Make a toilet paper roll cheetah using an empty toilet paper roll, glue, scissors, paper and coloring pens. Provide the children with a precut piece of yellow or tan paper that fits all the way around the toilet paper roll and instruct them to make black spots all over the paper. Glue the colored paper around the roll. You can either provide a precut head, tail and feet or support the children in drawing and cutting their own. After making black spots on all of the body parts, help the preschoolers glue the head to the top of the roll and the arms to the body of the cheetah. The feet can be attached to the bottom of the roll by making a small tab on top of each foot to apply glue and stick to the inside of the roll so the feet stick out. Glue a tail on to the back of the roll.
Use a paper plate to create a cheetah mask. Color the mask tan or yellow and make black spots over the plate. Cut ears out of construction paper and staple to the top of the paper plate. Teachers can cut out eye holes for the children or draw eyes onto the plate and help the kids cut out the eyes themselves. The preschoolers can draw a mouth on the mask. Use a hole punch to put one hole in each side of the paper plate and tie a string through each hole to keep the mask on each child's face.
Use fiction and nonfiction literature about cheetahs to build prereading skills and encourage discussion among preschoolers. Check out the picture book "Cheetah" by Taylor Morrison for a depiction of the life of a mother cheetah and her cubs. While the story is fictional, the author does provide facts about the lifestyle, habitat and physical features of the cheetah. The book "Cheetahs (Safari Animals)" by Amelie Van Zumbusch has actual photographs of cheetahs in their natural environment. Each page has a short description with facts about cheetahs. Encourage the kids to talk about what they see in each picture and share the facts that they already know about cheetahs while reading this book.
Remind the preschoolers that the cheetah is the fastest land animal and hunts for its food. Show the students pictures of the animals that the cheetah eats such as rabbits, birds, impalas, gazelles and warthogs. Tape the pictures around the classroom, including pictures of things cheetahs do not eat like flowers and trees. Instruct the kids to run "as fast as a cheetah" and pretend they are hunting for food. Tell them to grab one picture of something a cheetah would eat and bring it back to the teacher.
Discuss the cheetah's natural habitat with the children. Explain that cheetahs normally live in Africa while showing the preschoolers a world map and pointing out the continent of Africa. Facilitate a discussion with the kids about how Africa is different from where they live. Talk about how cheetahs live in areas where it is really dry such as a desert or grasslands. Provide the students with a basic outline map of the world. Help them locate Africa and instruct them to either color the continent like a cheetah (yellow or tan with black spots) or draw a few cheetahs within the continent.