5 Hands-On Ways to Learn with Your 5-Year-Old

Article Overview

5-minute read

Kindergarten is all about laying a foundation of academic and social skills children will build on throughout the rest of their time in school. Grow your child’s love for learning with these five hands-on ideas:

Mixed-Up ABCs—Collect yogurt lids and turn them into alphabet tiles.
The Great Cardboard Box—Transform any box into anything your child can imagine, from a school bus to a science lab! Imaginative play builds skills across creative, cognitive, and physical developmental domains.
Pipe Cleaner Play—Sharpen your kiddo’s fine motor skills by weaving pipe cleaners through the holes of a colander or sieve.
Muffin Tin Sorter—Use a tweezer, a muffin tin, and colored cotton balls to make a sorting game!
The Pet Project—Develop your child’s early math skills by making a graph featuring friends’ pets or animals from your favorite books.

“Kindergarten is about honing the skills children will build upon throughout the rest of the time they are in school,” says Khy Sline, curriculum supervisor on our education team and former kindergarten teacher. “When I taught kindergarten, I loved to see how children, who oftentimes were in any sort of group care or school setting for the first time, became more confident and independent as the year went on.”

Take a tip from our incredibly talented educators: Skip the flashcards and build a love for learning with these five hands-on ideas for your kindergartner:

Mixed-Up ABCs: Upcycled Yogurt Lids

Collect yogurt covers and turn them into alphabet tiles using construction paper, markers, and glue. Fix a lowercase letter on one side and the uppercase letter on the other. Children use their tiles to explore sounds and letters and practice putting words together.

Build Imaginations: The Great Cardboard Box

We’ll let you in on a little trade secret: Many terrific teachers understand the power of a cardboard box! It can be transformed into anything from a school bus to a science lab, helping children practice not just imaginative play but skills from a variety of developmental domains, like creative, cognitive, and physical. Plus, they're making connections to other learning activities they’re doing in the classroom.

Finger Play: Pasta Strainer and Pipe Cleaners

Kids love weaving pipe cleaners through the holes of a colander or sieve. When the project’s done, they’ve got a wiry wig, a flamboyant helmet, or a fuzzy bowl! But playing this way is more than just good fun; it also helps children practice fine motor skills while promoting independence and self-help skills for daily tasks.

Match Maker: Muffin Tin Sorting

Use a kid-safe tweezer and colored cotton balls to make a sorting game in a muffin tin. Sorting the cotton balls by color teaches children how to match and identify patterns, which are important math skills. (The tweezers provide more fine-motor practice!)

Graph Math: The Pet Project

Along the bottom of a piece of paper, glue pictures of pets—dog, cat, parakeet, fish—with the animal’s name written underneath. Ask each person to vote for their favorite animal and mark each vote with a spot on the vertical axis of the graph with the name of the person who voted beside it.

Another fun way to try this game would be to graph the different animals in your child’s favorite books. Write the type of animal along the horizontal axis (e.g., bear, owl, fox), count how many times they appear in the books, and then mark the number on the graph’s vertical axis. Children explore the mathematical concepts of “more” and “less” through graphing while also learning to take data and translate it into a new format.