Letter M Activities for Preschool (And Free Preschool Lesson Plan: M is for Manners!)

Through games, music, stories, crafts, and more, today we learn all about the letter M! These creative Letter M activities for preschool are centered around the free preschool lesson plan M is for Manners. It’s a fun way to teach kids about manners…an important topic!

This lesson continues our alphabet lesson plan series and is intended to help make your experience teaching preschool in your home easier, educational, and more fun.

Preschool at Home

The best part of doing preschool at home is the chance to teach my kids (and whatever buddies are with us) the things that really matter, laugh together, and shower them with love at this young and important age. My hope is that these lesson plans and activities help you in your efforts to do the same.

If you haven’t seen my quick tips for getting started with successful home preschool, check them out.

Use and share these plans to talk, sing, read, write, and play your way through the alphabet; these kinds of activities are the foundation of building strong readers. You can use our full lesson plans, or, of course, pick individual activities to do with the Littles in your life. I am also a budget-friendly Mama, so no worries there: our activities are always easy on the pocketbook. Now, let’s get to it!

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Visit the Preschool Lesson Plan Index to see what free plans are published or in the works!

Update: You can now get ALL of the Alphabet Lesson Plans, Checklists, and Printables, (plus Bonus Ideas and 75+ exclusive preschool printables!) all in one budget-friendly digital product…A to Z and Beyond! Preschool Curriculum.

Learn More about A to Z and Beyond!

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INTRODUCTION

Gather on the floor for circle time and start with a welcome song. We have been singing, “Hello to All the Children of the World”. Each week we briefly spotlight one of the countries in the song, but last week we learned about the last country mentioned.

So, this week, we learned a little about the desert because the song says, “There are children in the deserts.” We talked about how deserts are really dry places. Although we usually think of them as hot, deserts can be really hot or really cold.

Here are some interesting facts about deserts.

We finished by finding the three largest deserts on the World Map and the desert closest to us in North America.

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WRITE: Letter M Messy Mud Writing

I introduced what the uppercase Letter M looks like with its straight shapes and the lowercase m with its straight and curvy shapes. Another way to talk about what this letter looks like is the uppercase is “Tall mountain, tall mountain.” For lowercase m, I usually say, “Straight, little hill, little hill.”

Then I gave my Little a Tupperware with mud in it. He thought that was awesome!

We used a stick to practice writing uppercase and lowercase M. Then we wrote some of the other letters he knows.

If you have a particularly messy group, you may want to put newspaper or a disposable plastic tablecloth on your table.

Sing and Play: Sound of the Letter M and Hum that Tune

I introduced the sound of the letter M. We talked about how it sounds like a hum. We practiced the sound by playing a game.

One person hummed a song of their choosing, while the other person guessed what song it was.

Play and Talk: Mind Your Manners

The word that starts with the letter M that we were going to learn a lot about was manners. In order to teach, discuss, and review good manners in a fun way, we played a game called Mind Your Manners.

On your turn, you pick a scenario card. You decide if the scenario is an example of good manners or bad manners. If it’s good manners, you roll the die and move FORWARD that many spaces. If it’s bad manners, you decide what should have been done in that situation, roll the die, and move BACKWARD that many spaces.

The winner is the first person to get to finish.

You can make a simple game board and create your own scenario cards. However, if you want to use the game I made and used (containing 48 scenario cards, a printable gameboard, and directions) you’re welcome to it! You can get the Free Game Download and all the other printables for this lesson in the M is for Manners Lesson Plan Checklist.

This game was a great way to really discuss what it means to have good manners and why that’s important. I answered questions he had about manners too.

Additionally, any type of game like this that includes recognizing dot numbers on dice and moving corresponding spaces is a simple way to practice important math concepts.

Sing: Please and Thank You

These simple lyrics are sung to the tune of Frere Jacques.

Please and Thank You
Please and Thank You
Sounds so nice
Sounds so nice
Manners are important
Manners are important
Be Polite
Be Polite

Find this tune and many other simple songs about manners here. They are all new lyrics about manners written to familiar tunes.

