Use nature themes to teach children about the natural world. Themes that would fit into this category include seasonal themes, plants, flowers and minerals. Incorporate a variety of activities into your curriculum that enable children to learn about the theme, as well as specific subject areas. For instance, if you've chosen a flower theme, allow your students to create pictures of flower during arts and crafts, have them sort stickers of different sized, shaped and colored flower for math and encourage children to write haiku poems about flowers during English language arts instruction.
Choose themes that relate to children's literature, allowing children to develop an appreciation for and a greater comprehension of varied stories and genres. One story that you may consider using as a theme is "The Gingerbread Man." There are several ways that you can integrate this story into your curriculum. During math, students can make patterns with different sizes and colors of gingerbread man stamps or they can arrange gingerbread man cut-outs in size order. While reading the story itself fits into the ELA curriculum, you can also extend the study of this content area by reading other versions of this popular tale and comparing and contrasting them with Venn diagrams. For science, children can use their senses to explore gingerbread.
Provide your firs- grade students with an opportunity to learn about the importance of physical and dental health with thematic units. In science, children can explore the effects that soda has on tarnished coins, egg shells and foods, for example, to learn the effects soda has on your body. Students can use magazines and grocery store circulars to make collages of healthy and nonhealthy foods. You can even promote phonetic awareness in this theme by having students identify the letters that different types of food begin with.
Provide your students with opportunities to learn about different species of animals by incorporating animal themes into your first-grade curriculum. Students can study the difference between mammals, amphibians and reptiles, for example, in the area of science. In math, have children practice their addition and subtraction skills using animal toys or stickers as manipulatives. In the area of English language arts, encourage children to use personification to compose short stories about their favorite animals.