages in book fashion by stapling several house-shaped pages together. Then let the children cut out pictures from the magazines of objects which belong in the different rooms of the house. The children glue the pictures belonging in one kind of room on each page. Make a kitchen page, a living room page, a bathroom page and bedroom pages.

Alaskan Neighborhoods!

Igloos
Have the children color or paint igloos on dark construction paper. Ask them to draw someone beside the igloo. Have the children tell little stories about their igloos.

Igloo Building
Make igloos using marshmallows & a bit of water to make the m stick together (or marshmallows with icing)

BURR!!
Play with ice at water table

Ice-periment
Ice cubes – two trays – one with blue food coloring, one with yellow food coloring. In a clear plastic cup, pour room temperature 7-up or other clear soda and then drop ice cubes in

Igloo Construction
Use blue and white paper to construct an igloo. Cut or tear the white paper into squares or rectangles. Arrange the squares and rectangles in the shape of a dome on the blue paper. Then glue the pieces into place one at a time. Your child may wish to decorate their picture with crayons and paint to show other things that they learned about igloos. Write your child’s description of their picture on the bottom of the page.

Icicle Game
Have the children pretend to be icicles as they move about on the play area. Choose someone to be the sun. When the sun touches someone, he or she must “melt” and fall down, laying very still.

Salt of the Earth
Supplies: 2 cups salt, 1 cup cornstarch, 1 1/4 cups cold water, paper clips. Mix the salt, cornstarch and cold water in a saucepan. Ask an adult to heat the mixture until it is very thick.
Let the dough cool a little. Then squish it between your fingers until it’s smooth. Use the dough to form the letters of your name. Press the paper clips into the backs of the letters to make hooks. Let the dough dry until it’s hard. Then hang the letters in your room as a reminder to be the “salt of the earth.”

Doctor’s Bags
Materials: black construction paper, red construction paper, stapler, white chalk items such as band-aids, cotton balls, etc…. Fold the black paper in half & draw a doctor bag on it so that the fold is the bottom of the bag. Cut it out and staple the sides together. Cut a red cross out of the red paper & glue it on the bag. Write Dr. ____ on the other side of the bag. Put cotton balls, band-aids, & gauze pads whatever else you would find in a doctor bag that the kids could play with.

Chef
For a baker or chef make a hat by cutting a strip of white poster board, staple it to fit the size of each child’s head. Then we take one sheet of white tissue paper and staple it to the top of the poster band and fluff up the tissue to look like a bakers hat.

The children wear their bakers hat and we bake some cookies for our snack. For art we make pizzas with paper plates for the crust, red paint for the sauce, yellow and white construction paper cut into thin strips for cheese,
brown construction paper cut into circles for sausage.

Profession Sponge Printing
Use various people shapes (available in a variety of school supply catalogs) and let them dip them in skin tone paints and stamp on a piece of paper cut into a house shape.

Baby’s Quilt
Decorate “baby bundle” quilts with scraps of fabric squares….a baby bundle is sort of an oval shape with the top end (the head) a bit wider than the bottom… like the shape of a baby wrapped up in a blanket…. Let them draw a face at the top (or you could supply a circle to be the face and have them draw their facial features then glue on to the “bundle”) Fill the remainder of the bundle with fabric squares to be the baby’s quilt.

Families
Have available lots of magazines (women’s magazines have the best family pictures) and lots of popcicle sticks, glue and scissors. The children can cut pictures out of the magazines and glue on to the sticks for family puppets. Maybe they could make their own family!

 

Neighborhood Games and Activities

Neighborhood Walk
Take a walk around the neighborhood. Before going, make a list of things that we think we will see. When you return, review the list and make alterations as needed!

Match – Ups
Assemble an assortment of pairs of real objects often used together in or around the house. Some examples are broom and dustpan, paper and pencil, spoon and fork, cup and saucer, shoe and sock, salt and pepper. Discuss how and why each object may be used where we live. Let the children handle the objects. Then mix up all of the objects. Ask the children to find two objects that go together.

Telephone Repair Pantomime
Give directions and let children use motions to silently act out each step of a telephone repair person fixing the broken wire on the telephone line.
1. Get in the truck.
2. Drive the truck to the place needing repair.
3. Haul out all the equipment we will need.
4. Put it on our back.
5.Climb the tall telephone pole.
6. Fix the wires.
7.Climb down the pole.
8. Ooops. We forgot our tools. Climb back up the pole.
9. Get our tools.
10. Climb down the pole.
11. Dial a repair phone to check that the wire is working well now.
12. Get in the truck and drive away.

Salty Scenes
Supplies: 1 cup salt, 1 cup flour, 2 cups water, 2 cups tempera paint. Mix the salt, flour and water. Divide the mixture into four pie tins. Add 1/2 cup of tempera paint to each tin and mix it in. (Use a different color for each tin.) Paint a picture of the world that will remind you to give to others.

Light of Love
Try one of these ways to spread love…
Bake cookies for a neighbor and deliver them with a smile.
Make your bed–without anyone asking you to.
Help a friend who is hurt or sad.
Send a homemade card to a faraway friend or family member.
Say “please” and “thank you.”
Invite a new friend over to play.
Collect some of your old toys and give them to a children’s shelter.

