Kids’ Activities

Wondering what you should be doing with your three, four, or five year old all day? It doesn’t have to be complicated! Here are the top 10 daily activities for preschoolers at home, written by a former preschool teacher and mom of two.

Look, every kid has a different hard age. Some may be peak difficult at 18 months. Others may experience the terrible twos, and many kids struggle with the terrible threes. But my kids? Well, the preschool years were actually when we struggled the most.

Ages three and four can be incredibly difficult for little kids (and their parents). They are learning more about their world every day, and are suddenly capable of so much more than they used to be. For some families this is a welcome change, and others struggle with their children’s new needs.

Part of the key to success when creating a daily schedule for preschoolers is finding that tricky balance between structured time and the space to explore, imagine, and create. You don’t want your preschooler’s life to be consumed by academics, but you also want them to be prepared for school once it begins. 

As a teacher, I’ve worked with students from age 2 to adults. I’ve seen kids that have had great success, and kids that have struggled. These early years give you the perfect chance to give your kids a rich, balanced day that provides with not only early academic skills, but the space to just be a little kid.

So if you’re hoping to improve upon your preschooler’s daily schedule, here are 10 daily activities for preschoolers  at home that will set them up for daily (and lifelong!) success.

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Need to keep your kids busy? Check out this water play idea using recycled materials, which is sure to make your water play for toddlers WAY more fun.  Teach recycling to preschoolers (and have lots of clean, wet fun in the process!) with this new, eco-friendly idea.

One of our favorite ways to keep our kids entertained is water play for toddlers and preschoolers. We can set up a water table, sprinkler, or even throw the kiddos in the bathtub and they will splash, scoop, and pour the day away.

But every once in a while, our water play ideas get “boring.” According to our ungrateful kids, anyways. We have to find ways to keep it fresh and interesting (bonus points if it doesn’t take longer to prep than it does for our kids to play with). 

We love to play with recyclable materials over here (like our bubble wrap prints and our Bunch o Balloons paintbrushes). We have a rule, actually- before we throw anything out, we ask ourselves “is there a way for the kids to make art with this?” and “Is there a way for our kids to play with this in a new way?”

Which is how we came up with this water play idea with recycled materials. After a quick clean up, our recyclable materials are ready to give new life to our water play (and are still fit for recycling preschool efforts afterwards).

Looking for new ways to engage your kids with preschool water play?

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Need an easy, no prep open ended art project for preschoolers or toddlers to help fill some time today? We’ve got creative process art using paint and cookie cutters to help your kids create an adorable stamp art project for kids.

If you’re anything like us, you’re finding yourself with a LOT of time to fill at home. And while kids’ craft projects are great (and have adorable outcomes), they just don’t take up much time. 

The problem with crafts is that we often end up spending WAY more time prepping and setting up the craft than we do actually doing the craft. And these days, that just isn’t gonna fly.

We’re turning more and more towards open ended art projects for our preschoolers, and our bigger kids too. Just about anything that can be used to make art in this house is finding its way into paint and then onto paper.

This stamp art project for kids requires very few special materials– just cookie cutters, paint, and paper. It’s easy to tailor for any theme you may have (well, provided you have a cookie cutter stash), and provides quick fun when you’re in a jam.

And read to the end for a fun way to use up all that beautiful process art your kids have created!

Okay, so let’s get to it. Here’s how to set up a stamping art project for kids at your house, too.

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Wondering what to do with your used Bunch O Balloons? Try this fun recycled materials art project for toddlers, using recycled Bunch O Balloons fast fillers. It’s an ecofriendly way to prolong the life of this summer staple (and work your kids’ creativity in the process!)

If you ask my kids, they’ll tell you all about how much they LOVE summer. There are block parties, and beach days, and adventures. There are museum visits and swim lessons and EPIC water balloon fights with the neighbors.

But what they always seem to forget is that summer is also filled with long, lazy days that sometimes feel wayyyy too long. This is particularly felt on days following particularly exciting events. 

Take one day last summer, for example. The day before had been EXTRA fun and full of impromptu play, filling up a Bunch O Balloons kit and hosting a big water balloon fight, and hopping in and out of the neighbor’s pool. So when I told them that today was going to be a more low-key, stay at home day, they did exactly what you might expect.

They lost their minds. 

So I did what any mother who values her sanity would do. I scrambled to find something- anything- to stop the kids’ incessant whining. The used Bunch O Balloons were the first things that caught my eye, and I decided to turn them into something new. 

And in the process, a new summertime art project for preschoolers was created.

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