Kindergarten Bucket List

Want to make the most of your kid’s year in Kindergarten? Don’t worry, I have a Kindergarten bucket list for you!

Kindergarten is an experience. Sure, it’s about school, but your kid’s Kindergarten year doesn’t just exist in the classroom! Kindergarten is a transition year. A transition to school, yes, but also a transition to being a “big kid.” Your kid will need to learn a new environment, new rules, and new people, and so will you.

Any time I am faced with a special situation, I like to make a bucket list so I know I’m living in it and not just letting the situation slip by. Kindergarten is definitely a special situation, so this calls for a bucket list – a Kindergarten bucket list, to be precise.

I am not a Kindergarten teacher, nor am I homeschooling my Kindergartener, so I don’t have much say over what happens in my kid’s Kindergarten classroom. But I can make the Kindergarten year fun and memorable outside of the classroom! If you want to make the most of your kid’s Kindergarten year too, come embark on this Kindergarten bucket list with me!

First day photo

Of course, the first thing on my Kindergarten bucket list is a first day of school photo. You were probably going to do this already, so you’re ahead of the game. Congratulations!

How you take this picture is totally up to you. I bought a pretty simple chalkboard sign that doesn’t include too much personally identifying information for my son to hold. But, you don’t need a fancy sign. You can do what one of my friends has done since her kids started school and make a handwritten sign on a plain piece of white printer paper. Or you can do what my mom did and just take a picture without any props. However you choose to memorialize this momentous occasion, just make sure you snap a picture.

Reading help

One of the hallmarks of Kindergarten is reading. My son is getting close to being able to read, but he’s not quite there yet. To reinforce what I know they will be focusing on in the classroom in Kindergarten, I’m adding reading help to our Kindergarten bucket list.

Reading help at home can take a lot of different forms, though. Here are a few things you can do to tick this item off your Kindergarten bucket list.

Homemade alphabet

Your Kindergartener is getting super familiar with the alphabet this year. He’s continuing to sing his ABCs, he’s writing his letters, he’s learning the sounds that the letters make, and he’s putting letters together to make words. To keep reminding him about these letters that are so important to Kindergarten, I’m planning to help him made a homemade alphabet to display in his room.

I don’t have a single artistic bone in my body, so we are keeping this super simple. We have tons of printer paper, so I plan to dedicate 26 sheets of it to this project. I’m just going to have my Kindergartener write one letter – both upper and lower case – on the bottom half of a piece of paper in the portrait orientation. Then, I’ll have him draw a picture of something that starts with that letter on the top half of the paper. We will affix the pieces of paper in alphabetical order to the wall with one of my favorite kid products, brightly colored masking tape. Voila, a homemade alphabet!

Sight word chart

If you think your kid has the letters down pat and would get frustrated making a homemade alphabet, you might opt instead for a sight word chart. This one can be easily made too. Grab a piece of poster board, a ruler, and a Sharpie. Write common sight words on the poster board so they are clearly legible (big enough to read, spaced apart). Then, let your Kindergartener decorate to his heart’s desire!

Library

Kindergarten is a great time to reevaluate your kid’s at-home library. Now, I’m not suggesting that you get rid of all of your favorite bedtime stories. Those are safe, don’t worry! I am suggesting that you add some easy reader books to your kid’s collection, though. Easy reader books are books mostly comprised of sight words and words that can be easily sounded out with the basic rules of phonics. Stuffing your kid’s bookshelves with a bunch of books that he can feel confident reading (with a little help from you) will only make him more excited to improve his reading skills!

Math help

Besides reading, the other main focus of Kindergarten is basic math. No one is expecting your kid to come out of Kindergarten with a grasp on long division, but number fluency and basic addition and subtraction are good to reinforce at home. Luckily, math is everywhere so giving your kid a leg up on the math front should be an easy item to check off your Kindergarten bucket list.

Games

My favorite way to sneak in math concepts at home with my Kindergartener is through games. Card games like Uno require counting of cards and number recognition. Dice games are a great way to work on addition. We really like Math Dice Jr. for this purpose.

Counting

Another fun and easy way to work on math at home is to have your Kindergartener count everything. We count strawberries, buttons, stones – if you can count it, we do!

Mental math

When my son was first introduced to the concept of addition and subtraction, he started asking mom and dad to do mental math at every opportunity. He would just randomly ask one of us what 11 + 99 was. After we had been answering him for a while, I started turning his questions back around on him. I eased him into mental math by sticking to single digit numbers so he could use his fingers, but now he’s pretty good with coming up with the correct answer for any mental math addition problem I throw at him. We are still working on subtraction, but he gets better every day. This is a great activity to try when you’re making dinner – it keeps them occupied and makes the time go by quickly!

Play date

Like every mom, I’m worried about my kid being able to make friends at school. My son has been at the same daycare with his cousin (who is two months younger than he is) for the last three years. He has done pretty much every extracurricular activity with his cousin too. They’re pretty attached at the hip. But, plot twist, they are going to different elementary schools. This means they’re not going to be able to rely on one another anymore and they’ll have to make friends. And boy am I nervous about this!

