The Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) project is a small aperture, wide-angle search for planetary transits of solar-type stars. In this paper, we present the results of a commissioning campaign with the KELT telescope to observe the open cluster Praesepe for 34 nights in early 2005. Light curves were obtained for 69337 stars, out of which we identify 58 long-period variables and 152 periodic variables. Sixteen of these are previously known as variable, yielding 194 newly discovered variable stars for which we provide properties and light curves. We also searched for planetary-like transits, finding four transit candidates. Follow-up observations indicate that two of the candidates are astrophysical false positives, with two candidates remaining as potential planetary transits.