Preschool at Home: Engaging Activities for Little Learners
ages 3-6 or so
When my kids were little, we were very active. We were much more likely to be found jumping and feeling, searching and exploring than sitting quietly doing worksheets. I tried to bring in a wide variety of activities to keep the looking forward to “doing school!”
Theme Tables: We often did themed weeks… which helped me rotate in games, books, puzzles, toys, pattern blocks and inspired me to find some creative, fun activities! I’d often make new felt board pieces for them so they could tell their own stories.
- Here was our Princess Themed Week (My son had fun building the castle that you see in the back in the picture on the right!) We snuck in some sight-word practice (with a princess theme!).
- Preschool Bugs Themed Activities
- Ocean Creatures Theme
- Eric Carle Books – Theme & Crafts
- Farms
- and so many others… fire fighter, bears, monsters & dragons, numbers, fire fighters,
Preschool activities that include math, science, letter activities, and pre-reading skills can (and should!!) be fun and exciting to a young child! Here’s an activity from when we were learning about tsunamis (and natural disasters!) LD (about 5 years old or so) made his own and was “wowed” by the pictures!
This is a long list of our posts with activities you can do with your 2-5 year olds! We have made a lot of printables over the years, many of them are free. 🙂 Hope you find some useful ideas here! Have fun!! ~Liesl
- A Huge List of things to do with Your Preschooler (Free Printable)
This is a huge, long list of more than 100 different activities that you can do with your 2-5 year olds. I originally compiled this list when ED was three or so. I compiled this list when I was struggling to balance the needs of my preschooler with my older two school-age kids. Ultimately I came up with a three-page list of things to do with my preschooler.
Click here to save this on Pinterest:
You often see kids making letters with play dough… we did that with bread dough and then ate it! (This was part of our B day all about Jack & the Beanstalk, beans and more!) We “transformed the room” for our fairy tale unit with a giant beanstalk and the kids made their own craft of Jack climbing up to the giant’s castle! Fun! Here was when we did the Emperor’s New Clothes. 🙂 We read stories from Treasury of Classic Children’s Stories for this unit. (affiliate link)
- 20+ Board Book Recommendations
- 15 Books your 4-7 Year old Shouldn’t Miss
- Preschool at Home: Alphabet Activities
Free Alphabet Packet
Here are some other blend materials I’ve made: L-blends such as BL, CL, FL, GL and PL
- S-Blend Activities and Games Packet (sc sk sl sm sn sp st and sw)
- Preschool at Home: A Few Math Ideas for the 2 1/2-3 year old crowd
- K-2 Math BUNDLE – This bundle has 20+pdfs (more than 300 pages of worksheets, games and activities. At just $5.50, this is one of the best values! Your older preschooler might be ready for some of these. Find out more here. I know my kids were doing basic addition around 4 years old.
- fact families,
- shapes,
- fractions,
- temperature,
- time/clocks,
- days of the week, months of the year
- Free Planets of the Solar System Pages (this includes some tracing pages and Montessori 3-part cards)
- World Animal Packet – When we learned about the 7 continents, we went on to talk about some of the animals from each of the continents. This packet contains Montessori 3-Part cards with animals from the 7 continents as well as a number activity pages for each continent. You can find out more about this 60+ page World Animal Packet here:
- Animal Packet (Ages 4-6) – You can get this in a bundle with the World Animal Packet above in Our Store
- You might check out our Cicada Packet here or at the Big Animal BUNDLE page
- We also studied Earthworms: Hands-On Invertebrate Fun! Part I – Earthworms and the earthworm life cycle
- And Planaria (a type of flatworm): Hands-On Invertebrate Fun! Part II – Planarian – which you can order to study at home. They are easy to care for and are fascinating to study because they regenerate.
- Winter Packet: The Winter Packet is now 100+ pages because it has been updated to include the Hibernation Unit. See more details here.
This is a fun, hands-on unit! Like many of our units, the Five Senses Unit will work with a range of ages if you have more than one child. 🙂
- Our 60+ Page Dinosaur Packet (which includes Montessori 3-Part Cards, Letter and Number activities, a Dinosaur Lapbook, board games, addition activities and much more!
- Homeschool Preschool Year in Review which was a recap of many of our preschool activities when ED was 4.
- Where I Live Activity Packet! My galaxy, solar system, planet, continent, country, state, town, and home!
Where I Live Booklet (with coloring/tracing): This is the U.S. version, but there are also versions for Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand:
- If your child knows their letter sounds, they may be ready to learn to read. Visit this post, Teach Your Child to Read, for fun ideas that help your child learn to read – phonics games, word matching and more.
Montessori Preschool Posts:
- The Prepared Environment – A post about Montessori philosophy
- Preschool Unit on Bugs
- Living – Non Living Sort
- Rainforest Plants (from around the world)
- Biomes Cards – These are included in our Biology Unit
Of course, you can also do various unit studies with your child. When the kids were little we did units on Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece and more — including lots of arts and crafts projects. We also did units on the 5 senses, natural disasters and more! I haven’t included those specific units in this list, but you can look at our CATEGORIES button if you are interested in doing a unit on a specific topic.
Be sure to visit us at our Homeschool Den Facebook Page!
Preschool Fall Theme:
- Free Fall Math Game Board – Use this game board for any type of math fact practice. Players move around the board until one person lands on the WIN space. My oldest used this to add positive and negative numbers… but you can use this for number recognition, easy addition, subtraction or multiplication problems.
Thanksgiving Preschool Printables (free)
See you again soon here or over at our Homeschool Den Facebook Page! Don’t forget to Subscribe to our Homeschool Den Newsletter. You might also want to check out some of our resources pages above (such as our Science, Language Arts, or History Units Resource Pages) which have links to dozens of posts. You might want to join our free Homeschool Den Chat Facebook group. Don’t forget to check out Our Store as well. 
~Liesl
Our packets are pdf downloads.
Again, if you are interested in joining our Homeschool Den Newsletter, feel free to subscribe here. The Welcome Series includes 5 packed emails… with tips on homeschooling, keeping motivated, finding various resources and freebies tucked away on the blog and more!
Plus, you’ll be the first to hear about new packets (generally offered at a discount when they are first released), seasonal resources and more!
It’s a great way to hear about our latest packets and to learn about many of the hundreds of printables & other materials we have tucked away on the blog!
Happy Homeschooling!
~Liesl
