Fine Motor Skills, Functional Skills, Letter Formation, Sensory

Kindergarten Learning and Play Activities

Colleen Beck OTR/L

Colleen Beck, OTR/L is a pediatric occupational therapist and the owner and author of The OT Toolbox website. She manages all of The OT Toolbox social media accounts and runs the popular newsletter. Colleen created The OT Toolbox in 2011 and since then has written thousands of blog posts designed to support therapy providers, educators, parents, counselors, admin, and caregivers in promoting the healthy development of kids. Check out Colleen's blog posts below:

by Colleen Beck OTR/L
June 10, 2021

Below are kindergarten activities that promote development of skills needed during the kindergarten year. These are great activities to use for kindergarten readiness and to help preschool and Pre-K children build the motor skills in order to succeed in their kindergarten year. You’ll find kindergarten letter activities, Kinder math, fine motor skills to build stronger pencil grasps when kindergarteners start to write with a pencil and cut with scissors. You’ll also find kindergarten sight word activities for when that time of the Kinder year comes around. Let’s have some fun with 5-6 year old activities!

Be sure to check out our tools to support name practice for kindergarten to work on name writing skills!

Kindergarten Activities

What you’ll notice is missing from this massive list of Kindergarten activities, is handwriting, writing letters, and even writing names. (And writing letters in a sensory bin falls into this category too! Before kindergarten, children should not be copying letters into a sensory bin. You’ll see letters formed incorrectly, letters formed from bottom to top, and letters formed in “chunks”. The same rule applies to tracing letters and words and even “multisensory strategies” for writing. It’s just too early. Unfortunately, we see a lot of preschools and standards doing the exact opposite. You’ll even find online sites sharing preschool and Pre-K writing that is just in poor advice.

Here’s why: prior to kindergarten age, kids are not developmentally ready for holding a pencil, writing with a pencil, and writing words. Their muscles are not developed, and asking them to write letters, copy words, and trace with a pencil is setting them up for improper letter formation, poor pencil grasp, and weak hands.

What children aged 5 and under DO need is play! They need exposure to sensory experiences, sensory play, coloring, cutting with scissors (even if it’s just snipping), puzzles, games, beads, blocks, stamps…there are SO many ways to help pre-K kids and preschool children develop the skills they need for kindergarten and beyond.

Kindergarten is such a fun age. Kids in kindergarten strive when they are given the chance to learn through play and hands-on activities. These are our favorite Kindergarten activities that we’ve shared on the site, with Kindergarten math, reading and letter awareness, Kindergarten Crafts, and Kindergarten Play.

Kindergarten Functional Tasks

Kindergarten is the stage when children go off to school for perhaps the first time. That’s why prior to kindergarten, it’s great to “practice” a lot of the functional tasks that children will need to do once they go to kindergarten. Some of these may include:

Managing pants
Toileting
Wiping
Washing hands with soap
Rinsing hands (removing all of the soap)
Taking off a jacket
Hanging a jacket on a hook
Tying shoes (though this can come later)
Putting on socks
Buttoning
Zippering
Feeding oneself with utensils
Opening containers
Opening a lunch box
Snapping a pencil box

Now…not all of these functional skills will be established for every kindergarten child…and that’s OK! Kindergarten can be the year to practice these tasks in the school environment.

Kindergarten Letter Activities

Kindergarten is all about letters, upper case and lower case letters, and sounds. They learn how letters go with sounds and work on decodable reading. These letter learning activities will help your kindergarten student with identification, sounds, and beginning reading skills.

Name Soup Writing Your Name | Building Letters Cotton Swabs | Fizzy Dough Letters | Handwriting Cookie Cutters

Learning Letters Push Pins | Letter & Writing Travel Kit | Letter Formation with Styrofoam | Upper & Lower Case Letter Seek

LEGO Letter Stamps | Color & Letter Sticker Match | Name Building Sensory Soup | Sensory Letter Play

Letter Identification Bin | Upper & Lower Case Letter Match | Decodable Reading With Nature | Pressing Too Hard When Writing

Visual Motor Letter Learning with Bubble Wrap | Rainbow Writing Handwriting Practice | Winter Letters Outside

Alphabet Order Visual Scanning | Letters on the Garage Door | Bottle Cap Letter Learning | Alphabetical Order Golf Tee Hammering

Kindergarten Math Activities

Kindergarten students work with manipulating items to discover and explore numbers and patterns. They solve simple addition and subtraction problems, more or less, comparing amounts, and shapes.

These Kindergarten math ideas will be a fun way to discover math ideas with playful learning.

Caterpillar Math Craft | Math with Checkers | Cardboard Tangrams | Play Dough Math

Lego Shapes | Styrofoam Cup Math | Cardboard Building Shapes | Art Worksheets

Easy Shapes Salt Truck Craft | Easy Shapes Backhoe Craft | Learning with Lids | Playful Math Ideas

Styrofoam Shape Stamp Art | Pattern Activities | Heart Pattern Maze | Teaching Math Through Play

Easy Shapes Big Rig Craft | Rainbow Color Sort | Apple Math

Sugar Aunts Counting Nature | Snowball Math | Penguin Themed Math Counting

Snowman Math Composing Numbers | Styrofoam Engineering Building Shapes | Cherry Blossom Patterns | Color Sorting Shape Patterns

Kindergarten Sight Words and Reading:

Kindergarten students learn sight words throughout the school year. These sight word activities are fun ways to learn with play while reinforcing sight word skills.

