Back to School Theme Free Printable Number Posters 1-10

Trying to think of an eye-catching, adorable theme for Back-to-School? Look no further! A back-to-school theme in preschool is perfect because our youngest learners are excited and curious about….school!

Theme learning in preschool is perfect and so versatile. Once you get to know your students, you can pick themes that they will love. Until then, welcome students back to school in style!

The Back to School Theme Free Printable Number Posters 1-10 could be your first step towards creating a welcoming room for your students. AND, you can use the number posters for your classroom in many other ways throughout the year.

The free number posters include: Full page posters for numbers 1-10 with the numeral and the corresponding number of sweet child faces riding the bus. I also included colorful half-page posters with the numeral, the number word, and those same sweet faces to count.

Theme Activities for Preschoolers:

While preschool themes certainly are not a requirement, you can get a lot of miles out of them! When you engage your students with interesting themes throughout the year, you can sneak in all those important skills they need to work on with little resistance.

Learning activities that build on a specific theme provide a number of benefits for students, including:

• Helps young learners organize new information and connect it to prior knowledge in meaningful ways, which increases retention in the long run.
• Provides real-world connections to otherwise abstract ‘school activities’ that only occur within the preschool classroom.
• Encourages hearing and using new vocabulary in a fun learning environment.
• Gives students multiple opportunities and choices to explore and demonstrate concepts from math and science to language and reading.

How to Use the Free Number Posters for Preschool

It really doesn’t get much easier to add these adorable school bus number posters to your preschool lesson plans for the first day of school!

Just print them! Laminating is optional, based on how you will use them. If you’re planning a bulletin board, you might want to leave them ‘au naturale.’ I find that the glare from the plastic sometimes hinders vision.

Beyond printing, decide how you might use these free number posters for the classroom:

• Circle time is the perfect time to practice singing and counting to 10! Use the posters as a reference, and choose a student to point to each poster as you count/sing. As students gain fluency, count backward or skip count to keep it engaging.
• Laminate the half-page printable number posters for preschool and place them at the math center. Provide play dough for students to make each numeral. They can also work on sequencing the cards.
• Use the back-to-school preschool number posters side-by-side with a ten frame. Give students small manipulatives to count onto a ten frame for each number.
• Use the full-page posters as counting mats to practice one-to-one correspondence. Provide a pile of school supplies, like pencils, crayons, erasers, etc. Students must pick a mat and then count the appropriate number of school supply objects onto each mat.
• Get your students moving and learning with relay activities. Place the posters around a large area. Gather students on the opposite side and call a number. Students must run/skip/hop/walk backwards to that number.

More Back-to-School Themed Activities

Take advantage of this exciting theme by implementing more than the free number posters 1 10 printable.

Crafts in the Classroom

• Get crafty while welcoming your young students into the classroom! Students can cut and color their own buses, Then take a picture of each student to place in the window.
• Help students identify their name in print by creating a crayon box complete with one crayon for each letter of their name.
• Create back-to-school photo frames that look like a bus with yellow craft sticks and red gems for the tail lights.

Math in the Classroom

• Use bus/pencil/scissor cutouts to practice counting! Place a dot sticker with a number on each cutout. Provide clips for students to clip and count each number.
• Practice learning and identifying shapes and patterns by sorting pattern blocks onto school-themed mats (bus/crayon box/apple, etc.)
• Print a school-themed memory match game where students find pairs of backpacks, pencils, erasers, and other school supplies. This builds vocabulary as well!

Language Arts Activities

Share plenty of school-themed stories and songs with your students to get their attention and help them realize what an important journey they are starting. Here are just a few books that fit well into a preschool back-to-school theme, but there are many to choose from:

• The Night Before Preschool, by Natasha Wing
• Curious George’s First Day of School, by Margret and H.A. Rey
• If You Take a Mouse to School, by Laura Numeroff
• I Am Too Absolutely Small for School, by Lauren Child

Science Activities for Kids

Science projects are a wonderful way to engage students right off the bat. While preschoolers might not quite be ready for lab coats, you can definitely incorporate some interesting scientific discovery into your back-to-school theme.

• Make slime/play dough/cloud dough!
• Experiment with color mixing with water colors. Mix primary colors to create secondary colors.
• Play with baking soda and droppers of vinegar and food coloring.
• Delve into an apple and observe/predict/record what might happen over the course of a few days.