Create a Personalized Pumpkin Name Craft

What better way to celebrate fall than by letting your students personalize their own pumpkins? This activity is perfect for reinforcing name recognition and spelling skills. Your students can decorate their pumpkins and create something they can proudly display on your classroom bulletin board or take home. They’ll also enjoy the creative writing prompts! This craft is simple, fun, and a great way to integrate literacy with seasonal art projects.

Study the Lifecycle of a Pumpkin

Fall is a wonderful time to introduce students to the lifecycle of a pumpkin. This activity not only teaches science concepts but also promotes curiosity and observation skills in your young learners as it walks students through the fascinating stages of a pumpkin’s growth, from seed to sprout to vine and finally to pumpkin.

This set includes a variety of activities! Students can put the lifecycle stages in order, reinforcing sequencing and comprehension skills. You can also plant pumpkin seeds with your students and observe their growth over time. This provides an ongoing, real-life example of the plant lifecycle that they can monitor daily.

Investigate Pumpkins All Week Long  

Do your students love to ask questions? Help them become pumpkin detectives with my Pumpkin Investigations unit. This hands-on activity guides students through a series of scientific investigations centered around pumpkins.

Some of the fun activities include:

• Measuring the circumference, height, and weight of pumpkins.
• Predicting how many seeds are inside their pumpkins before they open them.
• Introducing the concept of buoyancy using pumpkins in a sink-or-float experiment. 

These activities help develop key skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration, while keeping the focus on pumpkins and fun.

Provide October-Themed STEM Challenges

Pumpkins are also a great way to incorporate some STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fun into your classroom. My October STEM Learning is filled with seasonal challenges that encourage students to use their creativity and engineering skills and is a great addition to your fall-themed units.

One of the activities in this unit involves students discovering a way to build the tallest tower possible using mini pumpkins. This activity encourages them to think critically and problem-solve while having fun with their pumpkin “building materials.” Anytime you can incorporate a learning activity that feels like play is a win in my book.

In conclusion, whether you’re decorating pumpkins, learning about their lifecycle, or using them to conduct science investigations, pumpkins offer a fun and engaging way to bring fall learning to life in your classroom. These activities, paired with seasonal lessons, will help your students develop skills in literacy, math, science, and creativity, all while embracing the festive spirit of the season. Let the pumpkin fun begin!

The post Pumpkin Activities and Crafts in Kindergarten appeared first on Kreative in Kinder.

Why Teach the Five Senses in Kindergarten?

Teaching the five senses helps children develop observation skills, assists with language development, and encourages cognitive thinking. By exploring the senses, children learn to be more aware of their environment and understand how their bodies work. This knowledge lays the groundwork for scientific inquiry, as it encourages curiosity and exploration—skills that are vital for future learning.

Introduction to the Five Senses

Start your unit with a basic introduction to the five senses. Explain that our senses help us understand and learn about the world. You can use a fun song or rhyme to introduce each sense, making it easier for children to remember. Teach a catchy song that names each sense and the body part associated with it (e.g., “Eyes help us see, ears help us hear…”). Songs are a great way to reinforce memory through repetition and rhythm.

You can also set up five stations in your classroom, each dedicated to a different sense. Include posters or visual aids at each station that show the sense and the corresponding body part. Use these stations to introduce the topic and allow children to rotate through them.

Sense of Sight

The sense of sight is an excellent place to start, as it’s a sense children use extensively in their everyday activities. Focus on how our eyes help us see colors, shapes, sizes, and movements. Go on a color hunt around the classroom or playground. Ask students to find objects of a specific color and bring them back to a designated area. This activity enhances observation skills and color recognition. Or, play a game of “I Spy” using different colors, shapes, or objects around the classroom. This classic game encourages children to use descriptive language and strengthens their attention to detail.

Consider introducing simple optical illusions and ask children what they see. This can spark conversations about how sometimes our eyes can play tricks on us, highlighting the complexity of the sense of sight.

