Rosh Hashanah Theme: Preschool Journal Prompts

Here's a glimpse into how we've used our preschool journal to incorporate the Rosh Hashanah theme. My son is enjoying using his journal more independently and leading many entries with his own ideas and expression. Sometimes, I sit with him and we use it together. It continues to be a great tool to practice fine-motor skills, pre-writing, building language and vocabulary and even developing mathematical skills through charting and counting (as you will see below).

Happy writing and recording!

We've talked and explored through books and actual fruit how apples come in a variety of colors. Here I would provide crayons, markers or colored pencils in yellow, red, and green. An older child may be able to match the color to the associated apple. Younger journal writers may have fun exploring the writing medium and coloring with shades of all three colors.

Journals are a great place to store cute songs, poems and action rhymes related to themes we explore. Along with stickers I might also provide crayons or something to color with. As an extension, you can count how many apples are "up in the tree" or "below on the ground" or "all together." This is a great way to incorporate mathematical concepts into journaling together.

As a theme-related field trip, we visited a local produce shop to pick out a variety of different apples to taste and compare. This is a great activity to talk about the senses of sight and taste (among others, of course!) and we will use color coded stickers to make a very basic chart of which ones we each try. At the end we will pick a favorite. Older children could chart based upon their favorites, or which ones taste sweet, sour, are crunchy or soft, etc. We will definitely end up with more apples than mouths to eat them all at once. The remainder, along with some baking apples bought especially for the purpose will be used to make homemade applesauce together. If you do not plan to cook or immediately use leftovers, you may want to invite some additional tasters for this activity or reduce the number of varieties tried!