For this activity, all you need to do is go into your yard and collect items in nature such as some sticks, rocks, and leaves. These items can be used to create structures, masks, abstract art, or anything else that comes to mind. It also gives children the experience of working with three dimensional structures.

Materials:

• paint

• ice cube tray

• Popsicle sticks

• paper

• aluminum foil

Instructions:

1. fill ice cube trays half way with paint and half way with water, then mix.

2. Cover the tray with aluminum foil and stick the Popsicle sticks in each cube.

3. Once frozen, take them out of the tray and lay down the paper. (outside/on a tarp makes it less messy).

4. Demonstrate and let the children create!

Materials:

• water bottle/ jar/cylindrical container

• clear glue

• super glue

• glitter/decorative pieces to float in the water/food coloring

Instructions:

1. Fill the container up to about 80% with water

2. Add clear glue until the bottle is almost full

3. Add food coloring/glitter/ or any other visually stimulating materials you may have

4. Seal the container with super glue

This activity is a simple scientific investigation.

Materials: various small items, plastic tub or container, water

Collect small items from outdoors and indoors, such as a leaf, twig, pebble, coin, and so on. Fill a plastic container with water. One at a time, let your child examine each item and make a prediction: Will it sink, or will it float? Then test it out! If you like, you can keep a tally of which items sank and which floated. Discuss whether the items in each column have anything in common.

This activity builds your child’s prewriting skills.

Materials: salt, baking tray with lip, pictures of letters, paper, marker

Fill a baking tray with salt. (You can also use sugar or flour.) On different pieces of paper, draw letters and numbers. Show your child one of the pieces of paper. Then ask them to use a finger to draw the letter or number in the salt. You can also draw different types of lines—straight lines, wavy lines, loopy lines, and zigzags—and have your child drag their finger through the salt to make the same kind of line.

This activity builds vocabulary.

Materials: an item to hide

Remember this game? Hide an item (toy, hat, anything) in the room. Have your child wander around looking for the item. If they are moving away from the item, say they are getting colder . . . icy . . . freezing cold! If they are moving closer, say they are getting warmer, hot, boiling hot! Have fun building vocabulary by using different words for hot and cold.

Materials needed:

• a piece of paper

• scissors

• markers/crayons/pencils

Once the book is created, you and your children can create any story you'd like.

The idea here is to help kids put their imagination and complete the magazine image with the help of the sketch pens.

Things Needed

• Scissors

• Glue

• Card paper

• sketch pens (different colors)

• Magazine

How to do

• Choose your magazine, cut the pictures from the magazine (full picture, half picture).

• Glue the magazine images on the card paper and sketch the other part of the image with sketch pens.

• A branch found from a nature walk with your family

• Tempera paint (a variety of colors)

• Paint brushes

• Brown packing paper or various colors of construction paper

• Newspaper to protect the surface where you paint

• Twine or thread

• Scissors

• Hole punch

Cultivating a community of love, support, and trust in your family is important. Use this heartwarming activity to connect, have fun, and support your child’s social emotional health.

This is an easy and fun way to practice learning the letters in their names, or you can number the sections and have your preschooler put the numbers in order!

1. Gather your materials. You will need some construction paper, something to trace a circle with, crayons or markers, a pipe cleaner, tape , scissors and glue.

2. Start by tracing and cutting out circles in different color construction paper , you will need one for each letter, and one for the face.

3. Give your child a full size piece of construction paper and have them color it, they can draw a cool backyard scene or something more abstract!

4. If your child is able have them write the letters, even if they are messy and too small or to big- it’s more important that they do it if able and it not be perfect than us stepping in and doing it “right”.

5. If your child is not writing yet, while they color write out the letters, and do a face on the extra circle.

6. Spread some glue on the background paper.

7. Pop the letters on and bend the pipe cleaner into fun antennae

Binoculars

Materials Needed:

One paper towel tube per child. Paint. Yarn.

Stickers. Hole puncher.

Markers.

Cut each child's paper towel tube in half. The children decorate the tube (paint, markers, stickers, etc.).

Staple the tubes together. When dry, hole punch and add string for the children to hold them by their wrist (I don't recommend long enough strings to go around their necks, too much potential for injury.)

1. Materials 12 cup cake pans

2. Mark number with paper or baking cup

3. Rock, Lego, or small object counting the number displayed.

This counting activities will help child recognized, count the numbers out loud

If you don’t have craft sticks, use paper. It need to be usable, not fancy. Kids don’t care about fancy or “Pinterest Perfect.” They are happy that it’s done and they get to play. So, use what you have. Write things your kids can do on the paper/craft sticks, grab a die (dice) from a board game (or write the numbers on different pieces of papers and draw those too), and start playing!

To play: roll the die. That’s the number of times you do the activity on the craft stick/paper. Put the craft stick/activity back in the pile/cup and choose another one and roll the die again. Everyone can do the activity or you can take turns. Make it work for you!

I called this one a Superhero Workout because it’s for a boy who loves superheroes, but you can call it whatever you want. Notice my fancy packaging? Ziploc bag with directions on an index card. Nothing fancy or “Pinterest Perfect” here!

Painting letters with cotton swabs is a simple, fun way for preschool kids learning to write the alphabet There are many ways to learn letters

Straw painting can be done by splattering paint or blowing paint. Simply pick up some paint in a straw and splatter it onto the paper or put a drop of paint onto paper and blow through the straw to make the paint spread out.

Either way, the effect is quite cool.

Offer a magazine and a sheet of white paper and ask your child to make a colour collage with only one specific colour. They can cover their whole page by cutting out or tearing bits of paper that they find in the magazine.

Tearing and cutting are both important skills that some children struggle to master and therefore need lots of practice.

