PP1 and PP2 at Home: 20 Activities That Build Real Competencies

Pre-primary worries parents more than it should. There is no exam, no report you can compare, and a great deal of what looks like play. Many families conclude that nothing much is happening and start pushing letters and numbers on paper, often with the best of intentions and a genuine fear of falling behind.

This article sets out what PP1 and PP2 are actually building, why the play is the curriculum rather than a break from it, and twenty specific activities you can run at home with things already in your house. Information current as of Term 3, 2026.

What pre-primary is for

PP1 and PP2 exist to build the foundations that formal learning will later stand on. Not the content of Grade 1, but the capacities that make Grade 1 possible: language, attention, fine motor control, number sense, and the social ability to function in a group.

Assessment reflects this. There is no written examination. Teachers use observation checklists, recording whether a child can do specific things, and portfolios collecting work over time. Progress is described rather than scored. If you have not seen your child's observation checklist, it is worth asking, because it is far more informative than anything else you will be given at this stage.

Why writing too early backfires

This is worth stating plainly because it runs against most parental instinct. A four year old asked to form letters neatly before their hand is ready will grip too hard, tire quickly, and learn that writing is unpleasant. Some develop an awkward grip that persists for years and slows every piece of written work they ever produce.

Writing requires the small muscles of the hand and the coordination between eye and hand. Those are built by squeezing, pinching, tearing, threading and pouring, not by tracing letters. A child who has spent a year doing those things will learn to form letters quickly when the time comes, because the underlying machinery is ready.

So when a well-meaning relative asks why your PP1 child cannot yet write their name, the honest answer is that they are busy building the hand that will write it. Grip strength first, letters second. The order is not negotiable and reversing it costs years.

Twenty activities using what you already have

Language, five activities

1. Narrate the cooking. Describe what you are doing while you do it, using proper words. "I am peeling the potatoes, now I am cutting them into cubes." Vocabulary at this age comes from hearing words used in context, not from lists.
2. Story in three parts. Ask your child to tell you something that happened today with a beginning, a middle and an end. Sequencing is a skill and it needs practice.
3. Sound hunt. "Tell me something in this room that starts with mmm." Phonological awareness, the ability to hear sounds inside words, is the strongest early predictor of reading success.
4. Rhyming games. Any rhyme in any language. Rhyme trains the ear to notice the parts of words.
5. Read aloud daily. Ten minutes, any language, any text. See our fifteen-minute reading routine for the full method.

Mathematics, five activities

6. Sort the bottle tops. By colour, then by size, then by whatever rule your child invents. Sorting is the beginning of classification and of algebra.
7. Lay the table. One plate per person, one cup per plate. One-to-one correspondence is the actual foundation of counting and it is invisible until it is missing.
8. Make a pattern. Stone, stick, stone, stick. Ask what comes next. Pattern recognition underpins a great deal of later mathematics.
9. Compare quantities. Two heaps of beans. Which has more? How do you know? The reasoning is the point, not the answer.
10. Count things that matter. Steps to the gate, mangoes in the bowl, people in the room. Counting attached to real objects means far more than counting in the air.

Hands and body, five activities

11. Threading. String through bottle tops with holes punched in them. Excellent for grip and concentration.
12. Tearing paper. Tear old newspaper into strips, then small pieces. Builds exactly the pincer grip writing needs.
13. Pouring. Water or sand between two containers. Control, judgement and a great deal of quiet satisfaction.
14. Clay or mud modelling. Squeezing and rolling builds hand strength faster than anything on paper.
15. Balance and hop. Along a line, on one leg, over obstacles. Gross motor control supports the fine motor control that comes later.

World and creativity, five activities

16. Grow something. Beans in a tin. Daily observation, the beginning of scientific attention.
17. Sort the washing. By owner, by colour, by type. Classification again, and genuinely useful.
18. Draw and explain. Ask them to tell you about the drawing rather than guessing what it is. The explanation is the language work.
19. Sing and clap the rhythm. Rhythm and syllables are closely related, and clapping the beats of a word is early phonological work.
20. Handwashing properly. A hygiene competency in the Environmental Activities strand, and a habit worth building young.

Where the time goes best

The bottom bar is the one to sit with. Knowing letter names, in isolation, predicts very little. It is visible, it is easy to test, and relatives ask about it, which is why it attracts effort out of all proportion to its value. Spoken vocabulary and the ability to hear sounds inside words matter far more, and both are built by conversation rather than by drilling.

Take Zawadi, a PP2 learner in Thika

Zawadi's father was worried. At five she could not write her name neatly, while a neighbour's child of the same age could. He bought writing books and set her to trace letters for thirty minutes each evening. Within a month she was crying at the sight of them.

