Using a paper bag, have your pre-kindergarten students create an animal puppet by decorating the outside of the bag with an animal of their choice. Place the paper bag upside down. The folded flap serves as the head and mouth of the animal. With construction paper of different colors ripped to pieces and sticker eyeballs, help students to glue on the pieces to the bag to dress it up. When complete, children have a puppet to play with. The project helps student develop hand muscles and imagination, and this form of play allows students to express how they feel through the puppet.
Learning the alphabet is part of learning language. Draw out block alphabets on a thick piece of paper or cardboard. After cutting out the alphabet blocks, punch holes around the rim of the alphabet blocks, spacing them 1 inch apart from one another. For each block alphabet, loop one long shoe lace into it and tie a knot at the back end. Ask each student, "What letter does your name start with?" Hand off the block letter corresponding with her first name. Students will begin to learn letters of the alphabet with this activity and have a chance to practice fine motor skills and logic when looping the lace through the holes throughout their letter.
Using construction paper of different colors, cut out fish shapes 6 inches long. Punch a hole near the mouth of the fish shape and label each a number from one to 10. Slip a paper clip onto each hole. Take a round magnet the size of a nickel and glue thick rope to its top. Lay out the fish shapes on a flat surface and have students surround it. Students can take turns recognizing and fishing for the number you call out, or if you make enough sets of fish and rope with magnet, all students can participate at the same time fishing for the number you call out.
Start pre-kindergarten students with simple shapes such as circles, triangles, rectangles and squares. Show how each shape looks and count how many sides each shape has. Then lay out on a table a mix of the shapes cut out from colored construction paper. Have a plate of cookies with those shapes. Go through each cookie on the plate and ask students "What shape is this?" Then ask the students, "Can you find the same shape on the table (selecting from the mix of precut construction paper shapes)?" When a student finds it, offer him the similarly shaped cookie. Repeat this several times. Students will have fun while learning shapes and feel rewarded for getting it right with a cookie.