Choose a variety of leaves with different shapes from the park or garden. Paint the leaves with a large paintbrush and then print them onto a white paper.

It takes a lot of coordination to hold the leaves and carefully turn them over to print them. Again, let your child decide how many leaves to use, what colours to use, and how to print them.

Remember to chat about the pattern the veins of the leaves make.

Tape down a long line of painter’s tape. This is your “road”.

Add masking tape (or painter’s tape) for roads leading into each parking space.

Look at your Hot Wheels and see which colors you have.

Label your sentence strip OR Paper with the colors in your collection.

MODIFICATION: Write the color words using a colored marker. This will highlight which color needs to be parked so younger children can focus on sorting by color.

It’s a great way to get your toddler or preschooler more familiar with writing letters of the alphabet. It makes a great pre-writing activity.

Supplies

• Paint

• Paper

• Marker

On the paper write out different letters you want your child to work on. It’s better to just do a few letters. If they are interested then you can add more. Writing out too many letters might become overwhelming for you child.

https://happytoddlerplaytime.com/fingerprint-letters/

Sorting is systematic. It’s ordering. It’s comparing and contrasting. Sorting is matching, and it’s also the very most basic form of algebra.

Sorting is a skill preschoolers should work on a lot.

Some ways to sort are by color, size, similarities and differences.

Supplies

Bears, or buttons, or gummies, or flowers, or colored paper, or crayons, or markers, there are a variety of materials you can use for sorting.

Children can sort by color, by shapes, by similarities, by differences.

https://teachingmama.org/15-hands-on-math-activities-preschoolers/

Supplies

• 6 small transparent jars or cups

• Paper towels / kitchen roll

• Liquid watercolour / food colouring

• Water

STEP 1: Get your supplies ready.

STEP 2: Prepare the jars with coloured water. Add water to each jar and add the colors.

STEP 3: Place the jars in a circle.

STEP 4: Predict what will happen.

STEP 5: Add paper towels to each jar (bend the paper towels in half and place each half on each ja

STEP 6: Watch the coloured water walk along the paper towels to create a rainbow!

Supplies

* A cookie sheet

* Magnet alphabet letters (6 uppercase and 6 matching lowercase)

* Flour or sand or shredded paper

* A blush brush / paint brush

* A piece of paper and a marker

How to play:

Put the alphabet letters on the cookie sheet, on the piece of paper write the magnetic letters you will use.

Cover the letters with the flour or the sand (depends on what you will be using).

Use the brush to "discover" the letters and then your child will match the letter discovered with the letter on the paper.

This a fun way to introduce uppercase and lower case letter to your child.

https://www.howweelearn.com/simple-letter-matching-game/

Enjoy the activity!!!

Materials you will need

• Containers

• Water

• Butterknife

• Fork

• Toothbrush

• Cups

Alternative tools

• Toy hammer

• Toy chisel

https://www.education.sa.gov.au/parenting-and-child-care/parenting/learning-your-child-greatstart/play/big-block-ice

Kids need to play. They need art. They need math. They need all of the things that this activity offers them. Shape art is one perfect activity.

Materials

Kraft paper. It can be any time of paper and any size.

Tempera paint.

Paint brushes.

A marker.

THIS ACTIVITY IS SO EASY.

You will use some Kraft paper (or any kind of paper) and start drawing overlapping shapes all over it.

Place the paper on the wall or in a table.

With the tempera paints your child will start painting each shape.

Ask your child about the shapes.

Your child will love to dance this song.

Acting, singing and moving.

Learning the days of the week in a fun way.

Enjoy it!!

If you have any cardboard boxes laying around, they can be transformed into a house, a car, a ship, and much more. The children can also have fun decorating their creation once you build it together.

CREATE A FLORAL FACE DRAWING

This project is such a fun way to juxtapose art with nature. Draw a face in a piece of paper. Then head outside to gather flower, leaves, and other foliage. Get creative using the nature finds to bring your face to life. Make a full head of hair from leaves, create a floral crown, or a pretty necklace. The options are endless! We just laid our foliage on top of the faces and then used markers and colored pencils for additional details. You could also try gluing on the foliage for a more permanent picture.

Materials:

*1 Pinto bean. * 1 Ziploc bag. * 1 Paper towel. * Spray bottle for holding water

Instructions:

1. Dampen paper towel with spray bottle

2. Place wet paper towel in Ziploc Bag

3. Place bean on top of wet paper towel

4. Close Ziploc Bag

5. Place Ziploc Bag in a warm, sunny spot

6. Add water to paper towel when it dries out

7. Observe your plant growing in 3-5 days!

How it Works:

What’s going on? Germination! That means the plant is sprouting it’s roots. Awesome! Usually, you can’t see the roots sprout when the seed is under soil, but since there is no soil in this experiment you can see the whole process.

Extra Experiments:

1. Prepare two bean plants, but put one in a sunny area and one in a dark area. Observe their similarities and differences and chart them down.

2. Chart your bean plant’s growth each day using a ruler.

3. After 2 weeks, move your bean plant to some soil. Don’t forget to water it and give it some sun!

Materials

• Bubble Mix

• Bubble Wands

• Food Coloring

• Paper

Instructions

1. Pour 1 tablespoon of bubble mix into a small, shallow bowl.

2. Add a few drops of food coloring to the bubble mix and stir well

3. Place your bubble wand in the colored bubble mix, remove and blow bubbles towards your paper.

4. As the bubbles hit the paper and pop, they will leave interesting patterns. Repeat with other colors.

Tips

1. Caution: Food coloring will stain surfaces and clothing. Be sure to protect both!

2. This activity can be frustrating on a windy day - as the wind makes it hard to get the bubbles to hit the target paper!