Week 2 of Kindergarten Lesson Plans & Ideas

Finally, it’s week 2 of kindergarten, and you may be thinking about what activities to plan. Here are some Week 2 of Kindergarten Lesson Plans & Ideas to get you started. Let’s get down to business with some engaging and purposeful activities to begin a successful academic kindergarten school year.

It’s the second week of the new kindergarten year. You have started to match your students’ names with their faces and are getting to know their personalities. You have covered classroom procedures, rules, and routines, and experienced a typical kindergarten schedule for a week. The students have been taught and practiced using school supplies. Now, it’s time to get serious, right? Let’s bring out the school supplies and concentrate on developing social, emotional, and academic skills!

Week 2

In this second week, dive into making friends, discovering colors and shapes, and sorting. Begin by instructing on drawing with basic shapes, emphasizing the head line, belt line, and foot line. This week is also all about explicitly teaching letter names and sounds.

Making Friends

During the initial week of school, you kicked off by introducing yourself and having your students do the same, focusing on learning about their names through spelling, writing, and drawing exercises. Activities were conducted with the whole group, small groups, and partners. Now, it’s time to shift the focus towards fostering friendships.

While kindergarteners may have had some experience playing with others before school, they now need guidance on how to engage positively with their peers and develop the skills to make and maintain friendships.

I find using books to broach this subject very effective. Incorporating these books into the classroom library allows students to revisit them, reinforcing the concept of forming and sustaining friendships. (See Post– Author Julia Cook – Making Friends is an Art 2nd Edition” also includes interview with the author.)

Take a look at these recommended books that are essential additions to pre-k, kindergarten, and 1st-grade classroom libraries.

Colors and Shapes

The colors I usually begin with include: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, grey, black, white, and brown.

Here are some engaging activities that can help your kindergartners learn to identify, sort, and classify colors effectively:

Color Sorting Game: Provide students with a variety of objects or cards in different colors. Ask them to sort the objects/cards by color into designated bins or piles. This hands-on activity helps reinforce color recognition and sorting skills.
Color Scavenger Hunt: Create a list of different colors and send your little learners on a scavenger hunt to find objects matching each color on the list.
Color Collage Art: Provide your students with magazines, colored paper, and other art materials. Ask them to create a color collage using specific colors or color combinations.

By incorporating these interactive activities into your lessons, you can make learning about colors engaging and memorable for your little learners.

Incorporating poetry in the classroom is highly beneficial as it aids in teaching various standards and strengthening skills. During the initial 2-3 weeks of the school year, I find it helpful to utilize a color poem book to work on concepts of print, following instructions, and to emphasize colors. Typically, I present this poem on sentence strips and in a pocket chart for the class to read together as part of our morning routine. You can select either the version with displayed images on each page or the version where students will color, cut out, and match the image to the text.

There are numerous color matching options available. Here are some excellent choices for color matching at your computer station.

Colors can be discovered and taught through a sensory bin filled with rainbow rice. Your little learners will enjoy exploring and learning about colors at this vibrant station.

There are numerous fantastic resources available to assist you in teaching your students about colors. For additional inspiration, feel free to explore my Amazon Store.

Shapes

Understanding shapes is not only fundamental in kindergarten but can also be engaging and fascinating. Typically, this concept is introduced and practiced starting from the second week of kindergarten. Here are some of the preferred activities chosen by my students to enhance this academic skill. The activities not only focus on teaching shapes but also contribute to the development of fine motor skills.

Check out this post for more activities and ideas-Teaching Number & Shape Recognition.

Sorting Activities

Sorting plays a crucial role in laying the groundwork for little learners. It is essential in shaping their understanding of various subjects like reading, writing, and math. While sorting and recognizing patterns may not be a standard kindergarten requirement anymore, educators at the primary level acknowledge their value in fostering critical thinking and problem-solving abilities. Mastering pattern recognition paves the way for academic success and acts as a fundamental building block for grasping numerical concepts and literacy. Since patterns follow specific rules, sorting aids children in interacting with and comprehending these rules through hands-on experiences. This is vital for kindergarten students. Thus starting sorting activities during the 2nd week provides the foundation for future activities and concepts.

Beginning Letters and Sounds

In the second week, I start introducing letters to my students. Offering a variety of activities for introducing letters and sounds creates numerous hands-on learning opportunities for your kindergarten class. These activities can be done as a whole group, in small groups, at stations, or independently. They are not only beneficial at the start of the school year but can also be used throughout the year and adjusted to suit different learning levels, making them advantageous for teachers.