Sense of Hearing

Next, explore the sense of hearing by helping children understand how their ears work and the importance of listening. Take the class on a “sound walk” around the school or outside. Ask students to listen carefully and identify different sounds, such as birds chirping, cars passing, or leaves rustling. Discuss what they heard and how each sound made them feel.

You might play a “mystery sounds” game where children close their eyes and listen to various sounds (e.g., clapping, a bell ringing, water pouring). Have them guess what each sound is and discuss how we use our sense of hearing to identify sounds. You can also provide a variety of simple musical instruments and let children explore the different sounds they make. Discuss high and low sounds, loud and soft sounds, and create a class band to play a simple rhythm together.

Sense of Touch

Students can explore their sense of touch through activities that focus on texture, temperature, and pressure. Set up a texture table with a variety of materials like sandpaper, cotton balls, feathers, and smooth stones. Encourage children to touch each item and describe how it feels. Use descriptive words like rough, smooth, soft, and bumpy.

Children love learning through games! Play a fun guessing game by creating “feely bags.” Place different objects with distinct textures inside bags and have students reach in without looking and describe what they feel. 

Teach an important safety lesson of not touching things that are too hot by using warm and cold water bowls to help children understand temperature differences. Have them dip their hands in each bowl and describe how each feels.

Sense of Taste

Exploring the sense of taste is always a favorite with young learners! This activity can teach children about different flavors and how taste buds work. Prepare a taste-testing activity with foods representing the four basic tastes: sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. For example, use sugar (sweet), saltine crackers (salty), lemon slices (sour), and unsweetened cocoa powder (bitter). Guide students through tasting each item and discussing their reactions.

Make a game of using different flavored foods or drinks and have children match the flavor to a corresponding picture or description. This can be a fun way to build vocabulary and understanding of different tastes.

Use this time to combine the lesson with a healthy snack-making activity. Discuss how different flavors can complement each other and create a simple recipe that incorporates multiple tastes, like a fruit salad or veggie platter.

Sense of Smell

The sense of smell can be a fascinating topic for kindergarten students, as it is closely linked to taste and memory. Create smell jars with various scents, such as vanilla, cinnamon, mint, and lemon. Ask children to close their eyes, take a sniff, and guess what each smell is. Discuss how different scents can remind us of different things, like food, places, or experiences.

I’m a huge fan of incorporating art with any lesson. Use scented markers or scratch-and-sniff stickers for a fun art project. Children can draw pictures and then “smell” their artwork, combining creativity with sensory exploration.

You can also show children how there are different smells in nature. Bring in a variety of flowers and have children smell each one. Discuss how flowers have different scents and why some plants have strong smells. This can also be tied into a science lesson about pollination and how plants attract insects.

Integrating the Senses

To conclude your five senses unit, create an activity that integrates all five senses. This will help reinforce what students have learned and show how our senses work together to help us experience the world. You can organize a scavenger hunt that requires children to use all their senses. For example, find something that makes a noise (hearing), something that is red (sight), something soft (touch), something sweet (taste), and something fragrant (smell).

Sensory bins are an important part of the kindergarten classroom. Create sensory bins filled with items that engage multiple senses. For example, a bin filled with dried beans (touch and sound), scented rice (smell), or themed items related to a particular season or holiday.

You can also turn your story time into a sensory activity. Read a storybook that uses descriptive language about the five senses and provide sensory props to accompany the story. For example, if the book talks about a forest, bring in pine needles to smell, rough bark to touch, and sounds of birds chirping to listen to.

In conclusion, teaching the five senses in kindergarten is not only fun but also foundational for young learners. These activities encourage observation, develop critical thinking, and assist with language development. By incorporating a variety of hands-on activities and engaging experiences, you can create a dynamic and interactive learning environment that helps children better understand how they explore and interact with the world around them.

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STEM Activities

By now, you should know my love for STEM learning. These activities inspire young learners to use their problem-solving skills to solve the challenges. 

My Easter STEM Set #1 includes activities such as egg stacking and jelly bean predictions. 

My Easter STEM Learning Set #2 includes even more hands-on activities featuring egg experiments and marshmallow bunnies.

