Kindergarten Prep Fun!

At Small Hands Big Dreams, we have a major focus on kindergarten preparation for our children. As the end of the school year is fast approaching, now is the perfect time to practice some of these same skills at home using fun activities.

Our first activity is Letter Fishing. Place magnetic letters (usually found at the dollar store or education-based stores) in a bucket. Attach a piece of string with a magnet on the end to a fishing pole or stick. Then dip the magnet into the bucket to fish out a letter. Have your child identify the letter and the sound that it makes. Then think of a few words that start with that letter. For old children, fish out a few letters from the bucket and try to make a word with them (much like Scrabble). This is a fun and educational game for the whole family

The second activity is a Lego sort. This a great game for critical thinking and math sorting skills. Take your Lego collection (or other collection of small game pieces, buttons, etc). Have each person choose a color. Then have a race to see who can get all of their colored pieces the fastest. Count each of the pieces of each color and make a bar graph. Talk about who has the most pieces and who has the least amount of pieces.

The final activity is great for fine motor skills. Fill a freezer sized Ziploc bag on with one cup of paint. Seal the bag well and use tape to secure the seal just to be sure (make sure all of the air gets out of the bag as well). Flatten the bag on to a table and tape down each corner. Now have your child trace his or her name into the paint. This is an easy to erase and no mess way to practice writing, letters, numbers, or for drawing.

Learning is fun at Small Hands!