So you have your time with your kids and thought to yourself, what can I do to keep them busy, having fun, bonding with them and with all that, give them education tools and support their development process?
In this article we will learn about the importance and benefits of educational activities for preschoolers, and later on you will find a list of 10 fun learning activities for preschoolers suggested by Moms Arena.
What are the preschoolers developmental milestones?
Skills such as naming colors, showing affection, and hopping on one foot are called developmental milestones. Developmental milestones are things most children can do by a certain age. Children reach milestones in how they play, learn, speak, behave, and move (like crawling, walking, or jumping).
As children grow into early childhood, their world will begin to open up. They will become more independent and begin to focus more on adults and children outside of the family. They will want to explore and ask about the things around them even more. Their interactions with family and those around them will help to shape their personality and their own ways of thinking and moving. During this stage, children should be able to ride a tricycle, use safety scissors, notice a difference between girls and boys, help to dress and undress themselves, play with other children, recall part of a story, and sing a song.
Development activities for preschoolers
Children are born creative. If you doubt that even for a single second, give any three or four-year-old some paints and an empty room. You’d be surprised at all the modern art adorning the walls (and his body parts and clothes) in less than ten minutes.
However, these pint-sized artists need a little guidance to channel all that creativity into something productive, and that’s where we, as parents, step in.
Creative development in preschoolers is all about nurturing their overactive imagination and promoting skills important for their social, mental, and physical development.
Does that sound too complicated? Well, don’t worry! There is nothing remotely complicated about teaching creativity to kids because… (read the first line again).
Listed below are 10 super fun learning activities for preschoolers that are as easy as making your child eat choco-chip cookies and are sure to boost his creative genius too.
Fun Learning Activities For Preschoolers
If you are looking for fun learning activities for preschoolers, then look no further. These learning activities are super fun, and also have the benefit of teaching some great concepts to the little ones!
Here is a collection of 10 fun activities for young children that are easy to set up and promote a whole range of skills.
Combine play time and learning for a creative way to connect with your children! That combination makes for the best experience. These easy activities will inspire fun, creativity, and learning into your days with the kids.
#1 Reading Books
Children love books. They love stories filled with adventures and things that spark their imagination.
Exposing children to books and stories every single day is the number one way to encourage them to love reading and develop their literacy skills.
Start reading to your child when they’re just a baby, long before they can attach any meaning to the words or pictures. They will grow up knowing the importance of books and they will become an exciting part of their daily life.
If you only have time for one activity in your day, make sure you read your child a bedtime story. This is one of the most magical experiences for a parent and child to share together, and one of the most educational.
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#2 Playing with Construction Toys and Blocks
Construction is one of the best and fun learning activities for preschoolers that a child can do daily because it involves such a high level of thinking, creating and problem solving.
As children grow and progress through the stages of block play, their creations become more complex and technical.
Watching a child persevere while trying to figure out how to stop the bridge from collapsing or how to join two parts together is wonderful. You can see how hard they are thinking.
Construction also develops a child’s fine motor and gross motor skills simultaneously and it under the umbrella of STEM toys..
You can find a full article about construction toys and building blocks.
#3 Free Drawing
Not one day should go by in a preschooler’s life that they do not have a piece of paper and a wax crayon, pencil or paintbrush available.
Drawing is the earliest form of creative expression and is how your child “writes” when they are not yet able to, and also how they express themselves and how they view the world.
Free drawing is a wonderful emotional release for children and is an activity no child needs to be convinced to do at first.
Give toddlers a crayon and they will immediately start to make their mark.
Note that free drawing means blank paper and your child’s mind. Nothing else.
Coloring books can be fun occasionally but provide no real educational value. Fancy art packs can also be fun but shouldn’t replace real free drawing.
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#4 Cutting and Pasting
In older grades, many children still struggle to control scissors properly and cut on a line. They lack the ability to really control the paper and scissors, as well as to paste the papers.
Give children lots of scrap paper and safe, blunt-nosed scissors and let them cut freely. Everything they cut does not need to have lines on it.
Starting with basic cutting activities such as snipping blank coloured paper, magazine paper or newspapers will develop scissor control.
Later, introduce cutting along straight or wavy lines, or cutting out shapes and pictures.
Pasting also requires finger control as well as planning skills. Children learn to think about how they will space things on their page before beginning.
Planning skills are vital for the early grades and a lack of these skills is why many children need to attend occupational therapy sessions.
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#5 Playdough
Basically, there is no child who does not love playdough, plasticine, clay, slime or a similar substance. some children would spend all day playing with it if they could.
One of the best things about playdough is how positive the experience is. Not only is the substance therapeutic but it also provides a feeling of success as all children can create unique things with it.
There is no right or wrong way to mold it and children always feel proud of their creations.
There are so many benefits of playdough. It is excellent for finger strength, and if paired with cookie cutters, plastic knives and other tools, it can provide many opportunities to develop fine motor control.
Playdough also develops creativity, thinking skills, problem-solving and social skills, as many conversations have been witnessed around the playdough table.
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#6 Board Games
Board games are a great way to have fun while building important developmental skills at the same time, but it can be challenging to find games that preschoolers are able to play.
When the rules are too many or the play is too complex, young kids will get bored and discouraged.
#7 Swimming Lessons
By their 4th birthday, most children are ready for swim lessons. At this age, they usually can learn basic water survival skills such as floating, treading water and getting to an exit point. By age 5 or 6, most children in swim lessons can master the front crawl. If your child hasn’t already started in a learn-to-swim program, now is the time!
Your child safety is above all, don’t forget to purchase the required equipment for him to be safe.
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#8 Dress-Up and Role Play
Let the children loose with a bunch of dressing-up clothes and props such as toy doctor’s kits, and let their imaginations run wild. Soon you’ll discover the budding doctor, vet, nurse, astronaut, chef or thespian. Dressing-up helps children to begin to make sense of the adult world, roles, and interests, as well as boosting social interaction. Not least, dressing-up helps to reinforce the self-care aspects of self-dressing which is essential for primary school life.
#9 Music, Dancing, and Singing
Singing and music hugely help to develop language and form the basis of literacy skills, as well as basic mathematical concepts such as counting. Furthermore, they begin to develop rhythm, whilst also refining their listening skills. Dancing helps the child develop strength and flexibility, not to mention coordination.
#10 Running, Jumping, Climbing, Swinging
The benefits of physical activities are undoubtable. physicals activity is super important for you child development process.
Young children have a compulsion to move. Allowing them to do so, and providing safe and age-appropriate challenges, allows them to increase their confidence as well as develop their resilience through risk-taking. Of course, gross motor skills also receive a mighty boost.