For the next two weeks, we’re focusing on the letter K in both our STEAM exploration and our preschool unit. Letter K is a lot of fun to teach. There are so many different ways of introducing the letter to young children. My kicking letter K preschool unit, part 1 focuses on: building fine motor skills, introducing children to the letter K shape, and reviewing the letters in the alphabet – upper and lower case forms – up to the letter K. We completed three activities in this first part of our letter K unit.
Activity One: K is for King Penguin
This activity is designed to help young children develop their fine motor skills. The children will recreate the feathers on a King Penguin during this activity. It is also a good way to introduce children to a different animal. My two preschoolers – a three-year-old and a four-year-old, enjoyed this activity. They found it just challenging enough to be fun and interesting, but not so challenging that it felt impossible.
Objective 1: Help the children develop their fine motor skills necessary for writing.
Objective 2: Introduce the children to some facts about the King Penguin
Materials:
One King Penguin example, available here, printed in color for each group of children
One King Penguin worksheet, available here, one for each child.
Orange construction or craft paper, one for each child.
Black construction or craft paper, one for each child.
White construction or craft paper, one for each child.
Glue sticks, one for each child.
Method:
Begin by showing the children the example picture of the King Penguins. Talk a little about where the penguins live, what they eat, and some of the things them do. Also explain how the feathers on a penguin keeps them warm and dry in the water. They work because of the layering of the feathers.
Now pass out the worksheet and the construction or craft paper. Explain that the children will be tearing little pieces off the different colors of paper and gluing them onto their papers to recreate the layered look of the feathers. Their job will be to try to make the feathers on their penguins follow the color patterns and layering of the example picture.
Activity Two: Letter K Pathway
In this activity, the children get introduced to the shape of the letter K as they follow a path of K’s to the Koala Bear. This is an easy maze and a fun way for children to begin recognizing the letter K.
Objective 1: Introduce the shape and look of the letter K to the children
Objective 2: Work on developing fine motor control
Materials:
One letter K maze worksheet, available here, for each child.
One pencil, or other writing instrument, for each child.
Method:
Explain to the children that their goal is to find all the letter K’s on the lines of the worksheet. Remind them to find the upper and lower case letters. As they find the letter K’s, have the children circle them.
Once the children have circled all the letter K’s, have the children connect all the K’s to find the path to the Koala Bear.
Activity Three: Fishing for Letters Game
This activity is a card game that can be used to introduce children to the upper and lower case letterforms for younger children. Or, it can be used to review the upper and lower case letterforms with older children.
Version One: For Younger Children
Objective 1: Introduce young children to the upper and lower case letterforms of the alphabet.
Materials:
One set of Animal Alphabet cards, available here, glued onto cardstock and cut out into cards.
Method:
For younger children, this game plays like a modified game of “War”.
Set Up and Rules:
Shuffle the cards.
Deal all the card to the players, face down, and leave them in a pile face down in front of the players.
Each player then takes turn starting.
The starting player flips over the top card on his/her pile.
All other players flip their top card as well. If there are any matches, the starting player gets to keep the match, then start another round. All other unmatched cards are placed in a discard pile.
A player gets a match when a lower case letter and an upper case letter is the same letter.
Once no matches are made, play rotates clockwise to the next player. That player then starts the next round, and gets to keep any matches made, and so on.
Version Two: For Older Children
Objective 1: Reinforce the upper and lower case letterforms.
Materials:
One set of Animal Alphabet cards, available here, glued onto cardstock and cut out into cards.
Method:
For older children, this game plays like “Go Fish”.
Set Up and Rules
Shuffle the cards.
Deal out 7 cards to each player. The remaining cards are left face down as a draw pile.
Have each player look for matches in the hand they were dealt.
Place the matches face up in front of each player.
Play starts with the player on the dealers left and continues clockwise.
When it is a player’s turn, the player askes another player for either the upper or lower case form of a letter. For example: “Susan, will you give me all your upper case F’s?”
Then, the player asked will either give all of the requested type of card, or will say “I don’t have any. Go fish.”
If the player receives cards, that player gets to go again. If the player has to “Go fish”, the player draws a card from the draw pile. If the player draws the card they asked for, then they get to go again. If not, play moves to the next player, clockwise.
Play continues until a player runs out of cards.
The player with the most matches wins.
A match is an upper case and lower case letterform of the same letter.
These are the three activities for the first part of our letter K unit. My preschoolers really enjoyed these activities. They thought the game was a lot of fun. We played the game with my third and first grader as well, and they enjoyed it too. I look forward to sharing the other activities in this unit soon.