Letter U Preschool Activities (And Free Preschool Lesson Plan U is for Up!)

Whether you are planning preschool for a crowd or you just want some activities for your child, kids will love these preschool activities about the letter U. These activities include games, music, books, crafts, STEM, and more! Kids will enjoy and learn from these creative and hands-on Letter U activities for preschool. This post includes all you need to teach the free preschool lesson plan U is for Up.

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

Most importantly, 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. Lastly, 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.

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INTRODUCTION

First off, 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 have been briefly spotlighting one of the countries or features in the song.

Earlier we talked about the line that says, “We speak in many different ways!” One way to speak that is not in the song is with sign language.

Today, we’ll learn signs to represent the line “We’re children just the same.”

Each of these words can be found in this super helpful signing dictionary that shows how to make the signs.

To make the sign for “we,” use your right hand pointer finger to point to the right side of your chest and then across to the left. Remember, “children” is signed by holding the hands open, palms facing down, and then patting down and then outward, like you’re patting the heads of little kids. Lastly, we can make the sign for “same” holding out the thumb and pinky while pointing the three middle fingers down and then moving the hand side to side.

Sing the song again, reviewing all the signs learned so far.

Write: Writing the Letter U with Pipe Cleaners

I introduced how today we are learning about the letter U. Both the uppercase and lowercase letter U are made of curvy shapes. Practice making an uppercase and lowercase U with pipe cleaners.

Play: Letter U Cake Walk

In order to practice the sound of the letter U, we did a Letter U Cake Walk.

After teaching the two sounds of the letter U, I showed the larger Letter U Pictures from the Letter U Cake Walk Printable (included in free Lesson Plan Checklist). As we said what each picture was, I placed them on the floor in a circle.

I turned on music and we started walking from picture to picture. The song we used was the U Song from the Alphabet Operetta.

One of my absolute favorite ways to learn about the alphabet is with the CD, The Alphabet Operetta. The songs are fun and teach the basic phonetic concepts of the alphabet. We listen to it in the car a lot (even my big kids are okay with that!), and then I often throw an individual song into our preschool learning.

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It’s hard to find the hard copy CD these days, but you can stream it very reasonably. You could also do a 30-Day Free Trial of Amazon Prime Music and stream it for free!

Join Amazon Prime Music – The Only Music Streaming Service with Free 2-day Shipping – 30-day Free Trial

Ok, so we’ve got our music going, and we’re walking around the circle. When the music stops, we each stop on a picture. Next, we draw from a bowl one of the smaller pictures from the Letter U Cake Walk Printable. Whoever is standing on the matching picture wins a prize!

For prizes, you could give a snack, small treat, or little surprise like these Unicorn Stickers.

Play multiple rounds.

My kids had a great time with this one. A dance party broke out when I said there would be a bonus prize for the one who moved around the circle in the most creative way!

Read: Inside Outside Upside Down by Stan and Jan Berenstain

After learning about the sound of the letter U, I introduced the word we were going to focus on for most of Mommy Preschool today. It is Up!

Our first book talks about being up and upside down!

The Berenstain Bears Inside Outside Upside Down is a simple story about Brother Bear going on a little adventure inside a box. It’s a fun introduction to directional words like inside and up.

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Play: Simon Says with Up and Other Directional Words

We briefly talked about directional words like up, down, left, right, under, and over. Left and right are tricky, but for many Littles it works to say, “You write with your right hand.” You can also show how the left hand pointer and thumb make an L.

Next, we played Simon Says using those directional words. For example, “Simon Says put your right hand up,” or “Simon Says put your left hand under your foot.” We like to take turns being Simon.

Read: Up by Joe Cepeda

I held up the next book we were going to read and had my Little find the U on the cover. Then we read the story together.

Up (I Like to Read) by Joe Cepeda is an easy reader book. It follows a young boy who is blown up and away and sees the farm animals flying along with him. The illustrations are fun and really help tell the story.

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Talk: What Goes Up?

In the story, the wind blows a little boy up into the air, but what goes up in real life? We talked about different things that fly like a kite, plane, balloon, or helicopter.

I introduced very simply the concepts of gravity and force. Gravity pulls things toward the earth; it is why we don’t float up and away. However, we can overcome gravity with force, which is a push or pull.

We talked about the force that makes some things go up. For example, the force of wind can make a kite go up or the force of our hands can make a ball go up.

Next, I introduced a challenge.

Play: Invent a Catapult

Our challenge was to see if we could invent a catapult that would put a plastic egg up into the air.

My older boys participated in this activity with us. I didn’t give them any direction, and they loved it. It was off to the kitchen and toy cupboard immediately to hunt down supplies.

If you want to give your preschoolers a starting point, teach them how to make a catapult by rubber banding a plastic spoon to a wooden block, and then experiment with launching different objects and seeing which ones fly the furthest.

As they worked, we talked about how inventing is a lot of trial and error. They created several different designs, and I loved hearing comments like, “Let’s try…” and “We could experiment with changing this part.”

Add bonus fun to this preschool physics project by recording the different launches in slow motion.

Play: Keep the Balloon Up

Our next activity was playing Keep the Balloon Up. Using hands or feet or whatever body part we wanted, we pushed the balloon into the air and kept it from touching the ground without holding it.

At first, each child played with a separate balloon to get as many hits in a row as possible without letting the balloon touch the ground.

Afterward, we worked together to set a team record.

Write: Balloon Math

This simple Balloon Math Free Printable (Included in Free Lesson Plan Checklist) is a great way to practice preschool addition and subtraction. You could also use actual balloons as manipulatives to help kids visualize adding and taking away balloons.

Sing: Balloon Song

Next, it was onto singing The Balloon Song for Learning Colors. This song was simple to sing along and a fun review of different colors.

Read: Up from Disney Pixar

After singing about balloons, we read a fun story about them. Up from Disney Pixar is a creative story about a man who dreams of visiting beautiful far away water falls. He is in for an adventure when he ties his house to countless balloons in order to get there, and then finds out he has an accidental stow-away on his porch.

My mom gave my son this Disney Pixar Storybook Collection for his birthday. It’s a really fun collection that has the Toy Story and Finding Nemo series, plus many more, including of course Up!

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Talk: Big Dreams

After reading Up, we discussed some questions about the story, such as what was Carl’s big dream and what did he learn along the way?

Then I asked, “If you could tie balloons to our house and fly away, where would you go?”

To really get there, what might you need to do? We talked about patience, working hard, and saving money.

Write and Craft: Up, Up, and Away Craft

Our last big activity was an Up, Up, and Away Craft.

The kids began by tracing the U’s in the title. Then they pasted balloons and pieces onto the paper to resemble the Up image of a house with balloons attached. Lastly, under the house, they drew a picture of the place they would want to visit.

Eat: Foods that Start with the Letter U

So, I had a hard time coming up with foods that start with the letter U! But no fear, there are a few good ones.

My favorite option of a food that begins with the letter U is Upside-Down Cake. It goes so well with our theme for today! Here is a simple recipe from box cake for Pineapple Upside-Down Cake.

Another option is cutting pineapple rings or bagels in half so that they look like the shape of the letter U.

Lastly, you could try U-NO Chocolate Bars one of these foods that start with U from around the world.

Sing: Goodbye Song

We closed up by reviewing our letter of the day: what Letter U looks and sounds like.

To finish off, we sang our goodbye song and see you next week!

Our next preschool lesson will be Letter V is for Very Hungry Caterpillar! It has a lot of fun activities!

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Leave a comment and share 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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