Activities
The early years are the time to build a strong foundation in all developmental areas. Meeting specific milestones in all five domains of development and learning helps preschoolers establish behaviors and skills that will make them successful.
The five domains of school readiness as follows:
- Language and literacy development
- Cognition and general knowledge (including early mathematics and early scientific development)
- Approaches toward learning
- Physical well-being and motor development
- Social and emotional development
These five domains are intended to be overlapping and connected indicators of a child’s ability to succeed in a school setting. They’re not intended to be chronological milestones, but rather skills that children develop simultaneously. The domains also serve as a way for early childhood education programs to guide their curriculum towards school readiness and age appropriate development.
1. STEM PLAY METHODOLOGIES
The STEM Play Methodology includes the idea of integrating science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
The inspiring spaces for young children to play and learn in classrooms are a crucial part of any comprehensive preschool curriculum. Many teachers think, featuring the Science, Technology, Engineering, Math activities in preschool for kids are an asset to any early childhood classroom.
Incorporating STEM projects in the early years exposes young children to a problem-solving approach to learning that align with their own curiosity and may spark in STEM learning in the future.
Science:
- Experimenting—Asking what happens if you mix red and blue paint
- Investigating—looking at the different textures you can make with crayons.
Technology:
- Creativity programs—Recording your ideas using different apps.
- Brainteaser programs—Developing your logical thinking and spatial perception by using apps such as Over Color, which challenges you to copy colorful patterns using geometric shapes
Engineering:
- Constructing—exploring how to construct a 3-D structure of a butterfly using recycled materials.
- Designing and building—figuring out how to make a boat out of water bottles.
The dramatic play is a favourite area in the preschool classroom. It is a place where children dramatize solutions through pretend play, where children gain understandings of how the world works and learn how to solve problems together.
Science:
- Noticing Detail—Observing and describing everyday objects to investigate properties of objects using all their senses.
- Comparison—Using certain science tools, such as magnifiers or balance scales.
Technology:
- Devices—Providing opportunities to use digital smart phones can inspire curiosity and wonder.
Engineering:
- Analyzing—Using simple machines, such as ice cream churns, pop corn maker, coffee maker machine videos to introduce how machines function.
Math:
- Counting—Counting out change in a restaurant.
- Learning one-to-one correspondence—Setting up a table in the housekeeping area with plates, forks, spoons, and so on for each place setting.
Children love to move, and music activities can guide them as they move and learn! By integrating music and movement, you can help enhance learning as children use more parts of the brain and develop more neural pathways.
Science:
- Comparing—Think about what sounds are the same and different.
Technology:
- Using devices—Capturing sound recordings.
Engineering:
- Constructing—Learning how different instruments are built to make sounds.
Math:
- Patterns—figuring out how to use tools to make different sounds.
2. NATURE LEARNING
Children are often intrigued by nature because of its mystifying qualities and the explorative aspect it holds.
Outdoor exploration is a wonderful way for children to learn through play, following their own pace and sense of curiosity. Outdoor learning activities not only promote scientific inquiry, but also help children develop a sense of independence, caring, and self-motivation.
Primary Objective: Children will explore the characteristics of natural materials by creating mini gardens or mini forests.
Materials:
- Natural materials, such as sticks, pebbles, seeds, and leaves
- Play dough
- Trays or shoe-box lids
What You Can Do:
- Spread some Play dough on a tray or shoe-box lid or directly on a table top.
- Collect small pieces of natural materials, such as short sticks, pebbles, seeds, and leaves.
- Encourage the children to make a mini garden or mini forest by pushing the natural materials into the Play dough.
Additional Suggestions:
- Finger paint with mud.
- Use natural materials for “cooking.” Provide pots and pans, spoons, spatulas, and plates. Have soil, sand, water, and a variety of plant parts available.
Primary Objective: Children will develop an interest in the physical features of animals by creating a creature using natural materials.
