Preschool Lesson Plans

Successful Theme Teaching

What is theme teaching?

Theme teaching is a method of teaching concepts and skills through activities that revolve around topics that are naturally exciting to kids, like dinosaurs or transportation, as well as topics that are important for kids like health or safety that can also be made exciting through creative lesson planning. Theme teaching is a successful and popular teaching method primarily used in preschools. Integrated learning is a similar teaching concept successfully used in older grades that entails incorporating lessons from many areas of the curriculum including math, science, history, art and language arts as varied topics such as Ancient Egypt or The Water Cycle are being covered.

This article will focus on successfully using theme teaching with preschool age students, but readers will easily see how the basic concepts can be used to stimulate ideas for integrated learning with older learners in a classroom or home school learning environment as well.

Creating Successful Theme Teaching Preschool Lesson Plans

To create a successful theme learning experience for preschoolers, teachers must first be aware of both the skills and concepts that their students need to master. Examples of concepts may include shapes, colors, numbers, letters or opposites. Examples of skills may include holding and using a pencil, using scissors, running, jumping, buttoning a jacket, listening or introducing themselves. These are only a few examples of skills and concepts that may be appropriate for preschoolers.

As you can see, concepts often involve cognitive development while skills often involve fine motor (using fingers and hand-eye coordination), gross motor (using arms and legs), or communication skills (both verbal and physical). Language incorporates both concepts and skills as children learn both receptive language (what they understand) and expressive language (what they can communicate). Successful theme teaching will incorporate activities to encourage all needed concepts and skills regardless of the theme.

Benefits of Theme Teaching