Math Activities

Another way to include Easter fun and learning is with math centers. Your students will enjoy sorting colors, counting manipulatives, strengthening fine motor skills, and following directions with my Easter Themed Math Centers set. This set includes five different center options with at least eight cards for each center. 

Crafts and Writing Activities

My Easter Crafts and Writing Activities set is full of hands-on learning opportunities. Each craft includes several writing prompts. I also include a Resource List with free YouTube links to videos of read alouds, songs, etc., for you to use in your classroom discussions. Your students will love learning with these fun Easter crafts and writing prompts!

Drawing and Writing

If writing and directed drawings are your preference, I’ve got you covered. My Easter Directed Drawings set includes nine images with seven different printable options for each so you can easily differentiate. Images include: Easter bunny, peep, lily, church, chocolate bunny, Easter basket, Easter egg, and carrot.

I also have a Draw & Write Easter Prompts set. Your students will love completing these drawing and writing activities.

Sensory Bins

You can incorporate Easter fun and learning with my Easter Sensory Bin activities. Not only are these a great sensory activity, they include math and literacy practice, too. 

As you can see, there are so many fun math, literacy, STEM, and hands-on activities that you can do that include Easter themes this time of year. I’m always a big fan of keeping students engaged with activities that reflect the current season and holiday.

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Activities for Kids: Writing About Apples

There is always an easy way to incorporate writing activities for kids—even in an apple unit. One of my favorite things to do is have an apple tasting in my classroom. This will in fact require real apples, so a trip to the grocery store is in order. You can buy red apples, green apples, go crazy! Each student can try an apple slice of each—red, green, and yellow apples. Explore which is their favorite (or least favorite). Then, they can write about which type of apple was their favorite and why.

Students can also share their opinions about different apple treats through writing. Apple sauce, apple juice, or even apple cider could be brought in and sampled. I’d definitely ask parents first if there are any students with a specific apple allergy. Assuming all is in the clear, students can then write about if they do or do not like specific things made from apples. Little learners will love activating their senses and you are further instilling in them the gift of curiosity.

Overall, writing about apples can be a great way to get students sharing their opinions and thoughts through writing, while also giving them some hands-on experience connected to what they will be writing about. There’s no better way to encourage a love for writing other than by creating fun opportunities for them to share what they think and feel through the power of words!

Apple Science and STEM

As with writing activities, there are many different ways to switch things up. This includes science activities for kids that can be done in a classroom involving apples. For one, an apple unit can be a great time to reinforce what students learned in a Five Senses unit. Because apples are edible, students can use all five senses to explore this one object, and then record their observations. 

Learning about apples is also a great time to talk about plants, life cycles, and labeling/using diagrams. In my Everything Apples product on TpT, I include straightforward pages for all of these activities so that your students can label the life cycle and parts of an apple themselves. In my apple unit, I also provide several ideas for STEM projects, including materials lists, directions, and pictures. One of the ideas is an apple volcano! Your students will love figuring out how to make an apple “erupt” using only vinegar and baking soda—and you will love seeing your students putting their problem-solving skills to the test!

Apple Literacy and Math

An apple unit is also a great time to bring in early literacy and math skills for your students. Because there are so many great apple books to choose from, you could easily introduce or reinforce the differences between fiction and nonfiction books at this time. After reading books like Ten Apples Up on Top by Dr. Seuss, and Apples by Gail Gibbons, it is easy for students to see that one book told a story, while the other shared facts and information.

When doing math in an apple unit, you can bring in real apple seeds to count, or find useful apple erasers that students can use as manipulatives. Learning about apples also provides really great opportunities for talking about graphing and reading graphs. You can graph and compare how many students liked each kind of apple the best, especially if you do the apple tasting activities mentioned above. 

My Everything Apples Unit provides even more literacy and math activities, including counting apples worksheets, apple math centers, and apple literacy centers for practicing letters, rhyming, and more!

Learning about apples early in the school year seems like such a staple for kindergarteners and other young learners. Students always love the different hands-on apple activities. While teachers love that students can complete fun activities while still covering all content areas. These ideas will hopefully help you kick off your apple unit and get your students excited about learning!

