Holiday Activities and Freebies!
Kindergarten is a year of tremendous learning and growth for our young students. When they leave for the summer, we hope that they’ll hold on to as much of that learning as possible! One way that we can do that is to send them home with a getting ready for first grade summer packet. In this post, I’ll share some fun activities that you can send home with your students so they can keep their skills sharp for first grade.
Kindergarten students have learned so much during the school year that it can be difficult to decide what to include in a summer packet. Focusing on first grade preparation can make it easier to narrow it down to the most important skills that students need to keep sharp for next year.
The other important thing to consider is that young kindergarten students also need to enjoy their summer break so they can be ready for the next school year! This is why I like to include engaging activities that don’t feel like summer school. Here are some examples:
By the end of the school year, kindergarten students are using their phonemic awareness and phonics skills to read CVC words in isolation and in simple sentences. It would be great if they could keep this momentum going and prevent the summer slide as they get ready for first grade!
You can send home engaging activities that will help students practice their phonemic awareness and phonics skills over the summer. For example, students will love this fun flower-themed activity that gives them a chance to identify vowel sounds. Each flower pot has a picture that students will identify. Once they have said the word, they will decide which vowel sound they hear and color the petal containing that letter.
Students can also practice building CVC words to keep their phonics skills sharp! Students will unscramble letters to form a CVC word that matches one of the pictures provided. They can then cut and paste the pictures to match the CVC words they’ve unscrambled.
During the kindergarten school year, students learn a lot about letter formation and how to use those letters to write words. By the end of the school year, students are writing simple sentences! It will serve them well if they can maintain this skill as they transition to first grade. To help them do this, there are many fun ways that you can incorporate sentence practice into summer activities.
This crab drawing activity is a great example! Students can follow the step-by-step directions to learn how to draw a crab. After doing that, students can read, unscramble, assemble, and write a crab-related sentence. This is a fun way for students to get the repetition they need with writing practice with an engaging, summer-themed activity.
There are many ways that you can make math practice fun in a get-ready-for-first-grade summer packet.
This dot-to-dot activity helps students practice number identification and counting with a summer twist. After completing the picture by connecting all of the numbers in order, students can color the picture they’ve created.
Another fun addition to math practice is a riddle! In this activity, students will review their knowledge of teen numbers by writing the correct number next to each set of ten frames. Each number corresponds to a letter, which students will write on the correct line at the bottom of the page. This will form a word that answers a summer-themed riddle. Students love these fun activities and it’s an easy way to get them excited about math practice.
Another activity that’s always a hit with students is coloring a mystery picture. While you can use these activities for literacy as well, this particular math mystery picture gives students the chance to practice number identification and counting. Students will start by filling out the code for the coloring. Each sequence is missing a number that students can fill in. The number that they write corresponds to numbers on the mystery picture. They will find and color the corresponding squares with the colors indicated by the code. Students love to watch the summer picture come to life as they fill in each square!
Finally, it’s helpful to incorporate as much fine motor practice into your summer packet as possible. Students have worked hard to learn how to hold a pencil, use scissors, and add an appropriate amount of glue to their work.
A summer review packet can include these types of activities so students can continue to strengthen their fine motor skills. Their first grade teachers will be grateful! Most of the activities I shared in this post have a fine motor component, like this phonemic awareness puzzle where students cut and paste the pieces to create a picture.
I hope that this post has given you some inspiration for the types of activities that you can include in a getting-ready-for-first grade summer packet. All of the activities I shared in this post (and many more!) are included in one print-and-go resource. It’s designed to be easy to be as low-prep as possible, since I know how busy the end of the school year can be!
This summer review packet includes over 50 activities that families can use over the summer to help their kindergarteners prepare for first grade. This resource also comes with a six-week planning guide that families can use to space out the activities three days a week over the summer.
If you’d like to take a closer look at everything included with this resource, you can find it in the A Spoonful of Learning shop or in my TPT store.
Be sure to save this post so you can come back to it later! Just add the pin below to your favorite board of summer activities. You’ll be able to quickly find these summer packet ideas when you’re looking for ways to help your kindergarteners get ready for first grade.
