12 Popular Preschool Activities to Do at Home

Learning should be fun, and at UDA Creative Arts Preschool in Utah, every activity we do is carefully thought out to teach important skills and concepts, while being fun and memorable.

With summer coming up, we thought it might be helpful to round up some of  our most popular preschool activities you can do at home. We love to make home life easier for our preschool families, so for each activity in this article, we made sure it meets certain metrics:

  • It must be fun
  • The activity must be easy
  • It must require few supplies and little prep
  • It must strengthen a skill or concept (while being fun!)

To that end, here are 12 popular preschool activities for you to do at home. Keep these ideas in your back pocket for spur-of-the moment mood-lifters, gatherings with friends, or a way to get through the lazy days of summer.

Remember, none of these activities need to be done to perfection. And if anyone gets frustrated, it’s always okay to stop!

Indoor Snowball Fight

When it’s too hot outside, retreat indoors and have a snowball fight. Use rolled-up socks and get as creative as you feel. Build forts, construct barriers, or simply use the couch as no-man’s land.

Skills this builds: This builds strength, coordination, creativity, and helps your child find joy in being active.

Travel by Plane or Train

Need to mop under the kitchen table? While you mop, set the chairs in two rows in the living room as if they are a plane or a train. Pull a suitcase out of storage, and let your child “travel” around the world.

Skills this builds: Pretend play builds imagination and creativity, increases vocabulary, enhances problem-solving skills, and so much more.

{Read: Pretend Away: Why Your Child Needs Pretend Play}

Treasure Hunt

Hide something fun (a treat, small toy, special note, or even your child’s favorite stuffed animal), and send your child on a treasure hunt to find it! Make this as simple or complex as you’d like: The simplest way is to write or draw simple clues like, “Go to the refrigerator.” Once your child is at the refrigerator, they’ll find another clue.

You can move up in difficulty by writing or drawing clues that make your child think, like “Go to the place where our food is kept cold.”

Want it to be more complex? Make it an alphabet hunt, where each clue takes your child to the next letter. Or draw a map for your child to read.

Skills this builds: Treasure hunts, even in their simplest form, help your child build critical thinking skills. They have to read or interpret pictures and figure out what to do with the information. Treasure hunts also build reading skills.

Make Your Own Pizza

English muffins are a great canvas for pizza items. Set out pizza ingredients and let your child build their own pizza.

Think of other food items your child can make on their own, or with minimal help: fruit salads (they can cut bananas, grapes, and strawberries), quesadillas, cold-cut sandwiches, etc.

Skills this builds: Making their own food helps children build independence. It also gives them confidence in making their own choices. Plus, it builds fine motor strength.

Try New Foods

Pick a country or region, and learn about the foods that are eaten there. Then, try them together.

Another way to have fun with trying new foods is to pick one type of food and try its different variations: apples are great for this. Family members can vote on their favorite, and you can add different dips to select another favorite.

Skills this builds: Your child learns how to try new things, while paying attention to multiple senses. They also learn about world cultures. And if you make a hypothesis about which will be the family’s favorite, you’re introducing the scientific method.

Car Wash

Indoors or outdoors, car washes are always fun. Fill a bucket with water, soap, and sponges, and let your child give a bath to the toy cars. Want to keep an eye on your child while you’re preparing dinner? Fill the kitchen sink!

Skills this builds: This activity gives your child a multi-sensory experience, which engages multiple parts of the brain. Your child also develops fine-motor skills while having fun.

Red Light, Green Light

Red light, green light is an easy and fun way to kill time. As with all of these activities, you can make the activity as easy or complex as you want. On the easy end of the spectrum, you can simply take turns being “It” and shouting out “Red light” or “Green light.” On the more complicated end, you can make red lights and green lights on papers or craft sticks.

You can change it up — and add some creative thinking and memory-building skills — by designating different colors to mean different things. For example, purple light could mean to hop or dance forward.

Skills this builds: Red light, green light teaches your child skills like following directions, self-regulation, and self management. It also helps your child be active.

Obstacle Course

Obstacle courses are fun ways to pass the time. Use what you have to create areas where your child can jump, spin, climb, balance, crawl, skip, and more.

Skills this builds: Your child gets to develop their gross motor skills, find joy in movement, and learn how to follow directions.

Teddy Bear Picnic

For lunchtime, head outside, under the kitchen table, or spread a blanket on the living room floor. Invite the household teddy bears to join a picnic in their honor.

You can do this popular preschool activity on the spur of the moment, or make this an elaborate, drawn-out celebration where your child creates invitations and party games for the teddy bear guests.

Skills this builds: Creativity! Your child will come up with imaginative scenarios at your teddy bear picnic. This is also a fun and nurturing connection for your family. And if your child turns this into a day-long event, complete with activities and party games, your child will develop writing skills, planning skills, and leadership skills.

Paper Plate Ice Skating

Keep a few paper plates handy for the inevitable choruses of “I’m bored.” Simply step on the paper plates and move around — now you’re “ice skating” in your kitchen and living room!

You can make this activity last longer with races, obstacle courses, and challenges. Write movement suggestions on cards that your child draws at random — backwards, spinning, to music, dancing, etc.

Skills this builds: This activity builds your child’s strength, dexterity,  coordination, and motor skills. If you use cards to suggest movements, your child can also improve reading skills.

