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Back to School Tips
Holiday Activities
Winter Games
End of the Year Activites

Washing Hands from Mary Kay Hedtke
When children are at the sink at school washing their hands, have them sing the alphabet song thru once as they soap and rinse their hands as seen at the Chain'o'Lake's School in Waupaca.

Make a Realia Alphabet Chart from Jan Delano
I heard this idea at the I Teach K Confernce in Chicago last year. This chart can be made by putting all 26 alphabet letters on a sentence strip chart. Take a picture of each student in your class. Place each student's picture after the first letter of his or her name. Leave this on display in your room all year. Student love it.

Getting to Know You from Beth Ferris
Each year at Open House I hand out a "Getting to Know You" sheet for students to complete with their families. It's from Donna Whyte's web site www.thesmartiezone.com/docs/writing/meetourk.pdf and it helps me learn a little something about each of them during the first week of school. Each family is also given a clear sheet protector and a blank piece of typing paper to fill with photos from home (that are returned at the end of the year). Then I put both sheets together in a 3 ring binder with the words "Our Class" on the cover. It's the most popular book in the room, even on the last day of school!

Thanksgiving Activity Graph by Lori Block
Send home a checklist of possible family activities.  Have the families check the activities they usually do at Thanksgiving.  Examples: watch football, eat turkey, go shopping, play family games, go hunting, or watch a parade.  When the children bring back the checklist, together the class can graph the Thanksgiving activities.

Christmas Card Match by Lori Block
Have the children bring in old Christmas cards.  Cut up the covers of the Christmas cards in unusual ways (4-6 parts).  You now have Christmas puzzles.  This is good center activity.

Boarding the Mayflower by Sally Brys
My students make paper pilgrim heads as a project.  We discuss why the Pilgrims came to America and what kind of ship they sailed.  At snack, we get our pilgrim project and each child signs a ship’s passenger book and then tape their Pilgrim to a large paper “Mayflower” ship.  We then have saltines and jerky for snack.  A great website to see what the ship and the voyage was like is www.scholastic.com/scholastic_thanksgiving.

Sounds Around the Mountain by Meagan Naumann
Here's a great idea for Shari Sloane's "Sounds Around the Mountain" song. I printed the words off her website and then printed the alphabet in a train track font. My class loves tracing each letter as they sing the song. I made a big book and individual books. They get practice singing the alphabet, hearing letter sounds and writing letters.
 
Big Cheese by Meagan Naumann
For math practice we love playing the game "Big Cheese." I took photos of the class with their mouths open and mounted them in a single row on a sheet of paper. Each photo is about an inch. The middle space is open. I use a cheese wedge eraser as the movement token. The players start with the cheese in the middle. They take turns rolling and moving the cheese toward themselves. The game is over when one player gets the cheese off their side of the board.
 
Blizzard by Meagan Naumann
During the winter months we also like playing Blizzard. For this game you need small foam snowflakes, a cityscape picture for each player, a die for each player. Each player gets a city scape picture. The players each roll a die. The player with the highest roll gets to put that many snowflakes on the board. The first player to cover their board wins.

Exercise Game by Carol Goodrow
For details, click here.

Sensory Table Fun by Beth Zingler
Hide arctic animals in your sensory table by burying them in packing peanuts. Give children tongs to pick up the animals and sort into pie pans labeled with the beginning sounds of the creatures. Restaurant supply stores have durable inexpensive tongs, some even for $1. If you don't have 3-D arctic animals use clip art or magazine pictures and have them laminated. This activity does make a mess but the kids seem to enjoy the static electricity that keeps the peanuts stuck to their clothes!

Winter Activity by Sally Brys
In winter I do an author study on Jan Brett. She has a wonderful website www.janbrett.com. Before Christmas we read The Gingerbread Baby and compare it to other versions of The Gingerbread Man. We bake our own Gingerbread Men. The children get a hunk of dough and use it like clay to fashion a Gingerbread Man. They can use raisins and mini m&m’s to decorate their cookie. Our lunch ladies bake them for us and we enjoy them at snack time. During our computer time we listened to Jan Brett read the
Gingerbread Baby on her website. She also discusses how she does her drawings. Then we go to the section of the site where the children can decorate a gingerbread house by clicking and dragging pieces of candy onto a house.

