Star Activities for Kindergarten

Teach your class about stars in the sky or anoint one of them as a "Star Student."

Kindergarten is a magical time when children soak up information like sponges and are excited to participate in classroom activities. When teaching your kindergarten class about stars, you can engage them in a number of activities that will capture that excitement and impart information at the same time. You can also use stars in the classroom as stickers on a rewards chart or to highlight a "Star Kid of the Week."

Shape Recognition

Teach your students to recognize the shape of the star with an interactive activity. Cover two shoe boxes with colorful construction paper and add stars to the outside of one of the boxes. Cut out many shapes from construction paper, making about half of them stars and the other half squares, circles, hearts and rectangles.

Seat your children in a circle and place the two open boxes in the middle. Place all of the shapes in a bag and pass around the bag. Each child should reach in, one at a time, and take a shape. If it is a star, the whole class sings (to the tune of "Skip to My Lou"), "So-and-so's shape is a star, so-and-so's shape is a star, so-and-so's shape is a star. It is a star, my darling." That child then places his star in the star box. If it is not a star, the same song is sung with the addition of the word "not" and the child places the shape in the other box.

Personalized Star

Have each child bring in a small picture of his face. Give each child a large, yellow star to decorate and glue his pictures to the middle of his star. Underneath the picture, write the caption, "I Am a Star."

Students can decorate their stars with crayons, markers, glitter, stickers and any other material.

Outer Space Lesson

After teaching children a lesson about stars in the sky, have them create the look of a starry night sky with this class activity. Give out black pieces of construction paper and supply yellow glitter and glue. Using popsicle sticks, children should dribble glue in any way they would like all over their paper. Then, they should carefully pour glitter over their page and shake it to cover all of the glue spots. Shake off the excess glitter and let dry.

Number Lesson

Use stars to help children learn to count objects that do not have a clear end. Hold up a five-pointed star and go around the points, counting together with the class from one to five. Mark the points as you go around so that children can clearly see which points have already been counted and which have not. Teach them that when they count round objects or small items grouped together, they should separate or mark the items that have already been counted.

References

• Enchanted Learning: Star Crafts: Enchanted Learning Software
• Step by Step CC: Star Theme