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One of my favorite ways to get students excited about learning is by using thematic units! A unit study can be a great addition to your lesson plan, but it can be hard to narrow down all of the possibilities! In this post, I’m sharing an entire year of kindergarten thematic units by month to help you streamline your lesson planning!
There are many reasons why thematic units are such a helpful addition to your classroom lesson planning.
Students need plenty of repetition in order to master new skills in the curriculum. A thematic unit can bring some of that repetition to your classroom in an engaging way! The themed learning activities really grab students’ attention!
Thematic units can help you streamline your lesson planning! It can feel so daunting to plan every week from square one, not knowing where to begin. You might spend more time spinning your wheels than actually planning! This is when a thematic unit can come to the rescue. When you know what unit study you want to include in a given week, you have a built-in framework for your lesson planning.
A thematic unit can expose your students to a wider variety of new vocabulary. Since thematic units are often seasonal, this new vocabulary can be put to use right away in their everyday lives. This makes it more likely for those new words to stick!
Celebrating a holiday in your classroom doesn’t have to sideline learning! You can use thematic units to bring some seasonal fun to your lesson plans without changing up your daily routine. You’re able to keep learning on track while helping your students channel some of their excitement toward upcoming holidays.
Are you interested in bringing the benefits of thematic units to your classroom this year? I am going to share fun units that you can use in your classroom during each month of the school year.
If you’re interested in using thematic units in your classroom, keep scrolling for some inspiration! You’ll find 23 kindergarten thematic units by month so you can easily plan out a year of engaging activities.
Each unit listed below links to a blog post that gives you a closer look at all of the activities in that unit.
Get your year started on the right foot with these fun activities for fall:
1. Apple
2. Scarecrow
Continue the fall fun as your students get ready for Halloween with these October thematic units:
3. Bats
4. Spiders
5. Pumpkins
Help your students practice holiday vocabulary and learn more about the first Thanksgiving with these thematic units:
6. Turkeys
7. Thanksgiving
Create a winter wonderland in your classroom as your students anticipate the holiday break:
10. Christmas
Use these wintery unit study ideas to help your students get back into the swing of things after winter break:
11. Winter
12. The Mitten
13. Snowman
14. Penguin
These thematic units are a great way to help students celebrate February holidays:
15. Valentine’s Day
16. President’s Day
17. American Symbols
As the weather warms up, these thematic units will keep your students engaged in learning:
18. Spring
Continue the spring fun with these themed unit studies:
20. Easter
21. Insects
Thematic units are a great way to end the school year! These are always a hit with students:
22. Ocean
23. Farm
Each thematic unit that I shared above comes with a variety of activities that your students will love! Inside each resource you’ll find the following:
The guide includes a suggested sequence for the one- or two-week unit study. In addition to the unit outline, you’ll find book suggestions for any pictures books needed throughout the unit.
Each unit has a wide variety of engaging activities for math, reading, and writing. These seasonal activities follow the typical learning sequence of the kindergarten curriculum, with options to modify or extend based on student needs.
Each thematic unit has everything you need to complete fun themed crafts with your class! You’ll find templates and step-by-step instructions with pictures to help you create these crafts. The best part is that these crafts also incorporate an additional learning activity such as writing, phonics, or math!
Keep your students engaged in learning with fun games! These themed activities are perfect for morning work time, centers, or small group practice. The unit plan includes the game board, pieces, and instructions to help you use these games in your classroom.
Since unit plans use the same vocabulary over several days, you can use anchor charts for students to reference this information throughout the unit. There are also printables that you can use to create pocket chart graphs and other whole-group activities.
You can finish off your thematic unit with a themed snack! This is a fun way to help students celebrate everything they have learned. In many cases, these treats also incorporate an additional academic concept or skill. For example, students practice patterning as they create the feathers for their turkey treats.
To save you time and money, I have put together all of the seasonal thematic units listed above into one easy-to-download resource. This bundle of thematic units for kindergarten will help you plan an entire year of engaging activities for your classroom, one month at a time! If you’d like to take a closer look at everything included in this bundle, you can find it in the A Spoonful of Learning shop or on TPT.
If you want to find these thematic units later, be sure to save this post! Just add the pin below to your favorite teaching board on Pinterest.
These alphabet books will have students dive deep into learning about each letter of the alphabet while eager to see what activity they get to complete next!