After Christmas we read The Mitten and compare it to different versions. We act it out. Then the children trace mitten shapes and decorate the paper mitten to resemble their own mittens. This year we are going to ask our fourth grade buddies to match our real mittens with the paper ones. We will also write a description of our mitten as an introduction to describing words (adjectives). We read Hedgie’s Surprise and then went to the website to listen to how to draw Hedgie.

Presidents' Day
Many Kindergarten teachers talk about patriotism and the flag in February. Here is a fun activity:
* Design a class flag using handprints and discuss the significance of flags and allegiance.
* Make U.S. flag handprints. Have each student paint a blue square on the bottom of his or her palm, paint fingers and thumb red and white. Turn the hand over and press it onto white construction paper. Use a q-tip to add white paint stars. Let it dry and then cut it out and display. To see full description, including related poems, snacks, etc. click here.

Groundhog Run by Toni Durben
A safe area is selected as the Groundhogs home (hula hoop, chair, mat, etc.). Four or five other children are the dogs. The Groundhog comes out to play and upon a signal from the teacher the dogs spot the Groundhog and try to catch him.  At this time the Groundhog must return to his/her home as fast as possible without being caught by a dog/s. The children playing dogs must run on all fours.  If playing in a open area like a gym there may be more than one Groundhog and more than four or five dogs, but each Groundhog  must return to it's own home.

Tom Thumb Guessing Game by Toni Durben
A child picks some small item in the clasroom and then describes it to the class, who in turn try to guess what it is. EXAMPLE: It is by the counter. It is black in color, shape is roundish and has a handle.  It makes this pointed.  What is it? (pencil sharpener) 

The Beckoning Game by Lori Block
The children are in a circle. The leader(in the middle) beckons to someone to take his place without talking (by curling his /her finger upward).  The leader takes that person’s place  and it just keeps going until everyone has a turn.  Once a child has a turn they sit down.  The person in the middle always beckons to the children standing up who have not had a turn.. This is very simple, but QUITE game.  A good calming game!

Bunny, Bunny, How’s your neighbor game by Lori Block
The children are sitting in a circle.  The child in the middle hops very low to another child in the circle and says,”bunny, bunny, how’s your neighbor?”  The other child replies,”I don’t know but I’ll go see.”That child hops to another child sitting in the circle and the child who has asked the question takes the child’s place who has answered the question.  When a child has had a turn,he/she stands up.  Another very simple game.

Pirate Day by Beth Zingler
Pirate Day is an indoor activity that beats the winter blues.  I draw on a handlebar moustache with an eyebrow pencil and wear pirate attire.  Students love practicing their pirate oooh aargh and walking the plank ( a balance beam) or shooting cannons (bean bags) into a treasure chest.  Dollar stores sell pirate costumes so the dramatic play area is loaded to the gills with skull and crossbone hats and hooks.

ABCD by MaryAnn Woelfel
Each corner of the classroom is labeled with a letter.  "It" has eyes covered and slowly counts to 10 while the rest of the class goes to a corner.  "It" calls a letter and the children standing in that corner are out.  The last one left standing becomes the new "it".  The game requires problem solving so not everyone goes to the same corner  at the same time.  Children also need to move quietly (providing some peace for the adult in the room!).  We use this on rainy days and bitterly cold days.

Sleeping Worms by Mary Ann Woelfel
The children find a comfortable position to lay on the floor - pretending to sleep.  The first one to move is out.  Amazingly this game takes tons of energy and concentration.  When using this I tend to go around the room talking to children in a quiet voice to try and get them to move.  I was and continue to be amazed at its simplicity and the engagement of the children.  All of us truly enjoy it.

Winter Tips by Sally Brys
When children need to stay in for recess and stay in the room, we try to have extra time for large muscle activities.   We use Hap Palmer’s “Bean Bag” song.  The bean bags are the home made variety.  We stuffed them with popcorn, a cheaper alternative to beans. We also use “Chicken Fat”, an exercise song Through Kimbo Educational Company .  Our third alternative is from a Steve and Greg collection called, Listen and Move (We All Live Together vol.2).   I taped it and deleted the running portion.  The children listen to the music and are told what action to do, then it goes through the music again and the children need to tell by the tempo what large muscle activity to do.