Kindergarten Social Skills: Sharing Activities

Sharing helps a child form friendships.

Sharing can be difficult for some children. Games, stories and other activities can assist the kindergarten teacher with teaching the concept of sharing to her young students. Foster a safe, fun, open environment where all students can be themselves and learn and grow at their own pace. You will soon find that your students begin to share with one another and cooperative play takes the place of previous squabbles.

Circle Time

Kindergartners love to talk about themselves and show off their possessions. Use circle time as an opportunity for students to tell something about themselves. Promote active listening by asking your students questions about what was shared with the group.

Have students bring in something they enjoy for show and tell. Allow them to share with the group and tell something about it. Ask that they pass it around the group for the others to see and touch. This allows the student to see that he can share his belongings and the other students can enjoy it and the object comes back to him in the end.

Classroom Supplies

Seat your kindergartners in groups of four. Push their desks together and have a supply basket in the middle of each desk with glue sticks, scissors, markers and extra pencils. Students will have their own crayons and pencils in their desks. When completing projects or crafts, a student will need to politely ask the other student in her group to use the red marker when he's finished or borrow his glue stick because one ran out. This teaches children to be patient, polite and to use their words to ask for things that they need. The students respond by sharing supplies, which teaches them to work together as a team.

Stories that Promote Sharing

"The Rainbow Fish," by Marcus Pfister, is an excellent read for promoting sharing as well as other emotions that are often felt when children refuse to share. Read the story and discuss how the little blue fish might have felt. Discuss how the Rainbow Fish might have felt as well.

Students can create their own rainbow fish. Place them on an ocean theme bulletin board with the title "I earned a Fin Today." Students who share with one another and are "caught" by a teacher or another student earn a sparkly fin for their fish. This is a great visual motivator for kindergarten students.

Classroom Responsibilities

Pair the children off when assigning classroom responsibilities as much as you can. Children learn to negotiate with one another and decide how to share the job so they are both pleased with the outcome. If there is a pet fish in your classroom, the two students need to decide if one will feed it in the morning and one in the afternoon or one does one day and one does the next. Teachers need to set limits as to what is fair and keep an eye and ear open for conflict, but this kind of activity can go a long way to teaching responsibility, sharing and teamwork.

References

• Education.com: 5 Ways to Promote Preschool Sharing
• Themes4Fun: Arts and Crafts