Read: If You Give a Moose a Muffin by Laura Numeroff

First, my Little found the M’s on the cover of the book. (Can you find the lowercase m too?) Finding a letter on a cover like this is a great way to practice recognizing individual letters, often in different fonts.

Typically, after preschool we also find our preschool letter all around in everyday life, such as labels and signs. We need a lot of repetition to learn!

I asked my Little to watch for examples of good and bad manners in our story. We read If You Give a Moose a Muffin by Laura Numeroff. Afterwards, we talked about the manners in the book.

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This whole If You Give…Series is super entertaining. My kids like all of them. They love how the story comes full circle. An added bonus I appreciate is how the main character is so great at being accommodating and cleaning up after his friends!

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Play and Craft: Mighty Manners Moose Puppet

After reading about a moose, we made a moose puppet to go along with book. However, our moose had a little variation from the one in the story. We made a Mighty Manners Moose.

This moose is pretty much a super hero, cape and all. Mighty Manners Moose is an expert at catching people using good manners and congratulating them, as well as helping people improve their manners.

Whether or not the puppets work on manners for long, a moose with a cape is a pretty cool thing to have around.

Sing: 5 Little Monkeys

We sang 5 Little Monkeys, which is a fun little example of not such great manners. 🙂

Play: Musical Chairs

Here’s another example of not the best manners…racing to take the last available chair!

We only had two at our preschool on this particular day, but a bit bigger crowd and we definitely would have played Musical Chairs, a classic game that just happens to start with the letter M.

Eat: Foods that Start with the Letter M

Going with the theme of the book, we ate muffins that I had made previously. You could also bake muffins as part of your preschool time.

Other foods that start with the letter m include melon, mango, mandarin oranges, macaroni and cheese, mushrooms, milk, milkshake, or anything maple flavored. You can also serve stick pretzels in the shape of M.

While we ate, we read another story.

Read: Penguin Says “Please” by Michael Dahl and Other Books about Manners for Kids

I had searched at my library for books about manners, please, etc. and brought a stack home. Many of them were shorter board books, so we read several while we ate our snack.

You can do a general search at your library, or try some of these that we read and enjoyed.

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We liked Penguin Says “Please” by Michael Dahl, a simple story about a penguin learning to remember that magic word. We read two others in the series as well…

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(The books in this Hello Genius Series are all good books for teaching kids about manners. It’s a great series for the younger preschool crowd.)

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This is a unique book with a good message.

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Richard Scarry books are classics. I love how much is going on in the illustrations of his books.

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You can’t go wrong with the Berenstain Bears. Mama Bear has a solution for every family problem!

Write: Alphabet Practice A-M

We are half way day with the alphabet! I thought this would be a good time to practice with the letters that we’ve learned so far.

I made a printable of Letter A-M, so my Little could trace the uppercase and lowercase letters. Then he cut out the pictures and glued them under their beginning sounds.

He didn’t remember the sound that all the letters made, but after gluing the ones he did know, we figured out the others.

This was a great review of both what the letters look like and what they say.

Sing and Play: Move to the Music (AKA DANCE PARTY!)

I don’t know about you, but we always enjoy a good old-fashioned dance party at our house.

We turned on some favorite music and danced and sang along.

If you want to mix things up a bit, do a freeze dance. (When the music stops, everyone freeze: the more interesting the frozen position, the better.) Kids love freeze dances, and they are good for the body and brain.

SING: GOODBYE SONG

We closed up by reviewing our letter of the day, what it means to have good manners, and why manners are important. I encouraged my Little to choose to use his best manners ever this week!

Lastly, we sang our goodbye song and see you next week!

Our next preschool lesson will be Letter N is for Numbers. It will be a good one!

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Leave a comment and share how you’ve taught your child to use good manners. Also, let me know what activities your Littles are enjoying, what types of posts you’d like to see, or any other questions or thoughts you have. I love hearing from you. Share pictures on social media using #lovinlifewithlittles. Thanks for visiting, and Happy Preschooling!

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