It really doesn’t matter what time of year you introduce your favorite apple activities though. Kids will love these fun crafts no matter what the season. If it’s in the budget, kids of all ages would love a school trip to an apple orchard. This is a sure fun way to bring the kids’ activities to life.

So what do you think so far about apple theme lesson plans? What are fun fall activities  you enjoy implementing?

The post Apple Activities For Kids appeared first on Kreative in Kinder.

Apple Books

Hello, World! How Do Apples Grow? 

This board book is the perfect nonfiction book that is written in clear and easy terms. From apple seed to apple tree and then farm to store, this delightful book with cheerful illustrations is a perfect way to introduce apples to young children. 

How Do Apples Grow?

You’re not seeing double. This book is also called How Do Apples Grow, but it’s another good one and worth sharing. In this book, readers learn how an apple grows from bud to flower to fruit. It’s the perfect informative text.

Apple Picking Day!

Do you ever use readers as a read aloud? They often have great illustrations and are full of good vocabulary. I also like that after reading them, students have a better chance of re-reading and retelling because it is a reader. This adorable rhyming book is about a sister and brother who celebrate autumn by taking a trip to a local apple orchard.

Apple Trees and the Seasons

Follow the apple trees throughout the year and watch what happens to them during each season. This is a great nonfiction text. 

Amelia Bedelia’s First Apple Pie

Who doesn’t love a good Amelia Bedelia book? Amelia loves Fall and her favorite thing to do is pick apples. In this book, Amelia bakes her first apple pie with her grandma. Of course there is a problem but she has a solution. This is the perfect book to pair with your apple pie tasting. 

Bad Apple: A Take of Friendship

When an apple named Mac meets a worm named Will, they become best friends. Apples and worms aren’t supposed to be friends though, so Mac gets called names that hurt his feelings. Mac has to decide if he will stand up to his bullies and keep his friend Will. There is a positive moral to this story, which will lead to great lessons on friendship and character.

Apples

This book is full of so much apple goodness: vocabulary, picture diagrams, apple varieties, and more. This is the perfect introduction or ending to your apple week.

Applesauce Day

Maria and her family visit an apple orchard and pick apples. Then it’s time to turn the apples into applesauce! Every year they use the special pot that has been in the family for generations to make applesauce. First they wash the apples. Then Grandma cuts them into quarters. Follow each step in the process as everyone helps to make delicious applesauce!

More Hands-On Apple FUN!

When prepping my Apple Unit, Bennett wanted to try on the apple hat and kept saying, “Cheese!” Sweet baby, you can tell that his mom takes all the pictures, and he definitely loved “helping” with all of the apple activities, especially the sensory tub. You can click here to see more.

Outside of reading, hands-on learning experiences are my FAVORITE. This is one of three art projects in this apple unit. Have you ever painted with apples?

Sensory tubs are a great way for your young learner to have developmental experiences using all of their senses while also building their cognitive skills. In this sensory tub, children are “making apple pie” with an educational spin. You can add a few cinnamon sticks to entice their sense of smell, too. Kids will love this! You can check this out by clicking here. 

We hope you enjoyed our book list. We LOVE incorporating APPLES in literacy, math, art and STEM. Check out our Apple Learning Set by clicking here. 

If you are looking for a list of Teacher Approved Apple VIDEOS, Simply Kinder has you covered. You can see them by clicking here. 

Happy teaching!

**Posts on Kreative in Life may contain affiliate links which means we make a very small percentage off of your purchase but that does not affect your price. 

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Naturally, spring is the perfect time of the year to teach life cycle units to your kindergarten students! Of course, this topic fits perfectly into kindergarten science standards, but there are also many other ways you can bring life cycle activities into your spring lesson plans! In this article, I’m going to talk about teaching life cycles through reading, writing, and science lessons so that you can do the same for your students. So, keep reading to discover how to teach life cycles in kindergarten!

