Role-Playing Activities for Kindergarten

Write specific social situations that kindergarteners face on cards. This might include sharing materials, taking care of supplies, playground etiquette and bullying situations. Read one card at a time to the class. Choose a group of students to act out the situation. After the kids act out the social situations, start a class conversation on what worked and what didn't. The discussion afterward helps the kids process what they saw so they can make better decisions in actual social situations. Many kindergarteners get an introduction to social skills in preschool, but some students still need to learn how to work well with their classmates. Role-playing puts the kindergarteners in common social situations so they get practice handling them.

Teach personal safety to your kindergarten students by role-playing how to handle specific situations. Focus on a specific personal safety topic, such as fire safety, walking near a busy road or dealing with unknown adults. Have the students take turns acting out the situations. Have them practice stop, drop and roll or crawling under smoke for fire safety. Draw a road and sidewalk on the playground with sidewalk chalk to practice road safety. Role-playing gives the kindergarteners a chance to try out the personal safety skills in a simulated situation. Repeated practice helps reinforce those safety skills. Let all of the kindergarteners practice during a whole group role-playing activity. Give them more practice during learning center or small group learning time by setting up a smaller safety role-playing area. The kids can practice those same safety skills on their own.

Use role-playing in kindergarten to review the topics you teach in class. Instead of keeping the kindergarteners in their seats for math, science or social studies, include role-play activities. Have the kids act like animals you study in science class. Act out the different roles in a community as part of your social studies unit. These easy activities get the kids up and moving while they learn. The traditional school format keeps students in their seats, but movement may help students learn better. Incorporate movement into learning when possible to complement the natural need for kids to move.

Have the kindergarteners act out stories from class. Assign each child a character and have them role-play the main actions in the story. Kindergarten is the primary time for building literacy skills. Role-playing can help your kindergarteners improve their understanding of the stories they read. You can also use role-playing to help the kids better understand vocabulary words you teach in kindergarten. Have them act out a situation that uses a vocabulary word. For example, if explore is one of the vocabulary words, they might act out a trip to the rain forest.