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This is a fun Kindergarten Craft that is also a great Kindergarten learning game!  You can make it red and white and give it as a gift for Valentine’s Day!  You’ll need to collect some water bottle caps or soda caps for a bit as the markers.

Supplies:

• Cardstock Paper 11×8
• Ruler
• 12 caps
• Crayons
• Pencil/Black Marker

Steps:

1. Use ruler to mark a space for a square with 6 squares across (1 inch wide) and 6 squares high
2. Then use the ruler to draw the lines.
3. Have your child color every other square.
4. If your caps are different not different colors, color one  set a different color, or put stickers on them.

Teach your child how to play checkers, and have fun!!!

This is a really fun preschool and Kindergarten Learning Activity!  It’s a fun science experiment for kids and teaches about measuring, observations and making a hypothesis.

Supplies:

• 1-2 cups flour
• Pan with 1 or 2 inch sides
• 3 size balls
• Tape Measure
• Newspaper or try this experiment outside
• Notebook
• Pen or pencil for marking your observations and measurements in notebook

Steps:

1. Measure 2 cups of flour and put in a hill on the corner of pan
2. smooth out to cover the other parts of the pan.
3. Explain to your children that you are going to drop the balls from different heights, and record information about each time you drop it.  Ask them to form a hypothesis about what might happen with different size balls and when they are dropped from different heights.
4. Measure up 10 inches, drop first ball from that height, measure how wide the hole was and if it rolled, hopped etc.
5. Mark down if this was the largest, smallest or middle size ball.
6. Repeat at that height with the other 2 balls, smoothing flour after each one. Make sure to record the measurements and your observations.
7. Pick two different heights, and record the same information as above.
8. Talk about what you observed and if your hypothesis was correct.

photo credit: sarae

Educational Learning Games

Using games to teach children can be very effective.  I created a Bingo game with site words that my son had inKindergarten.  Site words help kids start to read sentances easier as they are commonly used words like this and is.  It’s slightly different then a traditional Bingo game but has the same basic concept.

Supplies:

• change-to use for markers on Bingo cards
• Bingo cards and site words located here

Bingo Card

Steps:

1. Print out Site Words Bingo on cardstock
2. Cut out Bingo cards (they are 3×3-3 words wide and 3 words down)
3. Cut up all the site words (located on the top)
4. Give every player a card
5. Put all site words in a pile
6. Pick first site word, have one of the players help you read it (rotate so they all get a turn)
7. Then they should each look at their card to see if they have it
8. If they have, have them put a coin on the word
9. Continue picking site words until someone has 3 in a row and has BINGO

Have fun!

Kindergarten Learning Games

There are many great Kindergarten Learning Games to play with your children.  Since it is summer, I am working on coming up with some Kindergarten Learning Games to reinforce what my son learned during the year in Kindergarten.  As part of the learning to read process children are taught different site words.  These are introduced through out the year in kindergarten (of course sometimes earlier as well).  At the end of this year my son had been exposed to 30 site words.  I want to reinforce these throughout the summer.  I created a matching game to help him work on these words while having fun.

Site Words Matching Game:

• Print out the sheet of site words 2 times onto card stock, then cut them.
• Use them like a deck of cards and shuffle them up.
• Place them with the word side down.
• Each person gets to flip over two cards per turn.
• If you get a pair on your turn you get to keep it.
• When you flip over the word say the word.  Your child might need some help with sounding out the word at first if they are not familiar with it.
• Play until all the matches are made.
• If you want there to be a winner, then the person with the most matches wins.

You can also incorporate this list of site words into regular games you might like to play like Caribou, Zingo, or Candy land.  Before each turn you pick a word to read, then take your turn.

If you haven’t entered the Huge Art Contest and Giveaway head over and check out the prizes and details on the Contest Page!  The prizes are amazing, and there are already some great entries in the art contest.