Introduce your kindergartners to basic math ideas with hands-on activities. Manipulatives are toys or small objects that serve to represent numbers, helping kinesthetic learners to make connections between abstract mathematics and real-life situations. For example, kindergartners can practice counting blocks or beads. They can also compare quantities and measurements. It isn't necessary to use standard units of measurement yet; you can simply ask students to report the height of a tower in terms of how many blocks.
Kindergarten is an important time for your students to develop their literacy skills. Organize plenty of regular pre-reading and pre-writing activities, tailored to individual students' abilities. To improve reading skills, hand out colorful pieces of tagboard or cardboard, cut in the form of block letters. First, have students recognize the letters. For an interesting twist, challenge students to recognize letters by touch, alone. Once students can regularly identify the letters, hand the students baggies with the letters to spell out their names. See if they can use the letters to spell their own names. For a more difficult activity, have students exchange baggies and try to spell their friends' names.
Craft projects are an excellent way for young students to develop their creativity, their fine motor skills and their powers of perception. Regularly plan arts and crafts activities, using the relatively open format of an art project to create interest in related lessons and themes. For example, generate interest in the alphabet by letting students create animals out of paper plates, each starting with a different letter. Mount the animals beside the letters of the alphabet as a learning aid. Generate interest in the environment by teaching students to make their own bird feeders from pine cones, peanut butter and birdseed.
Plan science experiments for your kindergarten class by dropping the formalities of traditional experimentation and incorporating a measure of playfulness. Just by taking the time to observe scientific phenomena, you'll spark your class's interest in cultivating their skills of observation and analysis. Provide students with toys that use simple machines, such as slopes, wheels and pulleys. Plant seeds in cups and set them on the classroom windowsill. Find variables, such as soil type, to create a simple "experiment."