How to Teach Life Cycles with Reading

Read alouds are the perfect way to familiarize students with different plant and animal life cycles. Before choosing my read alouds, I try to think about what types of life cycles I plan to focus on in my teaching. For insects like bees and ladybugs, National Geographic Kids has some excellent nonfiction read alouds. You could also share The Honey Makers by Gail Gibbons with your students to learn more about these fascinating insects. Read alouds are also a great way to work on reading comprehension and communication skills!

Students can also learn about different life cycles from books that take a more narrative approach, like Sunflower House by Eve Bunting. In this story, a young boy talks about each step he takes when taking care of and growing sunflowers from seed to plant. By reading these different stories and texts, students become familiar with the different life cycle stages living things go through.

Writing Activities for Teaching Life Cycles

As you teach life cycles of organisms to young children, they can write about the facts they learn. For example, after learning about salmon, students can write about where they live, eat, and even why they are essential. I love independent work like this because it forces your students to use critical thinking and reading comprehension. In addition, an informational writing unit furthers your students’ understanding of the circle of life.

Students can write about similar topics with plants and insects, like what they need to survive or the different parts. For plants, this means students could write about how plants need water, sunlight, and soil and plant parts like stems and roots. For insects, students could write about interesting facts like that insects have six legs and a head, thorax, and abdomen. Writing is a great way for students to share all the facts and information about the animal and plant life cycle. In addition, students can work on their fine motor skills while writing!

How to Use Science to Teach Life Cycles

Students get to put their plant and animal life cycle knowledge to the test with science! I try to begin discussions about each plant or animal with KWL charts. These life cycle charts are a fun way to see what students already know and help me plan a series of lessons for what students want to know. Then, I implement these lessons through read alouds and educational videos to aid the learning process. Then, we can go back to the chart and record our new learning! Having your students record what they’ve learned is a great way to practice reading comprehension and application!

Science is also a great time for students to practice putting life cycles in order. At the end of our unit, I want students to understand that different plants and animals go through different phases before reaching adulthood. Therefore, modeling a series of events in the life cycle is a creative way to practice using that knowledge.

One way to do this is by having students cut out and glue each phase of the life cycle on a piece of paper in the correct order. Another great resource that’s so much fun to make is a life cycle hat. Students can still practice putting each life cycle in the correct order. However, now they have a hat that shows their learning! I love using a life cycle hat because it’s a fun craft for my students to do. Plus, they have a resource they can refer back to!

Learning about different species with a life cycles unit is the perfect way to help students understand the circle of life. In addition, these activities incorporate vocabulary words and creative writing into your lessons!

Be sure to check out this life cycle bundle that is heavily discounted so you can teach life cycles all year long.

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What is STEM?

You might not be familiar with what STEM subjects really are and what it looks like at the kindergarten level. Essentially, it is a curriculum based on the idea of educating young minds in four specific areas: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. When teaching STEM topics and doing STEM projects, we encourage experimenting, tinkering, building, observing, exploring, and problem solving. We also encourage creating curiosity and passion at this young age. STEM gives opportunities for kids to push the limits of what they can do. There will also be plenty of opportunities after for real-world application.

At the kindergarten level, this often looks like presenting students with a problem, and then providing them with different materials to solve that problem. Even simple tasks like making an apple shape out of provided materials can give students an opportunity to creatively solve a problem on their own. This can help with fine motor skills. It can also lead to great social/emotional learning at an early age!

Social/Emotional Skills

One of the things that makes STEM so important in kindergarten is its ability to naturally build emotional and social skills in our students. As mentioned earlier, through these types of projects, students can creatively solve problems on their own. This is a great way to help to build problem solving skills. It also helps to build confidence in our students’ earliest years. It helps them to see that they are capable of working through challenges. 

STEM also gives students a chance to build a growth mindset. When solving a problem during a STEM lesson, the first thing that students try might not help them to find the solution. However, they can continue to try new solutions. The willingness to try things that are difficult, and being okay with being wrong, are both key to having a growth mindset. Plus, it builds resilience! To learn these important skills in the early years of learning will do wonders for their elementary education and beyond. By working through different STEM challenges, students can build social/emotional skills. This is just one of the reasons for the importance of STEM in kindergarten. 