Materials:
- Modeling clay or Play dough
- Natural materials, such as leaves, sticks, seed pods, grass, and pine-cones
- Photos of a variety of animals
What You Can Do:
- Call attention to some pictures of animals, and have the children describe some of the physical features.
- Tell the children that they will be creating a creature of their own. Explain that they can create any kind of creature they want, but it should include some things that real animals have such as ears, legs, antennae, a tail, or wings.
- Take the children outside and have them collect some natural materials such as leaves, sticks, seed pods, grass, and pine-cones, and so on. Tell the children they will be using these materials to create their creatures.
- Give each child a small amount of modeling clay. Tell them to use the clay to hold the natural materials together as they create their creatures.
- When they are finished with their creations, have them introduce their creatures to a friend. In doing so, have them describe some of its physical features and explain how it moves and where it lives.
Primary Objective: Children will participate in a philosophical discussion about the things that are real but can’t be seen.
Materials:
- Windy day
- Rhyme related with wind
What You Can Do:
- Take the children outdoors on a windy day. Have them look around and list some of the things they see, such as trees, cars, grass, clouds, leaves, and so on.
- Encourage further discussion by asking the children to describe what they notice about some of the things they listed. Focus on things that are moved by the wind. “What do you notice about the trees? About the branches? About the leaves?”
- Continue the discussion by asking questions about what it would feel like to be the leaves or the trees.
- Invite the children to move like leaves or branches on a windy day. Encourage them to use their arms and legs, their hands and feet, and their entire bodies to show what it’s like to be blown about by the wind.
- Have the children sit or lie down on the ground with their eyes closed. Tell them to think about the wind. After a few minutes, invite the children to share their ideas about the wind and how it feels.
- Share the windy poem. Read or recite the poem a second time and then ask, “Who has seen the wind?” By now, some children may be ready to say, “not me and not you.” If not, read the poem again and note what it says about not being able to see the wind.
- Ask, “If we can’t see the wind, how do we know it’s there?”
- Ask for other examples of things that are real but can’t be seen, such as the chime of a bell, the air in a balloon, or the way we feel when we’re hungry.
Primary Objective: Children will practice animal poses and make animal movements.
What You Can Do:
- Ask the children if they’ve ever seen a cat arch its back. Invite a volunteer to demonstrate what this looks like. Explain that cats sometimes arch their backs to stretch after taking a nap and that sometimes they arch their backs when they feel threatened.
- Have the children pretend to be cats waking up from naps. Have them arch their backs and stretch.
- Invite the children to suggest other animals they could imitate with body motions. Give them time to demonstrate what each would look like.
Primary Objective: Children will become more familiar with the beauty and characteristics of natural materials by using them to spell their names.
Materials:
- Natural materials, such as leaves, flowers, and pebbles
What You Can Do:
- Gather some leaves, flowers, pebbles, and other small natural materials.
- Have the children spell their names by shaping these natural materials into letters. This might be done on a clear piece of ground, on a tabletop, or on a large sheet of paper or cardboard.
Additional Suggestions:
- Have children use a stick to write their name in mud or wet sand.
3. ART AND CRAFT ACTIVITIES
The art and craft activities provide young children a place to experiment with art and craft materials investigate ideas and work with various user friendly chemical free tools, processes, and media.
Help your child celebrate dad, grandpa, or any other elders in their life with this simple, yet fun activity that they are sure to love.
Use pencils and paint to decorate this keepsake card.
Materials:
- 8½” x 11” sheet of card stock
- Shallow plastic containers
- Unsharpened pencils with erasers
- Photo (at least 3½“ x 5” in size)
- Tape
- Pen
- Paint – various colors
Before Beginning
- Prepare the frame cards by folding the card stock in half to create 8½” x 5½” cards. Cut a 3½” x 3½” square or circle in the center of the front of the card.
- Select your favorite photo with your dad, grandpa or father figure to use!
Instructions
- Place a sponge in each shallow container, and pour in a small amount of paint. Place one pencil, eraser side down in each container.
- Use the eraser ends of the pencils dipped in paint to print dots on the front and back of the card stock.
- After the paint dries, tape the photo on the inside of the card, positioning the picture so that it shows through the frame in the front of the card.
- Write a special message for the intended recipient on the card.
Helpful Hints
- If card stock is not readily available, use construction paper or poster board instead.
- Washable inkpads make a wonderful, mess-free substitute for the paint in this activity.
Children learn and understand the world around them through their senses. Why is sensory learning so important? Sensory explorations build young children’s cognitive, emotional, and physical skills. They also support curiosity and a love of learning. Take your child on a sensory exploration! All you need is heavy poster board, scissors, sandpaper, fabric with varying textures, glue and markers. From there, you’re off to create your own sensory cards!
What You’ll Need:
- A large garden pot (6’x6’)
- A variety of plants
- Card stock
- Clear contact paper
- Garden stakes
- A shovel or trowel
What to Do:
Prepare your garden area by finding a sunny spot and digging it up to loosen the soil. Plant some of the following plants in groups to represent the five senses:
- Touch: Lamb’s Ear (silky), Silver sage (woolly), and Teasel (spiny)
- Taste: Tulasi, Peas, Swiss chard and mint are all safe plants for children to taste
- Smell: Honeysuckle, lavender, roses, peppermint, thyme, chamomile(white flower with yellow bud) and lemon balm.
- Sight: Giant sunflowers, poppies, zinnias marigolds, purple sage, and verbena
- Sound: Rattlesnake grass, bamboo, and love-in-a-mist.
Families are probably used to their children creating beautiful crafts, cards and gifts in the classroom and bringing them home to celebrate holidays throughout the year.
For this Mother’s Day, you can set your child up to make fun and creative gifts to celebrate mom—at home. You just need some craft supplies—whatever you can find around the house should do the trick!
And, the best part? These fun activities will celebrate mom and will teach your child how to express himself using the arts, how to connect with someone (mom!), and how to express feelings toward another (again, mom!).
Easiest-Ever Photo Frame
Materials:
- clear contact paper
- card stock or
- lightweight cardboard
- glue stick
- photo of child
- tissue paper scraps,
- colored cellophane,
- stickers
- magnetic tape
Before Beginning:
Cut the card stock to the desired size and shape. It should be larger than the photograph with plenty of room for the photo and a border of collage material.
Make Your Great Gift:
- Glue the photo to the center of the card stock.
- Arrange and glue flat collage materials, such as tissue paper scraps, colored cellophane pieces, and stickers, on the surface of the card stock around the photo.
- Cover both sides with clear contact paper, and firmly press it down on the photo and collage materials.
- Trim the contact paper to the edges of the card stock. Press to seal.
- Place a piece of magnetic tape on the back of the frame.
Seasonal Suggestion
The card stock can be cut into a holiday shape, such as a heart shape and flower for Mother’s Day. Heart-shaped stickers can be one of the collage materials. For autumn, cut the card stock into a leaf shape, and add leaf-shaped foil confetti.
4. Life Skill Activities
Day to day activities like folding cloths bedtime routine, hygiene maintenance, sorting things and more routine children learn with us. Plan a list of regular chores for every member of the family. Help your child understand that his chores aren’t just work, but they’re his opportunity to give back to the family.
Below are some ideas that can give your child a specific task to focus on, that will also help him understand his greater contribution to the family.
- Water the plants.
- Scrub the sink.
- Feed the pets.
- Make the sandwiches.
- Set the table.
- Wash the dishes.
- Put laundry in the laundry room.
- Sweep the floor.
- Vacuum.
For this first activity, you can use glitter to demonstrate how easily germs are spread. The goal is to emphasize the importance of washing your hands often to prevent people from passing germs to each other.
What You Need:
- Glitter
- Hand sanitizer
- Sink or large bucket
- Soap
- Water
- Paper towels
What to Do:
- Squeeze 1-2 drops of hand sanitizer in one of their hands.
- Holding their hands over a sink or large bucket, pour a small amount of glitter into the hand with the sanitizer.
- Have them rub their hands together. What happens to the glitter?
- Then they will shake someone else’s hand (without glitter). What happens to that person’s hand and the glitter?
- Once the glitter (“germs”) has spread to the other person’s hand, have the pair wash their hands with soap and water.
Do you want to see soap’s germ-fighting power in action? This activity will demonstrate how soap is a miracle fighter against germs and why children must wash their hands with soap to avoid getting sick and sharing germs.
What You Need:
- Hand soap
- Black pepper
- Bowl
- Water
- Paper towels
What to Do:
- Fill the bowl with water.
- Sprinkle a moderate amount of black pepper into the bowl of water.
- Have the child dip one finger into the water. What happens?
- Ask them to wipe off their finger with a paper towel and cover the same finger with soap.
- Have them stick their finger back into the water filled with black pepper. What happens? Similar to germs, the black pepper is repelled by the soap and instantly scatters in the water.
Your home can become a germ factory with children touching various surfaces, sharing, and touching others. By learning proper hand washing techniques, children can help prevent the spread of germs. This experiment is a great way to teach proper hand washing, and it’s an activity child will never forget!
What You Need:
- Glow-Germ Gel Lotion (or any substitute)
- Ultra-violet (UV) light
- Hand soap
- Water
- Paper towels
What to Do:
- Squeeze a bit of lotion into their hands. (Don’t let them know what type of lotion it is or why you’re giving it to them)
- After they’ve played for 30 minutes, turn off the lights and power on the UV light. What do you see? Their hands will glow, but every object they’ve touched will also glow under the light. This helps demonstrate how easily germs are spread.
- To get rid of the lotion on their hands, have them wash their hands with soap and water.
- Once finished, power on the UV light again to see how well they washed off the lotion. This is the perfect opportunity to demonstrate when and how to wash your hands to prevent germs from spreading.
5. PHYSICAL WELL-BEING AND MOTOR DEVELOPMENT
Preschoolers are constantly using their bodies to play and learn, whether you encourage activity or not. You can help them stay active as they grow by providing instruction in physical skills, motivating them to develop strength and fluid movements, and challenging them to improve their skill levels.
Not every child will become an athlete, but all children use motor skills to move around their environment, interact with others, play games, and learn. You can help preschoolers understand the best ways to do the following movements:
- Skip, gallop, and run
- Balance
- Jump and land
- Kick accurately
- Throw and catch a ball
- Strike large balls with their hands
- Hit small balls with paddles, sticks, and bats
- Jump rope
- Ride a bike
Wellbeing is a popular term nowadays but what does it mean and how can we ensure our children have it? Our physical, mental, emotional and social health is all equally important and all contribute to our wellbeing. As parents, educators and childcare workers, it is important that we foster this in our children from an early age.
Through being good role models for our children and developing positive thinking and behaviour patterns in them we can help improve our children’s wellbeing, as well as teach them lifelong skills to maintain this into their adult life.
Here are five practices that you can adopt to improve children’s wellbeing:
Exercise is essential for everyone, especially children. There are a lot of benefits gained from exercising, including that it fosters a positive mood and releases the stress of the day. After a day of thinking, children need to be outside in the fresh air either playing sport or simply playing.
There is so much technology available to children nowadays but it is important to limit the time children spend having screen time. It is easy to use technology as a babysitting device but children should be restricted to a maximum of 1 hour per day, which includes television, computers, iPods etc. Setting clear and consistent guidelines from an early age makes it much easier to reinforce these limits. Most technology has timers so it easy for children to know when their time is up!
Developing positive relationships with others is very important for children’s wellbeing. The benefits from time spent with friends and family is that they learn to share, compromise and listen, as well as develop conflict resolution skills. Fostering these relationships as a child will also help them maintain relationships in their adult life.
Sleep is an important element in maintaining good mental and physical wellbeing. Ensuring your child gets enough sleep each night is one of the most important practices you can develop as a parent. It is never too late to establish a night time routine. This may include a bath, reading a story or listening to quiet music. Make sure the technology gets turned off one or two hours before bedtime to allow your child’s brain to unwind and relax.
Being resilient is one of the most important qualities to develop in children. The ability to learn from mistakes and accept feedback, be persistent and not give up easily will help maintain a positive wellbeing in children. Through modelling these qualities, yourself, parents and educators can help children bounce back and move past mistakes and problems. Letting go is one of the best ways to maintain a healthy wellbeing.
Through play, young children learn to communicate, interact, and expand their cognitive thinking horizons. And, when combined with physical exercise, play is a great way to teach young children to nurture their bodies while having fun.
As children grow, they develop and refine motor skills they will use throughout life to be physically active and remain healthy. Parents, caregivers and educators play an important role in encouraging young children to be active.
What constitutes physical activity? Many health and fitness organizations categorize it as any body movement that results in energy expenditure above resting. So, any movement a child does other than sitting or lying down can be considered physical activity—playing tag, nature walks and scavenger hunts, hide and seek, and yoga.
Just like learning to write, read, or understand numbers, practicing motor skills is essential to learning about the world. Learn how you can make play meaningful, educational and active for your child.
Motor skills are something most of us do without even thinking about them. Motor skills are divided into gross and fine.
Gross motor skills include standing, walking, going up and down stairs, running, swimming, and other activities that use the large muscles of the arms, legs, and torso. We develop these mostly during childhood through play and physical activity.
Fine motor skills, on the other hand, involve the muscles of the fingers, hands, and wrists, and, to a lesser extent, toes, feet, and ankles. Coordination of hand, eye, and brain makes gaining these skills a little more complex than, for example, learning to crawl. Development of these skills is more ongoing, often throughout our whole lives.
Gaining these skills is more than a matter of chronological age or reaching a certain developmental stage. The individual skill must be learned, including the physical movements involved.
Examples of some activities of daily life that need fine motor skills and what they involve
- Clothing fastenings – buttons that are supposed to go into buttonholes or loops, zippers, snaps, ties, collar stays or button-down collars, and shoelaces
- Using tableware – a knife, fork, or spoon, both for personal use and the utensils used with serving dishes
- Opening and closing food containers – screw tops, carton spouts, plastic leftover containers, and boxes
- Twisting doorknobs – also locks, slide chains, and keys
- Personal care – shaving, brushing teeth, doing hair, applying makeup (especially eyeliner), putting on post-back earrings, inserting contact lenses, bathing, showering, and using the toilet
- Handwriting – holding a pen or pencil, printing vs. cursive writing, size of individual letters, consistent size of letters, and writing in straight lines
- Needlework – threading a needle, making the correct size and consistent stitches, casting on/off knitting, maintaining proper thread/yarn tension
- Video gaming – thumbing the joystick, pressing keys in rapid succession, and watching the screen and operating the controller at the same time
- Operating other electronic equipment – using a keyboard, a telephone or alarm system touchpad
- Musical instruments – coordinating both hands to play the instrument, putting fingers in the right places on strings, over holes, or on keys
Children show fine motor coordination and the skills that go with them as they grow older and develop.
6. SCIENCE ACTIVITIES
Fun science activities for toddlers, infants and preschoolers help boost your child’s motor skills and cognitive development through hands-on exploration. Our award-winning, open-ended science resources include activities that empower children to develop skills that can help lead to adulthood success.
Gardening is a great way to help young learners explore the great outdoors while creating something beautiful and unique.
Exercise is essential for everyone, especially children. There are a lot of benefits gained from exercising, including that it fosters a positive mood and releases the stress of the day. After a day of thinking, children need to be outside in the fresh air either playing sport or simply playing.
This tiny garden fits inside a container! It’s perfect for when it’s still too chilly to start planting outside.
What you’ll need:
- A clear glass or plastic container with a wide opening (i.e. fishbowl, large jar)
- A few small plants
- Colorful aquarium rocks or small gravel
- Newspaper or an old plastic tablecloth
- A plastic measuring cup or other cup (for scooping the dirt)
- Potting soil
What to Do:
- Spread old newspaper or an old plastic tablecloth over your work area
- Set out the container. Your child should fill it about ¼ full with rocks and gravel
- Using the cup, scoop potting soil into the container, filling it to the halfway mark
- Demonstrate how to remove the plants from their plastic nursery pots
- Let your child make holes in the dirt and plant the little plants in the container. Press the dirt firmly around the roots and add a little more dirt if needed to keep them in place
- Water the terrarium
- For clean-up, bundle the excess potting soil in the old newspaper or tablecloth and take it outside
- Place the indoor mini-garden near a sunny window (but not in direct sun) and water it about twice a week. Do not overwater!
All sorts of science experiments exist for children to participate in, and they love all of them science experiments they do have the chance to participate in! Their naturally curious minds keep them engaged during experiments, making it easy to introduce them to scientific concepts. Children are sure to love this activity, and children are sure to love the rest of the activities the book holds!
Balloon Blow-up
Topic
Combining certain substances can cause changes that can be observed. Sometimes these changes are reversible, and sometimes they are not.
Objective
Children will participate in measuring and mixing substances and observing the changes that happen.
Creativity Skills
- Exploration
- Documentation
- Communication/collaboration
- Opportunities for unique problem solving
- Balloon (1 per trial)
- Small bottle (cleaned 16-ounce soda bottle)
- Small funnel (if you don’t have one, you can make one out of heavy paper for this experiment)
- Baking soda (2 tablespoons per trial)
- Vinegar (4 ounces per trial) Dropper/pipettes (optional)
- Paint (optional)
- Ask the students if they’ve ever blown up a balloon or seen someone blow up a balloon. Ask them what makes the balloon expand. Let them know that today they will help blow up a balloon but they won’t be blowing air from their mouths into the balloon. They will be mixing vinegar and baking soda to see if they can blow up the balloon.
- Ask them to think about what will happen when baking soda and vinegar come in contact that may help inflate the balloon.
- Using the funnel, add the baking soda to each balloon (two people may be needed for this: one person to hold the balloon open and the other person to put the baking soda inside of the balloon.
- Pour the vinegar into the bottle using the funnel.
- Carefully fit the balloon over the bottle opening, taking care not to drop the baking soda into the vinegar yet.
- Once the balloon is fit tightly on the nozzle, hold up the balloon and allow the baking soda to fall into the vinegar.
- Observe the chemical reaction and effect on the balloon.
- Ask the children to think about what is produced that is blowing up the balloon. Introduce them to the term gas, and repeat the experiment to reinforce their ideas and observations. A great follow-up discussion question is to invite them to think about why the balloon eventually stops blowing up. Draw their attention to the liquid at the bottom—do they still see fizzing, or has that stopped?
The human body is a wonderful and mysterious thing! As they grow, children often notice how the different parts of their bodies help them with different movements, but they don’t always know the name of each body part that helps them run, throw, play, and learn.
The following activity allows educators to teach student’s science, literacy, and movement all in one lesson plan!
Look around your kitchen. Did you ever realize it’s a sensory playground for the developing brain? Whether it’s measuring ingredients while baking, noticing the changing temperatures of food while cooking, creating food structures, or exploring the different colors, textures and smells of different foods, many rich learning opportunities exist in the kitchen.
Who knew you could teach engineering basics with food, right in your kitchen! Try this activity that helps young children develop their art, science, engineering, and fine motor skills.
But first, head to the kitchen and grab these simple supplies:
- Toothpicks
- Peas (or beans or chickpeas, as pictured—whatever you have onhand!)
- Paper plates
- And we can try this activity