First-School.ws
Raccoon Theme Preschool Lesson Plan Printable Activities
The raccoon is a mischievous nocturnal mammal. It is intelligent, a great
swimmer, and can be an urban pest too! Let's learn some more.
Young children will have fun making an easy and fun craft of a raccoon
and during the process many skills
and educational themes can be addressed. Other printable support materials and links to related
activities are provided.
1. Science and Social Sciences Objectives:
- Define and understand the terms:
- mammal: a class of warm-blooded animals that have, in the female, milk-secreting organs for feeding the young. The class includes human beings, apes, many four-legged animals, whales, dolphins, and bats.
- raccoon (can also be spelled raccoon): a small mammal native to the forests of North and Central America that has grayish black fur, black patches around the eyes that looks like a mask, and a long bushy ringed tail. - Understand that people need to respect animals and plant life, natural resources and their habitats.
- Identify ways people help protect these living things so that they are not endangered or become extinct.
- Review the external resources and suggested children's picture books to prepare and expand on the objectives.
- Ask children what they know about the raccoon, or if they have seen pictures or read stories that have a raccoon character.
- Ask children if they know other animals that live in the forest or their local park and backyard.
2. Discuss some simple facts about raccoons:
- Raccoons are mammals.
- Where does it live? Lives in woodland forests, deserts or urban areas.
- What does it eat? The raccoon is not a picky eater. It can eat just about everything. It has very agile hands to pick up food and are super climbers. It eats berries, acorns, honey, eggs, worms, grasshoppers, and other bigger animals like chicken. In towns and cities they eat garbage.
- The raccoon is generally nocturnal - active at night.
- Raccoons can spread diseases, such as rabies - be careful and never touch a raccoon.
- A young raccoon is called a kit. Kits are born in tree holes way up high where they can be safe and dry.
- Fun facts, and wonderful images of the raccoon at Wikipedia.org
Activity: Printable
Raccoon Crafts
Select a printable raccoon craft that is age appropriate. All
you need is a printer, paper or construction paper, glue stick,
scissors and something to color with.
- Before
craft assembly conduct some of the learning activities suggested
for the craft which may include: identify colors, number and count the craft templates.
- Skills developed during craft assembly: Scissor cutting and coloring are precursors to handwriting, problem solving, fine motor skills.
Activity: Language Arts: Alphabet Letter R or Vowel team sound (oo)
Activity: Children's picture books
- raccoon theme
This is just a sampling of beautifully illustrated books that can help
you present the raccoon and other topics -- your librarian can help you
select many more!
Activity: Online Jigsaw Puzzle
> Raccoon
Children will enjoy this fun image. Skills: Problem solving, bilingual English and Spanish The default puzzle is 6 pieces.
Activity: Raccoon coloring pages for puppet and display
A coloring page can be printed on sturdy card stock paper to make a
puppet. Color,
cut out and attach a craft stick to the back.