Academic Skills

Another important aspect of STEM learning in kindergarten is its ability to target academic skills while still feeling like play! As mentioned before, some of these specific STEM areas include engineering and science, so you can infuse both within your STEM projects! 

Within the NGSS, ETS1.B is focused on developing possible solutions through physical models. I don’t know about you, but that sounds exactly like what students are doing when they solve STEM problems! Because you can use STEM challenges to address academic skills, they are important to include as part of your kindergarten routine!

The Importance of STEM in Kindergarten

As you can see, there are many benefits for the importance of early STEM education. Not only does it help students build social/emotional and academic skills, but stem skills also have many other benefits that you can read about here. Moreover, the way STEM challenges are set up makes them feel like play, which makes them a simple and enjoyable way to build these skills in kindergarten. 

Now that you’ve learned about the importance of STEM in kindergarten, you can support STEM learning by teaching these new concepts to your students in the coming year. It’s a great opportunity to teach about STEM occupations as well. Teaching them about various STEM fields early can lay a solid foundation to their future interest in STEM careers when they are older. Who knows what impact that will have on future generations. It could very well become a long-term interest. You could be teaching students who make the next big scientific discoveries!

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Typically, in fun stem challenges you give students a problem to solve as well as various materials that they can use in order to solve the problem. For example, first, you give students a scenario. In kindergarten, this could be something as simple as, ”The teacher needs an apple.” Then the students can look down at their simple materials and use their critical thinking skills. They can then think and plan through the steps that they should take in order to create that apple. And just like that they are problem solving, while at the same time, it’s a fun activity and a craft!

These types of stem education school activities are really fun for our little learners. They are also very purposeful and beneficial stem lessons. Here are just three of the many benefits of incorporating STEM skills in your back-to-school plans: 

Hands-On Learning

Especially in the beginning of the new year, the more hands-on an activity is, the more likely our elementary kids are to succeed at it. They need to be able to touch, move, and manipulate things in order to stay engaged in those early days of kindergarten. STEM activities give students new ways to do that.

Because they are building things, they are also firing up their fine motor skills, which is the best way to prepare students for future activities in kindergarten. Fine motor skills are necessary for writing, coloring, and even cutting, so any chance you have to build those skills early in the year is worth taking. In the beginning of the school year, younger kids might not yet have all the developed skills they need. But by the end of the year you will have played a crucial part in helping them move forward. That’s the beauty of simple stem projects. They can be so much fun while also helping them grow the entire year.

Structured Learning Time 

At this point, students likely have little experience with structured learning time. I’m sure that we have all heard that play is the work of children, and while that is true, kindergarten is often a transition time of turning play into work. STEM challenges are very beneficial with that transition. 

For students, STEM feels like play as they are tinkering with different materials. However, it is more structured in that they have directions to follow and a given task to complete. Doing tasks like STEM activities early in the year helps students build up their learning-time stamina, while still allowing them time to ease into more rigorous expectations.

Sets the Stage for Learning Throughout the Year

Another great thing about using STEM challenges is that they set the stage for learning activities throughout the year. There are many lessons that students learn from STEM activities, and then apply to school and life in general. For one, it is okay to not have the “right” answer. In fact, in STEM, there are often many different solutions to one problem. Students may use different materials but still create the object that they were supposed to create, such as an apple from our earlier example. 

STEM challenges also encourage students to keep trying. Maybe the first set of materials they used didn’t quite work out as they had hoped. They still have an opportunity to try solving the problem in a different way or using different materials. Through this, they also learn that it is okay to be challenged and to continue to work hard even when things do get challenging.

By using school STEM challenges as part of your back-to-school plans, your students will gain so many benefits. They will start getting familiar with learning time routines but in a hands-on way that is engaging for our young learners. Students will also begin building important mindset skills that they will use throughout kindergarten and beyond. 

Whether it’s a science activity or math activities, there are plenty of fun school stem challenges you can incorporate into your lesson plans. Do you already have fun ideas you like to implement when introducing STEM? I’d love to hear about them in the comments below!