Sight Word Scavenger Hunt | Sight Word Scooping

Rock Letter Blends Word Building | Sight Word Sticky Board | Puzzle Rhymes

Sight Words with String | Sight Words Ping Pong Bounce | Sight Words Sensory Bin | Bottle Cap Sight Words Stamps

Sight Words Manipulatives | Outdoor Pre-Reading Letter Hunt

Kindergarten Books and Activities

Extending book ideas with crafts and activities are a fun way for Kindergarten students to become engaged with reading. Listening to an adult read is a powerful tool for pre-readers. They learn language, speech, articulation, volume, and tone of voice. These book related activities will extend popular stories and engage your Kindergartner.

Outer Space Books | Goodnight Moon Memory Game | Dinosaurumpus Movement Game | Little Blue and Little Yellow Magic Foaming Dough

The Kissing Hand Salt Dough Charm | Mix It Up Fingerprint Art Candle | Elmer the Elephant Visual Perceptual Puzzle | Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Letter Learning

Ten Apples Up on Top Baked Cotton Balls | Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons Snack | Activities Based on Books | Bears on Wheels Letter Match

Snowball Fight math activity

Press Here Sensory Bin

Harold and the Purple Crayon Play Dough

Little Blue and Little Yellow Puffy Paint

Kindergarten Fine Motor Play

Fine motor skills in Kindergarten students are essential for effective pencil control and handwriting, scissor use, and clothing and tool manipulation. Kindergartners may have little experience with tools like scissors, pencils, hole punches, staplers, and pencil sharpeners. In fact, there are MANY fine motor skills needed at school. All of these items require dexterity and strength.

In-Hand manipulation play for fine motor skills: We had so much fun with water beads. This post shares two ideas for improving in-hand manipulation skills which are so important for dexterity in self-care, handwriting, coin manipulation…and so much more!

Finger isolation, tripod grasp, eye-hand coordination, bilateral hand coordination…Fine Motor Play with Crafting Pom Poms has got it all! We even worked on color identification and sorting with this easy fine motor play activity.

What play ideas can you come up with using common tools? These items are GREAT ways to build hand strength and dexterity that will be needed in kindergarten for pencil grasp development and endurance in handwriting.

tweezers
tongs
beads
toothpicks
hole puncher
peg boards
lacing cards

These fine motor activities will engage your student in fine motor skills for effective hand use in functional school tasks.

DIY Light Box | Rainbow Beads | Beads & Feathers | Fine motor Color Match

Fine Motor Color Sorting | Fine Motor Pom Pom Play | Play Dough and Rocks | In-Hand Manipulation Water Beads

Icicle Scissor Skills | Lacing Cards Carry Out Container | Flower Pretend Play Fine Motor | Color Sorting Scissor Skills

Pipe Cleaner Box Fine Motor Play | Christmas Pencil Control Sheets

Tripod Grasp Fine Motor Color Sort | Fine Motor Pom Pom Play | Fine Motor Lock and Keys

Kindergarten Play:

Play in Kindergarten is essential for so many areas. Kindergartners are young students who need brain breaks from desk work. Not only for that reason, but for turn-taking, language, social interaction, self-confidence, problem-solving, and interaction, play is an important part of your Kindergarten student’s daily lives.

Play builds skills! Check out this post on the incredible power of play. Play helps kids learn and develop cognitive experiences and the neural connections that impact their educational career, beginning right now! Occupational therapists know that play is the primary occupation of children, but what’s more is that play builds the very skills that kids need to learn and develop.

Kindergarteners can gain valuable input through play:

Cognition
Problem Solving
Executive Functioning Skills
Attention
Strength
Balance
Visual Motor Integration
Visual Processing
Sensory Integration
Self Regulation
Language Development
Self-Confidence
Fine Motor Skills
Gross Motor Skills
Social Emotional Development
Stress Relief
Behavior
Imagination
Creativity

Try these play ideas in the classroom or at home for fun learning (through play)!

Teaching Spatial Concepts | Bugs and Beans Sensory Play | Back to School Story Stones | Butterfly Life Cycle Activities

Outdoor Small World Play | Painting Toys in the Water Table | Sticks and Stones Simple Sensory Play

Farm Sensory Bin | Water Bead Tea Party Pretend Play | Monochromatic Water Bin Sensory Play | Corn and Cookie Cutters Sensory Bin

Kindergarten Crafts

Crafts in Kindergarten are a great tool for so many areas. Students can work on direction following, order, patterns, task completion, scissor skills, fine motor dexterity, tool use, and more by completing crafts in Kindergarten.

Kindergarten crafts can have one or more of the areas listed here to help and build skills: