Combine learning and play
Set kids up for success with preschool math activities, from tech toys or card games that specifically teach kids to identify numbers, to cognitive activities like role-playing store or restaurant and counting out and adding or subtracting items or money. Little ones love to touch and feel: preschool sensory activities like sand or sculpting play, slime play, or finger painting, are satisfying and fun. Creative projects like these are also terrific fine motor activities, as are coloring or drawing, and building with blocks or bricks. Play sets that require kids to dress dolls or move figures around a playhouse or other imaginative setting – down slides, up staircases, or through doors – are good fine motor activities, too. Exciting transportation activities for kids who love vehicles can be small-scale – like driving toy cars or trains around a play set indoors – or large-scale, like piloting a ride-on, tricycle, or scooter in a park or yard. Preschool outdoor activities present loads of fun learning opportunities: science activities like bug-hunting; winter snow play like fort building; and animal activities like role-playing as a zookeeper, farmer, or veterinarian. Kids who love animals may also enjoy dinosaur preschool activities, like playing with action figures based on real-life prehistoric creatures or even dinosaur characters from favorite shows or movies.
Get ready for kindergarten
Learning activities for curious preschoolers can be as targeted as kindergarten curriculum-based workbooks and flash cards, and as simple as taking a walk on a summer day and identifying animals, shapes, colours, letters, and numbers you see. Every season and holiday can present new opportunities for preschool learning activities: like calendars to count down to Christmas , Haunukkah, or Halloween; or hunts to find a certain number of hidden Easter eggs. Literacy activities like dedicated story times can be helped along with preschool alphabet puzzles that match shapes and letters or pair up pictures and simple words, or even floaty foam letters and numbers to play with in the tub. Number activities for preschoolers can be as specific as matching games or tech toys, and as organic as sorting snack foods or blocks into groups or counting spaces on a board game or hopscotch grid. Construction play with blocks and bricks is a perfect preschool STEM activity (that’s science, technology, engineering, and math). Active-play can also involve learning activities, whether or not there are actual rules to be taught, as with introducing sports like tee-ball, soccer, or hockey. Even kite flying, bubble-blowing or trampoline jumping can help develop gross motor skills, cognitive skills like cause and effect, and social skills like cooperation and turn-taking.
ginations and pose creative challenges!