To facilitate my kid’s friend-making endeavors, I want to host a play date as part of our Kindergarten bucket list. I’m not entirely sure what this will look like at this point. It might be a get-together at our home, it might be a meet-up at a local park, or plans to do an activity together. Needless to say, I’ll keep you posted.

New sport

If your kid is athletic, even a little bit, add try a new sport to your Kindergarten bucket list. My kid is obsessed with all sports, so we are ticking this item off the bucket list early. I have signed my kid up to play rec soccer for the first time. Sure, he’s kicked a soccer ball around the yard and he’s even done a Soccer Shots program that introduces the concept of soccer, but he’s never actually played soccer. I’m hopeful that he’ll like it, but even if he doesn’t, I’m looking at it as a great opportunity to try something new and meet some new people.

This is true for my Kindergartener and me. I never really played soccer as a kid, so it’ll be a new sport for me too. And I’m really hoping we get similar luck with soccer that we got with tee ball in the Spring on the social front. My son really clicked with one of the boys on his tee ball team and we clicked with his parents too. I never say no to new friends for the whole family, so I’m really hoping we hit the jackpot again from soccer!

Decorate

One really fun (or slightly annoying) thing about Kindergarten is that they typically make a big deal about anything worth celebrating. Although my natural inclination is to be annoyed by this, I’ve decided to really lean into this year. I’m going to be excited about the theme days at school and every minor holiday that can possibly be celebrated. In fact, I’m even adding decorate for the holidays to our Kindergarten bucket list.

When I say decorate for the holidays, I don’t really mean Christmas. I always decorate for Christmas, so this wouldn’t be something new. What I’m aiming for is to decorate for the lesser holidays so our house has a festive feal to it all year round. I want the house to have all the pumpkins in October, all the hearts in February, and all the pastel colors in the Spring. I just want the house to feel fun and festive. But I do draw the line at over-the-top outdoor decorations. I just can’t with the inflatables and the 10-foot-tall skeletons.

Library

Were you a library kid growing up? I sure was. We loved to head to the library after school to pick out a stack of books and then read and read until we made our way through the stack. I really credit those routine library trips with my love of reading and writing as an adult, so I want to foster this same love in my kids by lots of library trips.

Of course, you can check off the library item on your Kindergarten bucket list by perusing the shelves and checking out books. That’s relatively easy. If your library has great programming like my local library, though, you can check it off in other, more exciting ways. My local library offers student volunteer-led after school programs, life sized games set up through the library, nature programs, and so much more. Your local public library is awesome, so take this as your nudge to use it!

Routine charts

Part of becoming a big kid in Kindergarten is learning to follow a routine. Their classroom life will definitely include a routine in Kindergarten, so I’m looking to reinforce the importance of routines at home this year too. To make sure we set up and follow routines at home, I’m adding routine charts to our Kindergarten bucket list.

As a classic Type A personality, I can easily take this too far, so I’m intentionally practicing restraint here. I’m not going to turn every minute of my Kindergartener’s day into a step in a routine, and I’m not suggesting you do that either. Kindergarteners need free time to explore and imagine and create, so don’t over-schedule them and quash this need. Instead, I’m picking one time of the day that could benefit from a solid routine and making a routine chart.

For us, that’s the morning. Mornings are just hard around my house. My husband starts work extremely early most days, so I’m the only adult at home to get the day started. I need to get two kids out of bed, pottied, fed, dressed, and out the door with everything they might need for the day by myself. Since my kids are no longer at the same school, this means that we need to get everyone up and out the door to drive my daughter to preschool early so that my son and I can make it back in time to catch the bus. We won’t have much wiggle room, so we need a good routine and everyone to stick to it. I’m putting a lot of faith in a routine chart to make this happen. Pray for us.

Lunch

For me, Kindergarten marks my entrée into the packed lunch scene. Guys, I’m scared. I grew up in the era of a brown bag stuffed with a PB&J, a bag of chips, and an apple.

Although I’m not throwing any shade on my mom for this lunch, packed lunch expectations are very different in 2025. There are entire Instagram accounts dedicated to inventive lunches to pack for your kids. I mean, the pressure is high.

Instead of becoming anxious about packing lunches, I’m choosing to embrace the opportunity to stretch my creative muscles and I’m adding new packed lunches to our Kindergarten bucket list. To help in this endeavor, I’m following those Instagram accounts – Feeding Littles, Yummy Toddler Food – there are many. I’ve also bought the Feeding Littles Lunches book. Get ready for really cool lunches, kid!

Kindergarten journal

The final item on my Kindergarten bucket list is going to take me the whole year to complete, but it’s going to be worth it. I really want to remember this important transition year in my son’s life, so I’m going to keep a Kindergarten journal for him. This journal will hold all of the great new things my son is learning, the things he tries, the friends he makes, and the memories I want to hold onto forever.

Capitalism is alive and well, so you know there are Kindergarten journals for sale on Amazon. I’m not choosing to go this route, though. I bought myself a simple spiral-bound notebook and I’m just going to fill it up. No fancy pens, no cute graphics, just my memories jotted down in an unassuming fashion. We will have it forever.

Kindergarten Bucket List