25 Ideas, Resources, and Projects for Learning Together in April

Inside: Looking for ideas for your April kindergarten plans? Here are 25 ideas to help you create a more meaningful month with kids.

Our April Kindergarten Plans

In April, we are full blast into spring and enjoying the newness of the season and all that it brings. We are watching the colors change in the natural world and learning about the life cycle of plants and animals. It’s a joyous time of year and the kids are beginning to bloom just like everything else around them. They are much more independent than they were in the fall, and are beginning to read and write about their observations and experiences.

Listed below you’ll find a few of my favorite April experiences in kindergarten.

But first, here are a few special April dates that you might use as a springboard for some fun learning opportunities in your own classroom.

April 1: April Fools’ Day

April 2: Peanut Butter and Jelly Day

April 3: Find a Rainbow Day

April 8: Zoo Lovers Day

April 11: Pet Day

April 17: Easter

April 21: National Kindergarten Day

April 22: Earth Day

April 28: Superhero Day

April 29: Poem in Your Pocket Day

25 Ideas for Creating an Awesome April

Try something new this month by adding one or more of these ideas to your April kindergarten plans.

Bring some April foolishness into this month by adding a March 32nd to the calendar. As you do calendar time with your kiddos, see if there is anyone who isn’t fooled. Grab the free cards HERE!

Engage children with some How-To Writing on Peanut Butter and Jelly Day (4/2) as they write the steps to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Celebrate Superhero Day (4/28) by asking children to do some opinion writing about which superpower they would most like to have.

Go on a Rainbow Walk where children head outdoors to look for the colors of the rainbow in nature, record their observations, and use them as inspiration for creating color word poems.

Set up an invitation to paint a rainbow in your art center. Draw the arches on paper with a pencil to serve as a guide while they paint.

Do an Upcycle Project for Earth Day. Send kids home with a milk carton, paper tube, or egg carton and have them create something new from it. Create a museum in your classroom to display their work.

Go on an Earth Day Clean Up Walk. Sort some of the trash you find into categories to see if some of the things could be recycled or reused.

Take your kiddos on a virtual trip to Earth Academy, where they will unlock the top-secret training needed to become an Earth Hero, whose mission is to protect and defend our planet.

Read more about this and see the Earth Superhero Project in action in my classroom.

Begin using affirmations during morning meeting to encourage positive thinking with Affirmation Posters or Cards. Each card includes an animal or nature photograph, an affirmation, and a yoga pose.

Pass around an Earth ball as you sing We’ve Got the Whole World in My Hands and invite children to fill in the blanks with 2 things they love about the Earth. Transfer this activity to art and writing by using marble painting to create the Earth.

Celebrate Arbor Day with a Tree Walk where you stop at 4 trees along the way and observe and draw a different tree part at each one.

Challenge children to answer the question, “Are Trees Alive?” Bring in some tree parts and invite kids to look for evidence to back up their answer.

Take a Puddle Walk to observe and measure puddles and learn about the water cycle. After the walk, create a “puddle in a bag” by drawing clouds and a sun on a resealable bag and filling it with water.

Take a Cloud Walk and create stopping points for lying down and doing some cloud gazing. Read It Looked Like Spilt Milk and invite kids to paint cloud pictures when they return to the classroom.

Use Ready, Set, Research to guide you through the research process as you study chickens. Children can then write informational books to teach others about a chicken ‘s body features, life cycle, diet, and habitat.

Send each child home with a “Mystery Egg,” to fill with a small surprise. Exchange the eggs at school and do some Mystery Egg STEM Investigations with the eggs to build curiosity before the surprise is revealed.

Invite children to paint rocks to look like Easter eggs and hide them for others to find around your school or community.

Celebrate Spring and/or Easter with a Bunny Brunch where kids build and then eat a bunny breakfast.

Go on a Digital Egg Hunt where kids move on down the bunny trail collecting eggs and answering riddles shared by a “funny bunny.” As each riddle is answered, they are rewarded with fun Easter-themed activities.

Use the number rhyme Five Little Ducks to reinforce subtraction while also engaging kids in some great oral language and word play activities.

Engage children in some how-to writing as they write the procedural steps for How to Grow a Sunflower. Children can then follow these steps to plant their own sunflower seeds.

Plant a mystery seed and invite children to predict what it will grow into in their Mystery Seed Journal.

Nurture your children’s growing reading skills by launching an Elephant and Piggie book study. These books are highly engaging and filled with many high-frequency words so children are super motivated to pick them up and read them, providing authentic reading practice.

April is National Poetry Month. Launch a poetry writing unit where you provide both choice and voice for your young writers.

That’s it for April! It’s a colorful month and one that seems to really fly by. Hoping you found some ideas that will help you make the most out of this transformative time of year.