Have preschoolers help turn the classroom into an Old West town. Use cardboard to make signs for a general store, horse corral or post office. Stock the general store with plastic fruits, vegetables and cattle food for students to buy. In the horse corral, add a bale of hay, a horse saddle, horseshoes, feed buckets and logs for hitching posts where preschoolers can tie up their stick horses. Set up a post office with envelopes and stickers so preschoolers can drop off their letters for the pony express.
Gather some small rocks and paint them to mimic gold nuggets. Fill the sensory table with sand and water, then hide the gold nuggets in the sand. Give preschoolers pie tins and let them pan for gold by scooping up some sand and swishing it around to reveal the gold. Mine for silver on another day by searching through gravel for silver nuggets. Fill the table with straw and let preschoolers use yarn to tie up mini-bales of hay to feed their horses.
Have preschoolers cut cactus shapes out of green paper and glue toothpicks along the edges to make cactus needles. Hang cacti around your old town. Give preschoolers white fabric squares and let them use paints to design their own bandannas to wear. Make western vests out of large paper grocery bags. Allow preschoolers to decorate their vests using markers, paints and yarn for fringe. Help students make cowboy hats out of newspaper to complete a cowboy or cowgirl costume.
Invite preschoolers to use a rope with a large loop tied at the end to try out their lassoing skills. Set lasso chairs, block towers, foam blocks, cones and other objects around the classroom or gym. Go outside and let preschoolers use stick horses to race across the playground delivering the mail like pony express riders. Set up cones and let preschoolers use their stick horses for barrel races.