The Kissing Hand Inspired Activities

"The Kissing Hand" by Audrey Penn is still one of my favorite back-to-school books.  This sweet story about a little raccoon going to school for the first time mimics a real life experience for many little ones.  My little Kindergartner loved it so much that he kisses my palm every day before school.

I set up a few quick activities for my boys before they went back-to-school that would also be perfect to use in a class room setting.

Kissing Hand Art:  The boys each painted two pieces of paper in a two different colors.  After it dried, we used acrylic paint to "stamp" their hand print onto on of the colors.  I added a small heart, cut out of the second color paint, to the center of the hand print after it had dried.  So simple and they turned out beautiful.  They're hanging in our playroom.  How sweet would it be to send this home on the first day?

The Kissing Hand Play-Doh Invitation to Play

I provided different tones of play-doh, hand print and heart cookie cutters, plastic heart gems, heart shape containers and rolling pins for the boys to explore.  My 3 year old LOVED this and spent a solid 30 minutes making hand prints with hearts in the center.  

Kissing Hand Inspired Sensory Bin

Recycled some of the items from our play-doh invitation into a sensory bin with black beans, red pom poms, and red felt leaves from Dollar Tree.  I also provided red scoops and tweezers for fine motor skill building.  This was great for reinforcing the color red for my 3 year old and connecting the /r/ beginning sound in red and raccoon.

If you liked these ideas, you may also be interested in my Back-To-School Raccoon printables at Teachers Pay Teachers.