Waiters
Make place mats. Discuss waiters and use will use our placemats at meal time. Read Stone Soup and then each child is bringing in a vegetable to make soup with. We will talk about cooks and what they do.

Grocery Store
Take a field trip to a Grocery store.

Post Office
Have our mailman come into our room so we can hand him “letters” we have written to send home.

Fire Station
Plan a field trip to a fire station.

Tool Prints
Dip real tools in paint and place them on paper.

Policeman
Invite a police office to talk to the children.

Helper for the Day
For our unit on community helpers we usually designate a day for each helper . For example, for a doctor we had a doctor visit the class and talk about what they do. We played with the stethoscope, played a game naming body parts. Talked about nutritious food/

Postman
We had the postman visit our classroom. Before he came we wrote out letters to our special adults. (Most colored pictures) Explained where the address went. We made mailbags out of paper bags from the grocery store and pretended to go to the post office. When the mailman came we sent our mail to our special adults.

Policeman
We also had an officer come to our classroom. We talked about if we were in an emergency how we would contact help by dialing 911. We acted out this scenario and dialed 911 explaining the situation. (a fire) We showed the children how to call for help out the window, put a cloth by the door and stay low to the ground until a police officer or fire fighter found them. We made badges out of aluminum foil.

Librarian
We made a trip to the library and made our own books. Cut several “9 X 12” sheets of construction paper in half. Use a hole punch to make holes down the left side of the pages. Have children make a wordless book by drawing a story.

 

Neighborhood Songs, Poems and Finger Plays

Ten Workers
Said the farmer, the miller, the baker,
“We’ll give the dear baby his food.”
Said the carpenter, glazier, and mason,
“We’ll build him a house strong and good.”
Said the weaver, the tailor, the cobbler,
“We’ll make him warm pretty clothes.”
The mechanic said, “I’ll fix the auto
When off on a journey he goes.”

Dentist
If I were a dentist (point to yourself)
I know what I would do.
I’d tell all the children, “Brush your teeth.” Imitate brushing
“Keep a smile like new.” (Smile)
And if a tiny hole should show, (Make circle with fingers.)
I’d say, “Climb into my chair.”
I’d make my little drill go buzzzzzzz,(Make bzzzz sound.)
and put a finger there. (Point to teeth)

Teachers ( Tune: “Mary Had A Little Lamb”)
Our teacher comes to school each day,
School each day, school each day.
Our teacher comes to school each day,
To help us learn and grow.
She smiles and helps us learn all day,
Learn all day, learn all day.
She smiles and helps us learn all day,
We’re glad we come to school.

Smokey the Bear.
Smokey the bear, smokey the bear,prowlin and a snifin the air,
He can smell a fire, be–fore it starts to flame, That’s why they call him
smokey, and that’s how he got his name.

Traffic Light Song
Red says stop ( hold up left hand in “stop” gesture )
Green says go. ( right arm motioning )
Yellow says wait. ( Hold up index finger )
You’d better go slow.
When I reach a crossing place (cross arms at wrist )
To the left and right I turn my face.
I walk, not run across the street. ( Use fingers )
and use my head to guide my feet. ( point to head and feet)

I’m A Big Red Fire Truck (Sung to the tune of I’m A Little Teapot.)
I’m a big red fire truck long and stout,
when I am needed I roar and shout,
people love to see me rush about,
Just turn me on and head me out.

I’m a big red fire truck stout and long,
here is my ladder, tall and strong,
when I get a call you’ll hear my song,
Just climb aboard and turn me on.

If I Were
If I were a baker (pretend to put on a hat and apron)
What would I do?
Bake lots of cookies (make a circle with thumb and forefinger)
For me and you. (point to self and a friend)

If I were a secretary, (pretend to type and write on a notepad)
What would I do?
Answer the phone, (hold pretend phone to ear)
“How do you do?”

If I were a veterinarian, (pretend to put a stethoscope in ears)
What would I do?
Care for your pet (pretend to examine a cat or dog)
It’s special to you.

If I were a dentist, (look in mouth of friend)
What would I do?
Check those teeth (pretend to drill or x-ray friend’s teeth)
That’s good for you!

Police Officer
Police officers are helpers wherever they may stand. (Stand with feet apart, hands on hips.)
They tell us when to stop and go by holding up their hands. (Signal stop by holding up hand and go by pointing index finger.)

Cowboy
Home on the Range
Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam,
And the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the skies are not cloudy all day.
Home, home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the skies are not cloudy all day.

Firefighter (tune: “Eensy Weensy Spider”)
The firefighter helps us learn our safety rules.
Playing with matches is only for fools.
If you see a fire, “Help,” you’ll scream and shout.
Dial 911. The firefighter will put it out.

Farmer
First the farmer sows his seeds. (Imitate planting seeds.)
Then he stands and takes his ease. (Stand with hands on hips.)
He stamps his foot. (Stamp foot.)
He claps his hands. (Clap hands.)
And turns around to view his lands. (Turn around with hand across eyebrows, looking.)

 

 

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