Activities for Teaching Kindergarten Vocabulary
Kindergarten students are often expected to be able to read some words by the end of the school year. As part of critical pre-reading activities, students are introduced to a vocabulary of basic words. In addition to being exposed to a variety of stories, poems and books, students build their vocabularies through interactive activities, games, worksheets and crafts.
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Games
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Encourage the use of descriptive language. Place a small item in a bag and make sure you cannot see through the bag from the outside. Have children feel inside the bag and attempt to describe what they are feeling to the rest of the class. The student must not use the name of the item. The class attempts to guess what is in the bag based on the student's description. Also, have children play hide and seek around the classroom. Children must try and find particular objects by description only.
Worksheets
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Worksheets for vocabulary often include both the word and a picture of the word, allowing children an opportunity to trace the word and color the associated picture. Worksheets could include filling in the missing letter from a word, identifying the odd word out from a group of rhyming words, or identifying the correct word that relates to the picture on the worksheet. Word searches and simple crossword puzzle worksheets provide opportunities for children to increase their vocabularies.
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Activities
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Increase vocabulary through songs. Teach children different songs, which can complement any classroom theme, such as seasons, spelling, punctuation and contractions. Assign each student a different word for the week. Children will need to thoroughly research the word and its meaning and then draw a poster about the word. At the end of the week, children present their findings to the class.
Take children on an outdoor walk to build nature vocabulary. Each child will pick up one item on the walk. When the students return to the classroom, put all the items in a box. Then children take turns taking an item from the box, attempting to identify and describe it. Lead class discussions on the characteristics of each object.
Crafts
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Split the class into small groups to make poster boards about a word. The poster board should contain the word as well as related words, textures and pictures associated with the original word. For example, a poster board for the word "tree" might include other words such as "green," "tall" and "leafy" and have bark, twigs and leaves glued to the poster with pictures of trees drawn by the children. Over the school year, build up a word wall with all the words the children have been learning. Students can also make short books about the words they have learned, or laminated flip books bound on a ring as a portable vocabulary reference for each child.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit Cubes image by Maxim_Kazmin from Fotolia.com
