Homeschool activities for Kindergarten

Geography

• Animal atlas: Put animals on the world map and learn the continents.
• Hot or cold?: Why some places are hot and others are cold.
• Me on the map: Where I live, from my room out to the planet.
• My map: The words for where things are, then a first map.
• Rivers of the world: Where the great rivers run, from the hills to the sea.
• Time-zone call: Why it is bedtime somewhere when it is breakfast here.
• Treasure walk: Read a map on a real walk and find the treasure.
• Who can get there?: See a familiar walk through someone else's eyes.
• Wonders of the world: Famous places of the world, one true thing each.

Every geography activity

History

• Every year: The year as a wheel, with your family's days on it.
• Family tree of names: The people before your child, in order, by name.
• My day in order: First, next and last, in the shape of their own day.
• The one-shelf museum: A museum on one real shelf, and a visitor who learns from it.
• Time capsule: A box for next year, and proof of what changed.
• When I was little: Your child's own life, in a line from baby to now.

Every history activity

Science

• A bean in a jar: A bean your child grew, and their drawing of its root.
• A bird feeder: A bird feeder your child made, hanging level, and a week of birds counted.
• A cardboard dinosaur: A cardboard stegosaurus that stands on its own.
• The dough table: Prints your child pressed in play dough, and at K a print they read like a clue.
• Boats that hold the most: A foil boat your child improved by testing, and the numbers to show it.
• Fruit faces: A smiling face your child made from fruit, and then ate.
• Leaf rubbings and pressed flowers: Crayon rubbings of three leaves and two pressed flowers, made by your child.
• What the colours do: A new colour your child made by mixing two, and can tell you how.
• Big and small (dinosaurs): Was a dinosaur bigger than your car? Your child finds out.
• The nest (dinosaurs): From a dinosaur's nest to the birds outside your window.
• Grow it: A real bean on the sill, and a daily look at what changed.
• Light around corners: Aim a torch beam round a corner with a mirror.
• Meat, or plants?: What an animal eats is written on its mouth.
• Our solar system: The sun and its planets, in order, at their true sizes.
• Paper carries a load: One sheet of paper, folded right, holds a pile of coins.
• Pet, or wild?: Who feeds it? One question sorts the animals.
• Plant-eater or meat-eater? (dinosaurs): Your child reads a dinosaur's teeth to find its dinner.
• Same spot, four seasons: One favourite place, visited each season, and what changed.
• Seed to plate: What a seed needs, and how a bean becomes new beans.
• Shadow tracker: Your child finds a pattern in the sky for themselves.
• Sink or float?: Guess, try it in real water, and see what happens.
• Sort the zoo: Your child sorts the things from their own storybooks: alive or not, then animal or plant.
• Sound safari: Your child finds out that every sound is something moving.
• Two windows: A call to someone far away becomes a look at the world.
• Weather window: A daily look at the sky becomes a pattern.
• What do you notice?: Your child learns to look closely and ask a question.
• What lives in the pond?: Find the pond's living things, and one true fact about each.
• Where the ice goes: Follow one real ice cube and find where the water goes.
• Who is faster?: Your child races the animals, with their own real speed.
• Who lives here?: A loop of string on the ground becomes a small world.

Every science activity

Math

• Paper weaving: A woven paper mat with a pattern your child chose and kept going.
• Potato and leaf prints: A row of potato and leaf prints that repeats, made by your child.
• Torn paper picture: A torn paper picture your child made with their fingers, and can tell you about.
• Build my room: Your child measures their own room, and the Pet's room changes to match.
• Bundle builders: Ten loose sticks and one bundle of ten are the same ten.
• Cover without gaps: Same tiles, new shape: your child sees what area means.
• Half for you, half for me: Fair shares at the table, and what to do with one left over.
• Keep the boat level: Load the boat so it floats level, and find that far out tips it more.
• Lemonade stand: Your child runs the stand and gives change like a shopkeeper.
• Make the amount: The same amount, made two ways with real coins.
• Measure me: Hands, then string, then a tape: how tall is everyone?
• Number hunt: Real numbers from your street, put in order.
• Pattern parade: Your child hears a rule, keeps it going, then makes one.
• Secret rule machine: Your child finds a machine's secret rule, then tests it on a number it has not seen.
• Snack count: A number becomes an amount your child can hold.
• Sock sort: Your child makes a rule, keeps it, and counts the piles.
• How many?: Seeing seven at a glance, without counting one by one.
• Which one doesn't belong?: Your child looks closely and says why, in their own words.
• Which one doesn't belong? Together: Maths talk on a call with someone who loves your child.

Every math activity

Music & arts

• A shaker and a rubber-band guitar: Two instruments your child made, and a high note and a low one they found by ear.

Reading

• A sock puppet and a two-minute show: A sock puppet your child made, and a show they put on for you.
• The clue board: A quiz board of pictures from your child's storybooks, cleared together, with no points and no clock.
• Find it at home: Your child finds the things from their storybooks in your own home.
• Memory pairs: Your child finds the pairs among pictures from their own storybooks, and, from Grade 1, matches each picture to its word.
• Name it: Your child names the things from their storybooks in your family's language, with someone who speaks it.
• Sound it: Your child hears which words start with the same sound, using the pictures from their storybooks.
• Spell it: Your child spells the names of things from their own storybooks, one letter at a time.
• Story order: Your child puts a story they have read back in order and tells it in their own words.