Her teacher's observation checklist told a different story from the one he was reading. Zawadi's vocabulary was strong, she could sequence a story, she could hear the first sound in most words. What she could not do was hold a pencil comfortably, because her hand was not yet strong enough, and thirty minutes of tracing was making that worse rather than better.

They stopped the writing books entirely for two months and did threading, tearing and clay instead, ten minutes a day. When she came back to letters in the following term, she formed them without complaint, and her grip was relaxed rather than white-knuckled.

The neighbour's child, incidentally, was six months older. At that age six months is an enormous developmental difference, and comparing across it produced two months of unnecessary distress.

How to fit this into an ordinary day

None of the twenty activities needs a dedicated session. That is the point of them. A parent who tries to schedule pre-primary enrichment as a separate evening class will give up within a fortnight, and rightly so, because a four year old does not have a second working day in them.

Instead, attach the activities to things that already happen. Sorting happens while the washing is folded. Counting happens while the table is laid. Language happens while food is cooked. Pouring happens at bath time. The child is not doing extra work and neither are you; the ordinary activity is simply being narrated and slightly slowed down so that thinking can happen inside it.

The one thing worth protecting as its own slot is the daily read-aloud, because it will not happen by accident. Ten minutes, at a predictable time, ideally the same time each day so that it becomes automatic rather than a decision. Everything else can be woven in.

What the observation checklist actually says

Because there are no marks, the observation checklist is the real report, and most parents have never seen one. It is a list of specific, concrete things a child can or cannot yet do, ticked off over the term as the teacher watches.

Typical entries look like: holds a pencil with a comfortable grip, hops on one foot, counts objects to ten accurately, identifies the first sound in a spoken word, follows a two-step instruction, plays cooperatively with another child, tells a familiar story in the right order. Each is observable and none requires a test.

Ask to see it at the next parents' meeting, and ask a specific question rather than a general one. Not "how is she doing", which produces a reassuring answer that tells you nothing, but "which items on the checklist has she not met yet". That question produces a short list, and the short list is exactly what to work on at home. Teachers generally welcome it, because it is the conversation they would prefer to be having.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Formal writing before hand strength. Builds a poor grip and a dislike of writing that can last for years.
• Comparing children of different ages. Six months is a very large gap at four and five, and it closes.
• Buying materials. Bottle tops, string and sand do the job. Money is not the constraint at this stage.
• Treating play as a break from learning. At pre-primary the play is the method, not the reward.
• Correcting speech constantly. Model the correct form by repeating it back naturally rather than stopping the child to fix it.
• Long structured sessions. Five to ten minutes at a time is the attention span you are working with. Respect it.
• Ignoring the observation checklist. It is the most detailed information about your child you will get in these two years.

What to use at home

Very little needs buying. Where you want structure, our PP1 and PP2 resource hub holds activity plans and observation material aligned to the pre-primary designs, and the study packs gather them together. Our guide to portfolios and observation checklists explains how the assessment actually works and what to ask the teacher for.

When your child moves up, the Grade 1 parent guide covers what changes, and the Grade 1 hub has the materials for it. The official pre-primary designs are published free by the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development. For the endless questions a four year old asks that you cannot answer, Somo will explain simply.

Frequently asked questions

Are there exams in PP1 or PP2?

No. Assessment is by observation checklist and portfolio. There is no examination, no mark and no class position at pre-primary level.

Should my child be able to write their name by PP2?

Many can and many cannot, and both are within normal range. Hand strength and grip matter more at this stage than letter formation, and children who build those first learn to write quickly afterwards.

How much screen time is acceptable?

Less than most households manage. Screens are poor at building the two things that matter most here, back-and-forth conversation and physical manipulation, because both require a responsive partner or real objects.

My child will not sit still. Is that a problem?

Usually not at four or five. Attention builds gradually, and pre-primary activities are short for exactly that reason. Raise it if your child cannot attend to anything at all, including things they enjoy.

Which language should we use at home?

Whichever you speak most richly. Strong language in any language transfers. A wide vocabulary in Kikuyu or Luhya supports later English far better than a thin vocabulary in English does.

Is my child ready for Grade 1?

Look for: can hold a pencil comfortably, can hear the first sound in a word, can count objects accurately to ten, can follow a two-step instruction, can separate from you without distress. Those matter more than knowing the alphabet.

In summary

Pre-primary is not a waiting room before real school. It is where language, attention, hand control and number sense are built, and those are the things Grade 1 will assume. Talk with your child constantly, read to them daily, let them squeeze and tear and pour, and count things that actually exist in front of them.

Resist the pressure to start formal writing early, and resist comparison with children who may be half a year older. The twenty activities above cost nothing and do more than any workbook you could buy.