There are so many important skills for preschoolers to have to make the transition to Kindergarten smoother. Whether a child goes to daycare, preschool, or stays at home, there are many easy preschool activities that teach important skills to get ready for Kindergarten.
Recognizing and Naming Capital and Lower-Case Letters
For students to be ready for school, they need to be able to recognize both capital and lowercase letters. When children can discriminate and see the differences and identify the individual letters, it is easier for them to recognize and identify words, making learning to read easier. It is important to help them identify the letters in different fonts, especially in environmental print.
Letters and Sounds Preschool Activities
It is not enough for children to recognize the letters in the alphabet. It is important that you teach the sounds that the letters represent right from the beginning. The letters of the alphabet represent sounds of speech. As I teach the letters, I say, ” A says /a/. I do not say “A is for apple”. Some even teach that a vowel makes a short and long sound as they introduce the letter.
Easy activities for preschoolers include pointing out the letters in each child’s name and making the sound for each letter. In your reading or book center, children can find letters that they recognize in books. Fine motor activities for preschoolers that teach letters and sounds include writing the letters in shaving cream, and tracing. tracing on sand paper are all great ways to practice.
Rhyming Preschool Activities
Rhyming is an important phonological skill for young students. I love to introduce and practice rhyming with objects that the children can see and touch. I collect several objects and place them on the rug during circle time or a table for small group. We name the objects and then I let the children take turns to find objects with rhyming names.
It is important to remember that phonological awareness skills includes students being able to hear sounds. For example, if you give a child two rhyming words, can they hear the rhyme? When you say a word, can the hear the initial sound? ending sound?
Fine Motor and Pre-writing Skills
Pre-writing skills are so important for preschool students. There are some great fine motor activities for preschoolers that teach pre-writing skills. If you have mini erasers handy, I draw straight and wavy lines on poster board, then the students line up the erasers on the lines. Students can draw their names or different letters in sand, salt or shaving cream.
Visual Discrimination Preschool Activities
Another very important skill, is visual discrimination. In order for children to learn their letters and later, letter/sound relationships, phonics and sight words, they must be taught to look for differences in shape, size , color and directionality. This will help them later see the differences in letters and words. Here are some fun and effective ways to practice visual discrimination with young learners.
I created matching games with different levels of difficulty for my preschoolers. They love to play matching and memory games. I also buy foam puzzles from Dollar Tree with big pieces and the children have to match the shape to the empty shapes.
Math Sense Preschool Activities
Teaching number sense to early learners is one of the most important foundations you can give a preschooler or kindergartener in math. Number sense is more than just recognizing numbers. Number sense includes, knowledge of quantities, number order, sequencing and counting with a one to one correspondence and many others. It is not only important to teach young ones to count but to teach them what those numbers mean.
My preschool students love number puzzles, clip card activities, and playing with “recipe cards” that I have created for one of my dramatic play areas. They love to count mini erasers and small stuffed animals.
The possibilities are endless for preschool activities! I have given you just a few. I encourage you to read some of my other blog posts and learn about more easy activities for preschoolers.