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January Literacy Activities

One of my favorite ways to keep students engaged, regardless of what month it is, is with fun thematic activities that are seasonally appropriate. For January learning in kindergarten, that means we are focusing on all things winter like snowmen, penguins, and other cold weather animals. I LOVE to bring those themes into fun literacy activities. 

For example, we practice literacy skills, such as sight words and letter recognition, with fun Find & Color activities that incorporate winter scenes. First, students look at the coloring guide to see what color each word or letter should be. Then, they color the picture according to that guide. Activities like these where students are coloring with a purpose are perfect for getting students re-accustomed to the classroom, without having to sacrifice any learning time. 

In a similar way, I include winter themes in my January Morning Tub Activities for literacy. Students can match first sounds with corresponding pictures while also piecing together a snowman. Or, they can complete an uppercase and lowercase letter match with adorable winter snow globes. By keeping literacy activities on theme, they are even more engaging for students!

January Math Activities

Many of the January math activities I like to use are similar to our literacy activities. For instance, we can use find and color activities to practice number recognition. Keeping the activities similar, while addressing different skills, helps keep students learning, without making things too difficult for them as they get used to being back at school. 

This is true for my math morning tub activities as well. As I mentioned with the literacy activities, I like to use fun winter themes for each activity. However, just because the themes are new, doesn’t mean the activities are new. Because I use similar activities in my morning tubs each month, they are familiar to students. In fact, they may have already seen the same activity before we went on break, but with a Christmas theme. Now they are able to continue that same learning with a winter theme! 

Students can even use hands-on activities like fine motor practice to address math skills for January learning. For example, they can roll dice and put that same number of playdough “marshmallows” in hot chocolate or use playdough to build numbers on a ten frame. Although activities like this feel like play, they are a great way to get students back into using their important skills that they may not have been practicing over break.

January STEM and Drawing Activities

Another fun, hands-on way to incorporate winter themes with January learning in kindergarten is with STEM and drawing activities. First, I give my students some common classroom materials like pom poms and construction paper. Then, I give them a task like building an ice skating rink for skaters. This helps students to get their problem solving skills working because we will be using them for the rest of year!

Similarly, students also need to practice their listening and direction-following skills. A great way to give students practice with those skills in a fun way is with a directed drawing. When drawing something like a penguin, students have to follow each step in order to have a finished product. This serves as a good reminder to follow directions carefully. As an added bonus, I also like to let my students write a sentence or two to accompany their drawings. This gives them an opportunity for literacy practice, as well. While STEM and drawing activities may not seem as beneficial when it comes to math and literacy skills, they are great ways to get students back in the swing of using other important kindergarten skills like problem solving and following directions. 

When students return to school after break, it is important to choose the right types of January learning activities. This not only keeps them engaged but also eases them back into the learning process. For this reason, I like to choose activities that are seasonally appropriate, new but familiar, and also hands-on. I try to make sure we are working on important kindergarten skills as soon as possible. We do not want to waste any of our precious time together!

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Kids love crafts, so if you want to make a lasting impression, include this fun activity when you teach kids about germs. Scroll to the bottom to check out other fun resources, too.

Supplies

Paint
Water
Paint Brush
Straw
White Paper
Construction Paper
Black Marker
Glue

Directions

• Thin paint down with water.
• Use a paint brush to add blobs of paint onto the paper.

• Use a straw to blow the paint around in various directions.
• Repeat this step with other colors.
• Allow the paint to dry completely.

• Cut circles from white paper and glue them onto the blow
  paint germs.
• Use a black marker to finish the eyes or you can also use
  black paper.

• Draw lines coming off of the germs and paint the ends.
• Glue the picture onto a piece of construction paper to
  make the craft pop!

If you are looking for ways to teach kids about germs, here is a great YouTube video to watch. 

Another great resource is the book, Sick Simon. You can listen to the story in this video. 

We hope you find this craft a fun activity to use when teaching kids about germs. Make sure you check out our other articles to help keep kids healthy.

The post A Fun Way To Teach Kids About Germs appeared first on Kreative in Kinder.