You can design your kindergarten project around a Project Approach, focusing on nearly any subject in which your students are interested. This includes local issues, such as environmental issues, or personal interests, such as music. Keep your overall project idea general, giving you a range of ways to address the issue in your classroom. For instance, researchers at the LSU Child Development Laboratory instituted a Project Approach when they discovered young students in New Orleans showing individual interests in hurricanes after the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. They designed a project, using various aspects of the hurricane, such as hurricane defense technology, weather education and the effects of a hurricane on local wildlife.
A Project Approach is most effective when you use many different disciplines to teach your students. For a kindergarten classroom, this may include having students read to each other about the subject of your project, arts and crafts projects relating to your project, and field trips to locations where they can experience your project. As an example, in the hurricane project, researchers set up a high-velocity fan and allowed students to see which items would blow away when they released them into the path of the fan. Later the students weighed the items, getting an idea of the power of hurricane wind. This allowed students to study the science of winds, techniques for weighing items and giving them some early experience with basic math concepts.
Once your students begin showing an interest in your project, you can watch them for clues about areas of interest. Students will incorporate pieces of your project into their playtime, singing songs that you sang in your class or reenacting events they saw in a video. Watch them as they play to see if they have questions they would like you to answer in your project. For instance, one researcher found a student playing with animals in during a building project, inspiring researchers to add an animal section to their project.
The Project Approach provides a fully immersive environment, allowing you to teach students about something in which they are interested from points of view that allow you to teach them the skills they need. You are able to integrate other lessons, such as reading and basic math, into larger concepts like music or local concerns and give your students a deeper understanding of both concepts.