Teaching Kindergarteners STEM with a Magnet Board

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This post is sponsored by Lakeshore Learning – visit them for all your homeschooling resources! 

As much as I love teaching my older children as they grow, there is nothing I love more than teaching Kindergarten students. There is something magical about young kids just getting started on their learning adventures. They are eager, curious, excited… and too young to get seriously sassy.

Part of the reason that teaching kindergarten is so fun is that lessons at this age are simple. Recently, we were lucky enough to add a magnet board to our home, and I’ve found many different ways to teach STEM with this one resource.

Art & Geometry

Try providing your child with various materials to create pictures and designs on the board. We added small magnets to a pattern block set so Little Miss can create her own designs. We have been practicing naming 2D shapes while building with them.

Patterning and Counting

The same patterns blocks are wonderful for patterning practice. Start a pattern for your child, and then have them complete the sequence. You can start with simple A-B-A-B patterns, and then progress to more complicated patterns such as A-B-CC-A-B and so on.

Engineering

Our Lakeshore Learning Magnet Board arrived with this wonderful Engineer-a-Coaster set. We have cards with building prompts, and all the pieces we need to create fun roller coasters. With this particular set, Little Miss is able to experiment with different track lengths, angles and wheel sizes.

You can create all sorts of engineering challenges with a magnet board. Try your hand at Rube Goldberg machines, ball drops, Plinko boards and more!

Phonics and Reading

Add a set of magnetic letters, and you can now use your magnet board to teach language arts. Practice phonics, sound blends, reading skills, rhyming, spelling . . . just about anything! You can also create word cards with index cards and magnets – use these cards to write silly sentences, or as story starters!

Addition and Subtraction

We added magnets to popsicle sticks to make simple math manipulatives to practice counting, adding and subtracting. You could also create a ten frame, or add magnets to your math programs manipulatives.

Enter to win! 

Need some more hands-on fun in your homeschool? Lakeshore Learning is offering one lucky OPC reader their own Magnet Board and Engineer-a-Coaster set!

This board is sturdy, and two sided, so more than one child can play at once. It’s big enough that there is plenty of room for all of your lessons, and you can even use a dry erase marker on it to take lessons to the next level. You don’t want to miss this one!

Enter to win using the widget below!

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52 Comments

  1. What a great chance to win a homeschool necessity…. a learning necessity! I’d be happy to toss the old shower board we use. ? Thank you!

  2. The best thing to do with my kindergartener is to read side-by-side. Sharing wonder and stories is a treasure for both of us.

  3. My six year old would absolutely LOVE this. She is fascinated with magnets and building. This would be the perfect combo for her.

  4. My current kindergardener LOVES to draw. So it’s not something we do together, but the pages and pages of stories and pictures he brings me are absolutely priceless!

  5. My kindergartener learns so quickly and enthusiastically that our school time is a true joy. But honestly our favorite thing to do together is play our favorite video game.

  6. My kindergartner loves to have the complete and undivided attention of any adult present. This is a near impossibility with 3 kids, but it does seem to make her excited for her “lessons”! She does love to be read to (enough she will occasionally let her brotheres read to her, if she can’t get an adult to), and to do ANY sort of craft.

    This actually looks like a pretty awesome thing to do both lessons with, as well as to have her do some things independently when I am working with another child!

  7. One of the neatest things we do is match our little people zoo animals with their appropriate alphabet flashcards. Both my daughters love this- and it is one of the ways my oldest learned her initial phonics sounds.

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