Make a raccoon puppet out of a paper bag. Hand out black and white construction paper. If your preschoolers are old enough to cut out shapes, trace a heart for a face and circles for eyes, a nose and mouth. One white oval is used for the stomach and two triangles for ears. If the children are too young to cut, have the shapes available to attach to the bags. Glue the heart shape upside down on top of the flap for the face, then show the students how to affix the other shapes of black construction paper over the white to give the puppet a distinct raccoon look.
Before they eat, raccoons make motions with their food that give the appearance of washing it. Play the wash race with preschoolers by setting up two buckets filled halfway with water. Make two lines of children about 20 feet away from the buckets. Give them each a plastic fish or other pretend food favored by raccoons. The preschoolers take turns by running to the bucket, dipping their fish in and running back. The team that finishes first wins.
Supply pictures for children to color and then fold into their own raccoon books. Use two sheets of 8.5-inch-by-11-inch paper to photocopy coloring book images of raccoons on each side. Put two pictures on the front of the sheets and two on the back, so when you fold them, all of the pictures make a book. Give the children the papers, but don't use words, so they can make up their own stories. As they color, give them simple facts about raccoons, such as their night-time habits. After they color the pages and fold them into a book, staple them together in the middle and have each child tell a story to the group about the raccoons.
Make a matching game for your preschoolers with raccoon images. To teach the students facts about raccoons, find or draw pictures of the animals doing various activities, such as rummaging in trash cans and nesting with their family. Make two identical images of each activity with a total of about 20 to 30 cards. Shuffle the cards, and place them face down on a table or the floor in a square configuration. Allow each child a chance to turn one card over and guess where the matching one is located. Create enough picture cards so each child in your preschool class can have a turn.