Play games that help students develop their observation skills. Children can mimic each other with a circle-walking game. Tape a large circle on the floor with masking or painter's tape. Ask children to stand on the circle with you. Walk around the circle together, and as children get the hang of keeping their feet on the circle, change how you move. For instance, start crawling like a bear or hopping like a rabbit. Encourage children to follow your lead, while challenging them to keep their feet on the circle. When all students understand how to play the game, allow one child to be the leader.
Alternatively, help students mimic animal sounds in a game of Guess the Turkey. Choose one student to be a farmer and have him leave the room. Choose another student to be a gobbling turkey. When the farmer comes back in, all of the students put their hands over their noses and waddle around quietly like turkeys. Only the designated gobbling turkey, should gobble. As the farmer hears the gobbling, he guesses which student is making the noise. When he guesses correctly, the gobbling turkey can be the farmer.
Preschool students usually work on pre-reading skills, and one aspect of pre-reading education is to learn which words rhyme. Christine Hewitt of "The Independent" claims that rhyming helps four- and five-year-olds develop the phonological awareness that leads to categorizing words and spelling patterns. Make rhyming cards for students to pair. On notecards, either draw or paste pictures of objects. Each object should also have a rhyming pair. For instance, one card can have a picture of a cat and another a picture of a bat. Students can work together to pair the rhymes. Time them and ask them to beat their previous times.
Memory games help increase children's critical thinking skills, as well as their ability to retain information for a short period of time. Referred to as working memory, this is related to academic achievement. A game of Vegetable Soup helps children work together to hone their memory skills. Place a big pot in the center of the classroom and tell children that you are going to make vegetable soup. Ask students to stand in a line to your left. The first child can come up to the pot and pretend to put a vegetable in the pot, saying, "I'm putting carrots in the vegetable soup." The next student must build on what the first student said by saying, "I'm putting carrots and celery in the soup." Children keep adding their vegetable to the others mentioned until the list is too long for them to remember.
School children spend a lot of the day inside, so it is important to structure time for children to stay active, either inside or outside. If you have a large space, you can help children work together with a game of Move the Ball. Place a colored piece of construction paper in each corner of the room. Children should stand in the center of the room with a ball near them. When you call out a color, they should move the ball to that color's corner. Because there is only one ball and several students, they should figure out a way together to move the ball. For instance, they could roll or kick it to each other while moving toward the corner. Tell children that every student should touch the ball while moving the ball toward its appropriate corner. Once the ball gets to the color, call out another color and have students move the ball again.
If the weather allows, take students outside for a scavenger hunt. Prepare for the hunt by hiding objects in the yard or playground before students arrive. Paste pictures of the hidden objects on a large sheet of paper, or map. Place students in groups, and give them a certain amount of time to run around and try to find objects. The group that finds the most objects wins. Or, the entire class can play together and try to find all of the objects as a class.