Kicking K Preschool Unit, Part Two

We concluded our kicking K preschool unit on the letter K with three more fun activities. These activities focused on specifically teaching the letter formation for K and k, with an emphasis on increasing fine motor skills.

All this work on fine motor skills is really helping my little ones gain the skills they need to be able to write, cut, color, and glue. They are also noticing that their ability to do these things is improving. I’ve noticed their precision and stamina improving. It’s just so exciting to see their progress.

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This activity is a simple way to show children how the letter K is made, while helping them develop those oh-so-important fine motor skills.

Materials:
One Kicking Letter K worksheet, available here, for each child

One pair of scissors, for each child
One glue stick, for each child

Method:
The goal of this activity is to cut the soccer balls out and glue them onto the upper and lower case letter K’s.

Begin by having the children trace the letter K’s the way the letters would be written.

Now, have them cut out the soccer balls and fill in the letter K’s.  There are more soccer balls than are needed.

Next, have the children fill in the letter K’s by gluing the soccer balls to the letters.

This was a good activity for increasing my children’s cutting ability and hand strength. The children enjoyed filling in the letters with the soccer balls, and were relieved when I told them they didn’t need to use ALL the soccer balls.

Activity Two: Letter K HandWriting Practice

This activity is the classic hand writing skills page, but I added dots to help with the second row of letter formation. I have found that adding the dots helps children know where to start when making the letters. The final line is meant to be a free-hand letter formation line. That’s why it is the shortest line— it’s very hard for young children to write letters without visual cues especially when they are first introduced to the letter formation.

Materials:
One Letter K Handwriting Sheet, available here, for each child.

One pencil for each child

Method:
Begin by having the children trace the large example letters a few times. I had my children trace the uppercase K with their fingers. Then I had them trace the uppercase K with their pencil. We worked on all the uppercase K’s first, then we went back and worked on all the lowercase K’s.

After tracing the letter K a few times, then it was time to start work on writing the letter’s on the line. One of my children struggled for a while with this, so I held her writing hand while she drew the letters. I had to be careful to make sure to not “control” her hand, but let her place the pencil where she wanted. After about half a line, she was able to write the letter’s on her own.

This was a very successful hand writing practice for my younger children. My first grader did it too, and completed it very well—just for “extra practice,” he said.

Activity Three: Search and Find

This was the final activity for our Kicking letter K unit. We went on a letter K hunt during reading time. It was a lot of fun and my little ones really enjoyed “reading” the story.

Materials:
A fun picture book, with good text. We used “Danny the Duck with no Quack”, by Malachy Doyle and Janet Samuel
A good soft place to sit and read with everyone.

Method:
Start by telling the children that their job is to hunt for the letter K. Explain that you will read a sentence, then they will pick out each letter K in the sentence.

Then, read the story, one sentence at a time, pausing to give the children time to seek and find the letter K’s.

These final three activities really worked well together as a way to finish off our unit on the letter K. All six activities together were fun to do and a great way to introduce the children to the shape, sound, and formation of the letter K. If you missed the other three activities they are found in my Kicking Letter K Preschool Unit, Part 1, including all the printables.