Watermelon Activity Plans

Download the watermelon week planning guide for simple, hands-on play and learn ideas to use at home or in your preschool classroom!

DAY 1

Watermelon Walk: Use real watermelons or different sized balls to play this game. Spread the real or pretend watermelons around the floor. Use different directions to challenge the preschoolers to move around the room without touching a watermelon. For example, tip toe around, jump over, frog leaps over, hop around on one foot, etc. Focus on big, controlled movements while moving around the room.

Watermelon Names: Print the watermelon seed page on brown paper or cut seed shapes out of brown or black paper. Have your preschooler write (or do it yourself) each letter of your preschooler’s name on one seed with white crayon. Place the watermelon seeds face down and flip them over one by one to identify each letter. Put the seeds in order to spell out the letters in the name. Cut out a simple 1/2 circle of pink and green to glue together to make a watermelon. Glue the seeds on the watermelon as a name craft!

DAY 2

Watermelon Wash: Fill a plastic bin or the sink with soapy water. Add a real watermelon or smaller balls to the water. Find washing tools that would be perfect for this activity. Maybe a toothbrush, vegetable brush, turkey baster, medicine dropper, etc. could be used to wash the watermelon. Scrub and clean the real watermelon or pretend watermelon in the soapy water.

Paper Plate Watermelons: Cut a paper plate in half. Color or paint the curved edge of the paper plate green. Color or paint the inner part of the plate (where you would place food) a dark pink or red. While the plate is drying, cut watermelon seeds out of black paper. These can be any shape with the focus being on cutting a smaller round shape out of paper with scissors. If this is too difficult, cut out the seeds for your preschoolers and then let them glue them on the paper plate watermelon one by one. Work on counting the total number of seeds. Hang the watermelon up to display!

DAY 3

Play Dough Hunt: Create a pretend play dough watermelon slice using pink and green play dough. See easy to follow details here. Secretly hide pretend watermelon seeds (dried black beans or buttons) inside each play dough watermelon slice. Have your preschooler try to find each seed that is found. Make a pile of the seeds to count. Sort the seeds in piles of ten or practice early addition skills by asking your preschooler to find a certain number of seeds and then adding 1 more to find the total!

Watermelon Seed Trace: Print the tracing page for this activity. Make copies if needed. Trace each watermelon seed on the page to practice writing and fine motor skills. Find colored pencils or skinny markers to use to trace the watermelon seeds. To make this a reusable activity, place the page in a plastic page protector and use dry erase markers. Another option would be to use mini beads or buttons to place on the tracing lines.

DAY 4

Hot Watermelon: There are 2 ways to play this game. The first would be the traditional “hot potato” way. Sit in a circle and pass a small watermelon around from person to person while music is playing. When the music stops, the watermelon freezes. Whoever is holding the watermelon is out. Play again until there is only one person left! The second way to play would be to hide balls (or rolled socks) around the room. While the music is playing, find and gather as many pretend watermelons as possible. Play the music again to find more. Keep going until all pretend watermelons are found!

Watermelon Seed Mat: Print the watermelon seed mat or create your own version. Find a set of pretend watermelon seeds. Use dried black beans, buttons, or beads along with kid-friendly squeezers or small tongs. Fill in the missing seeds on the watermelon seed mat by picking up a pretend watermelon seed and placing them one by one on the designated spots. Practice counting as each pretend seed is placed. Practice counting down together while clearing off the mat.

DAY 5

Seed Sweep Up: Use a tray or shallow bin for this activity. Using masking tape or painters tape, create a taped square at the bottom of the bin. Scatter dried black beans as watermelon seeds around the tray. With a wide paint brush or small handheld broom, sweep and move the pretend watermelon seeds into the square. Work on controlling the beans to make sure they all make it in the square. Scatter the beans and play again!

Watermelon Listen & Dance: Grab the biggest ball you can find or a small real watermelon! A beach ball would work great for this activity. Turn on music and dance around with the ball. Give your preschooler different directions with how to dance. For example, “Hold the watermelon above your head.” or “Dance while holding the watermelon in between your knees.” Keep dancing to different kinds of music and dancing in fun ways!

EXTRAS

Roll & Paint: Use a large shallow plastic bin or even a plastic baby pool for this activity. Tape paper to the bottom and drip pink and green paint all over the watermelon. Roll the watermelon back and forth over the paper creating a watermelon themed painting!

Watermelon Bowling: Set up individual water bottles as bowling pins. Six would be good number to use. Use a real watermelon to bowl the water bottle pins down. Practice different ways to roll the heavy watermelon to try to get it to roll straight down to the pins. Count to see how many pins have fallen down and roll again trying to knock down the rest.

Download the watermelon theme editable planning sheet. Add learning ideas from the list below in this column or from the watermelon week activities!