Holiday Activities and Freebies!
The end of the school year is rapidly approaching and students are growing more and more excited for summer vacation! It can be a little challenging to keep students engaged and on track during the busy month of May. However, with the right activities, your May lesson plans can easily keep your students motivated to sharpen their skills in preparation for the long break. Keep reading for some of my go-to kindergarten activities for May!
All of these activities can bring a touch of seasonal fun to your classroom while also reviewing important skills. Students have been working hard all year long, so it’s important that they review what they’ve learned before leaving for summer break. This will help them avoid the summer slide and be more ready for first grade!
Your centers activities can mirror the beautiful May weather and bring some extra engagement to literacy and math practice. Students can review the skills they’ve been working on this year with fun summer-themed centers.
From building a sunshine using addition and subtraction to assembling an ice cream sundae with CVC word building, these themed activities are a great way to keep your centers routine up and running as long as possible!
Thematic units are also a fun addition to your May lesson plans. Themed learning activities can help keep students engaged when they are dreaming of long summer days spent in the sunshine! A farm unit is always a great choice for kindergarten in May.
In this unit, students can learn all about farmers and farm animals through nonfiction text. They can document what they’ve learned with writing craftivities.
Plus, you can incorporate the farm theme with other fun literacy and math activities. If this is a theme you’d like to use in your classroom, be sure to check out my blog post where I compile the activities I like to include in a farm thematic unit.
During the month of May, many of your students might be looking forward to a beach vacation during the upcoming summer break. An ocean-themed unit can help students channel some of that excited energy into worthwhile learning activities.
Students can learn all about ocean animals and then create writing crafts to share what they’ve learned. They can also use ocean-themed math and literacy activities to review important skills before the long summer break.
This review will give them a little boost as they get ready for first grade! If you’d like to take a closer look at the activities I include in an ocean unit, head over to my ocean unit blog post!
In May, you can also help your students recognize their mothers and other special women in their lives. This Mother’s Day card craft makes a special kindergarten keepsake that will be treasured for years to come.
This 3D card includes two different flower options as well as many different inserts that you can use for the inside. You can check out my post that shares all of the card insert ideas that you can add to this craft.
It can be helpful to have some no-prep digital learning activities on hand for your May lesson plans! We know how busy the end of the school year can be, especially with special guests, field trips, and assemblies. When the schedule is out of routine, it’s common to find yourself with odd pockets of extra time.
These digital activities are easy to use when you want your students to work on some meaningful skill practice but don’t have the time to make it to the copy machine. These digital centers include summer-themed learning activities that students love!
They will have fun coloring a butterfly as they practice counting and number identification. They can also practice reading CVC words with a fun picnic-themed activity. These seasonal digital activities are always hit with students! Check out my blog post where I share all of the different ways you can use digital activities in your lesson plans. In that post, you’ll also be able to find a bundle of digital centers that will last all year!
Depending on when your school year ends, May could be a good month to start an end-of-the-year countdown chain! You can add fun activities to small strips of paper, then staple them together to form a chain with one link for each day remaining in the school year. Each day, you can remove a link from the chain and do that activity with your students.
There are many fun end of the year activities you can add to your May lesson plans. This would be a great way to create special memories with your students before summer break begins. I have written a blog post with 11 end of the year activities for kindergarten if you’d like some other ideas! In that post, you’ll also find suggestions for activities to include on your countdown chain.
These summer-themed printable puzzles are a fun way for students to review literacy and math skills at the end of the year. These puzzles are assembled like a chain of dominoes. The problem on one end of the puzzle piece matches up with the answer on the edge of another puzzle piece. Students will work their way around the puzzle by matching the pieces one at a time.
If this looks like a fun activity that you’d like to add to your rotation this spring, you can grab four of these puzzles for free! Just fill out the form below and I’ll send it straight to your inbox.
Be sure to save this post so you can come back to it later! Just add the pin below to your favorite kindergarten board on Pinterest. You’ll be able to quickly find these activity ideas when you’re working on your May lesson plans.
