Arts and crafts activities allow kindergartners to be creative while still partaking in an educational lesson. Kindergarten classrooms are typically stocked with arts and crafts supplies, such as construction paper, craft scissors, glue, paints, markers, colored pencils and crayons. Work arts and crafts activities into various types of curriculum. For example, if you are teaching about animals, have the children draw the animals they learn about, color in animal worksheets or make animal sculptures out of clay.
Kindergarten teachers use file folder activities as a means of letting children have some fun while they learn spelling words or math. File folder activities are made out of paper file folders, and can be colored on, drawn on or painted to turn into an activity. For instance, write one column of uppercase alphabet letters on one flap of the file folder and a column of lowercase letters on the opposite flap. The activity is for students to draw a line between the matching uppercase and lowercase letters. For another activity, draw various shapes in vibrant colors on the file folder, and make shape cutouts that correspond with those shapes. Students must tape the cutout to the correct shape on the file folder so the two shapes match. File folder activities are inexpensive, easy to create and easy for young learners to use.
Puzzles are strategy toys that are used for entertainment as well as for educational lessons. Alphabet puzzles, for instance, require young children to piece together the letters of the alphabet so they learn the ABC's while also participating in an engaging activity. Allow kindergartners to work on puzzles during their break time or for winding down or quiet time at the end of the day.
Activity sheets are printable worksheets that kindergarten teachers give to children for math or alphabet lessons. One example of an activity sheet is to pass out a simple poem that contains a lot of letter "B's." Have children circle all of the capital "B's" they find, and underline the lowercase "B's." You can create this activity sheet with any letter.
It is common for kindergarten teachers to use balls during their class activities and lessons. Ball-bouncing is an activity that engages children, keeps their focus and allows them to have a good time exerting physical energy. To play a ball activity, have children stand in a circle while you hold the ball and explain the rules of the game. For math games, the rule may be to count in order from one to 20. Start off by bouncing the ball to a child, saying "one." The child then bounces the ball to another child and counts "two." This activity continues until the group reaches 20.