Category: Ages 2-6: Preschool and Toddler Activities

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Toddler and Preschooler Activities — A Big Long List!

About six months ago I made a huge list of things to do with my preschooler. This weekend I’ve been going through that list again for my daughter and I thought I’d mention it again on the blog for those of you who might have missed it. Here are some of the kinds of activities we’ve done: Again, here is the printable list if you would like to download a...

Games: Pop-Arty Beads 2

Games: Pop-Arty Beads

I often get asked how I keep my 4-year old engaged while I’m working with my older kids.  Last year ED loved doing Perler Beads. She would spend 30-60 minutes at a time working on those.  This year we added in something new that has brought endless hours of sorting and creativity… Pop-Arty Beads. It is wonderful for small motor skills, sorting and just for fun in general!  The beads are...

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5 Senses: Matching Scents Activity

On Friday we revisited an activity that we’ve done a number of times before, making pairs of scents and trying to find the match. To set up for this activity, I taped a piece of paper with matching symbols on sets of 2 Q-tips. Then I dipped the Q-tips into various liquids (vinegar, vanilla, fish sauce, almond extract, and lemon juice).  You can also do this with a cotton ball...

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K4 Preschool Plans for the Fall

Last week we started back to school, but I thought I’d spend a few minutes sharing our overall goals this for this next semester. I’ll start off sharing our plans for ED’s preschool. Early next week I’ll share the plans for DD (age 6) and LD (almost 9). Math This year I decided to go with Right Start Math Level A for ED (age 4).  I did this curriculum with...

4th of July Craft 4

4th of July Stars

These stars are wonderful for decorating your garden for Independence Day! We took a heavy duty paper plate and cut out a star. Then you decorate the star with toothpicks. As you can see we broke the ends of lots of the toothpicks to get the lengths we wanted. After the glue dried, we painted the stars. We used spray paint (and you can tell I didn’t get the hang...

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Beginning Reader Worksheet Pack to Accompany the Bob Books

We are using the Bob Books to help ED learn to read. She is just learning to sound out CVC words. While my other two kids learned to read early (age 3) using the Bob Book series (and others), my third child has her own pace and style of learning.  She is excited about writing words, loves to color, and has amazing pencil skills.  I made these worksheets for her. These would never (never,...

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Preschool Theme Time: Bugs, Bugs, Bugs!

Last week I put together my huge list of activities to do with my preschooler. One thing I haven’t done in a long time is our “Theme Time” activities.  It is such an easy way to incorporate those games that get shoved to the back shelf.  Last week we did a lot of insect-themed activities.  Here are some of the things we did together: ED did lots of different crafts....

Interesting Statistics about Preschoolers and Literacy 0

Interesting Statistics about Preschoolers and Literacy

There are some really interesting statistics out there about educating preschoolers in America.  Did you know that enrollment for preschoolers has increased 679% between 1985 and 2008?  In 1985 0.2 million preschoolers were enrolled in school in the USA while in 2008 this had increased to 1.2 million! But in reality, still only a little over half of all 3-4 year olds are in school (52% in 2009) (Digest of Education Statistics,...

Preschool Math 0

Preschool Math

We incorporate a lot of Montessori math into our preschooling days.  There are lots of great websites, but Living Montessori Now is a wonderful place to start as Deb has compiled ideas from all around the web. I also play lots of board games that require counting, we jump and play and sing about numbers. Here are some of the math activities we did a couple of weeks ago. I had this...

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Preschool Board Games

Today I want to share a couple of amazing preschool board games that ED really loves! ED turned four a couple of weeks ago. I always ask the kids what kind of cake they want.  ED wanted a Beyblade cake (the spinning top that you see down to the right of the cake).  Funny, huh?! I’m no major cake maker but the kids love helping to make their own birthday...

Preschool Life 0

Preschool Life

I feel like I haven’t written a long post about ED’s preschool work in forever. That’s because she’s been such an integral part of all our latest activities. She did all the owl crafts in our forest unit, did the dissection of the owl pellet. She takes notes and writes out her letters when the kids are taking notes on their science activities. She gets her own lapbook pages and...

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PreK Dinosaurs Activities

Two weeks ago, I read The Magic Tree House: Dinosaurs Before Dark  (affiliate link) to ED.  This inspired a short themed unit on dinosaurs. Here are a few of the things we did, plus other dinosaur books and dinosaur puzzles that I don’t have pictured below. Last week we were lucky enough to top our theme-time unit off with a visit to the Gray Fossil Site in east Tennessee on our...

Forest Animal Sort Cards 5

Forest Animal Sort Cards

Forest Habitat Animal Sort – Vertebrates-Invertebrates ED’s next habitat study is on the forest. I made a set of cards for the kids to sort through. We’ll be sorting them by vertebrates-invertebrates  and also into the five animal kingdoms:  ( fish), amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Oh and by the way, I didn’t include any fish in this sort–I did include a photo of crayfish that LD found in the...

Learning Letters:  Clothes Peg Activity (preschool) 6

Learning Letters: Clothes Peg Activity (preschool)

Back a couple of years ago Honey over at Sunflower Schoolhouse made a collection of clothes peg activities. I brought out this alphabet matching activity for ED last week. The plain letter matching was a bit too easy for her. Here’s the link to the Clothes Peg Alphabet, volume 1 (lower case letters)  (the link no longer works, sorry!) that you see in this first picture. Honey also made other...