Kindergarten Teaching| 2 min read

Everyone’s kindergarten experience will be different, due to the age of the kids, the location of the school and what is expected of you in the classroom. I had 2 kindergarten lessons, once a week. A class with 4/5 year olds and a class with 2 year olds, and oh how I dreaded going to these lessons at the beginning!

My advice to you is simply; don’t give up, no matter how bad you think that first lesson went with them. In my younger class, they all cried the entire lesson, it didn’t matter what I did whether jumped around or tried to sing. Things got easier and the kids began to recognise me and respond to the activities and gestures that I was making over time. They may not respond to words, as they are so young but motions and actions for words work a treat. I realised that consistency is the key, and structure is very important when teaching these little kids.

My older kids at kindergarten were much easier to teach, very bright however their attention span was very limited. Routine is still very important with the older ones, but so is variation. I always tried not to play any one game to long on a one day as they seem to very quickly get bored, also try including all the kids in the game, because if they aren’t included they don’t pay attention.

Games that I found worked well; a clothing race where they had to put the items on, and also a balloon race where the first one to jump across the room with the balloon between their legs to retrieve the flashcard received a point for their team.
If you run out of this in the lesson, you could always cut up your flashcards and make them into a jigsaw puzzle, works a treat and also calms the kids down.