Preschool Desert Activity With Big Questions To Get Your Little Kids Thinking

Preschoolers love sensory activities and here’s an awesome one to add to your next preschool desert theme. We’re going to have lots of fun creating a desert oasis and talking about how people and animals cool off in the Sahara!

This month, we’ve been learning about the desert. We’ve talked about plants and animals and even The Great Pyramid. If you missed it, you’re definitely going to want to check out the Preschool Desert Theme Cube Pyramid STEAM Station that we shared last week!

We had a blast putting together this Preschool Desert Sensory Activity and exploring Earth Science and Drama. You know because I’m definitely loving the fun Science & Nature STEAM Stations that we do each and every week!

The Sahara Desert is the hottest desert in the world. It covers most of northern Africa. It is very hot, dry, and windy. It rarely rains in the Sahara.

I love reading the small bits of information included with each of our lessons.

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A huge thanks to Experience Early Learning (formerly Mother Goose Time) for providing us with their Experience Preschool curriculum for free in exchange for sharing our honest and authentic stories resulting from our personal experiences. It’s been such a huge blessing to us! As always, my opinions on awesome stuff for little kids are 100% my own.

Keep in mind that all preschoolers do things in their own time and on their own terms. What one is ready for, another might not be. Please use your best mama judgement when planning activities for your little kids.

Preschool Desert Sensory Activity

Set Up

Fill a box with sand.
If available, put animal figurines in the diorama such as camels, scorpions, lizards, or snakes.
Place a bowl of water in the sand to create an oasis.

Big Questions

What might you find in the Sahara Desert?
How do people and animals cool off in the hot desert?
How can you move the water from the bowl to other areas of the desert?
How could you make a river in the desert?

I’m serious, y’all! This curriculum is amazing and I make a point of doing as many of the Investigation Stations and Invitation to Create activities as we possibly can.

I think they’re so important for encouraging creative thinking and problem-solving skills, which is why so many of my blog posts highlight these particular activities.

A lot of parents want to focus on the end product and that’s totally not what this is about. Preschool is about learning through play. It’s about exploring new materials and mediums. And let’s not forget about the experience of it all!

I love messy play! I’m all for rolling up our sleeves and getting dirty. I also love to adjunct science lessons that are had because of the daily topics! We were learning about the Sahara Desert, but we also talked about camouflage because our lizard friend blends in so well. It was all kinds of awesome!

Child-led learning at its finest, don’t you think?

Don’t forget to stop by next week if you’re interested in seeing what we’re up to with our Desert Discovery theme. And if you missed this year’s preschool homeschool space post, you can check it out here.

Looking for more insight & inspiration? Here are the top 10 most popular posts from The Keeper of the Memories. You’re definitely not going to want to miss these!