Paint with Unique Brushes

Find unique tools for painting. Head to the dollar store, and select kitchen items like whisks, spatulas, and brushes. Use vegetables, like peppers and potatoes. Ask your child for suggestions too!

Skills this builds: Your child gets to experiment, which builds imagination, an understanding of the scientific process, creativity, and artistry. They also build fine motor skills.

Scissor Practice

Give your child some safety scissors and head outside to cut the grass. (Just keep an eye out, because your garden might look tempting too!)

Or draw fun lines on paper, and have your child try and cut on the lines.

Skills this builds: Cutting with scissors builds the small muscles in the hands, which are critical for writing, brushing teeth, buttoning, tying shoes, and more. Cutting with scissors also builds coordination.

Come see how we incorporate these, and other fun skill-building activities, into our curriculum at UDA Creative Arts Preschool in Draper, Utah. Give us a call at (801) 523-5930, or contact us online to schedule a tour.

Why Your Child Should Play at the Playground

benefits of playground play

You know your child enjoys the playground, and you feel great about the exercise it provides. But when you take your child to the playground, you’re also giving her many, many more benefits that extend further than you might expect.

Play Benefits Children

Before we even get into the specific benefits of playground play, remember that play, in and of itself, is actually a critical component of a child’s development. It’s not just a nice thing to do. Play is how children learn. It also helps them develop confidence, dexterity, strength, imagination, math skills, and so much more.

{Why Your Child Needs Play-Based Learning} 

Full-Body Exercise

Playgrounds give your child the chance to get their full body into their play, which means they get to exercise their body from head to toe. Monkey bars increase upper body strength, climbing the ladder to the slide strengthens the legs, swings give a chance for grip to be strengthened while legs get stronger, and more.

Unstructured Play Allows for Growth

At the playground, your child can jump, run, and skip from activity to activity as his mood pleases. Unstructured play puts your child in control, lets him discover what he loves, and encourages him to try new things. Interacting with other children is often simpler in an unstructured environment where children can move from trying one thing to another with ease.

Learn Social Rules

It doesn’t take long for kids to learn to wait their turn for the slide. Older kids even develop sophisticated rules for how long a person can stay on a piece of equipment before letting another child try. (Forming a line and counting to 100, etc.) Children have to learn how to cooperate.

On the playground, children are also more free to interact with children of different races, ages, and economic status. There isn’t any ranking on the playground, which is just how it should be.

Therapeutic Benefits

benefits of playground play

Sand and water features are known to help reduce anxiety, provide a way for positive self-expression, and to provide a way to calm down. When these elements are present in a playground, your child has the chance to unknowingly gain therapeutic and emotional benefits.

Resilience

Children learn resilience as they try different playground equipment. Maybe they can’t get very far on the monkey bars at first, but as they watch other children swing along, they’ll try to go farther. Maybe climbing the slide ladder seems scary, but they’ll give it a try for the fun payoff of sliding down.

Because the equipment is fun, and because other children are also navigating it, your child will have the chance — and the motivation — to try, try, and try again.

How a Swing Can Help in Whole Child Development

At UDA Creative Arts Preschool, we make intentional choices about the equipment we put in our outdoor play area. Everything we have chosen is there with a learning objective in mind — to help your child develop and grow mentally, physically, and emotionally.

For example, we chose our swing specifically because it is difficult to climb onto and hard to balance on. This helps the children to develop upper body strength.

And we don’t just let the tricky swing dangle out of reach, frustrating the children. We actually coach the children on how to use their arm muscles to pull their weight onto the swing. This helps them listen, follow directions, and receive a big, fun payoff.

The swing is also tipsy, which helps children develop their core strength and balance as they conquer it.

It’s a difficult piece of equipment for most children in the beginning, but every child eventually masters it, overcoming fear, frustration, and doubt.

They also count to take turns to use it, and cooperate by pushing each other (Bonus: They’re learning Newton’s laws of motion along the way!)

So the next time you head to the playground, pat yourself on the back. You’re giving your child a mental, emotional, and physical boost. Well done, moms and dads!

To learn more about UDA Creative Arts Preschool in Draper, Utah, contact us online or give us a call at (801) 523-5930

44 Things to Do with Your Kids This Summer

We’re halfway through summer, and keeping kiddos busy, enriched, and entertained is starting to feel like a chore. Some of us used up all of our creativity in the first two weeks of summer!

Not to fear. Browse this list, and find something new to do this week — and the next… and the next.

1. Go on an outdoor treasure hunt. Find something enticing to hide, stash it in a place you won’t forget, and draw a basic map to get to the treasure. Bonus: This helps with reading (even if you only use shapes in your map, you’re helping your child practice pre-reading skills), following directions, and patience!

2. Make ice cream sandwiches. Sure, you can buy ice cream sandwiches (and that’s a fun treat and activity too!), but making your own is a fun, novel activity.

Buy or make soft cookies. Scoop a spoonful of ice cream onto the flat side of one cookie (if you make your own cookies, make sure you wait for them to cool). Place the flat side of another cookie onto the ice cream, and press the sandwich together. Wrap it in tin foil and stash in the freezer. Now you have a delicious, cold treat to grab when it’s hot — and your child can take pride in having helped to make it!

3. Eat ice cream for dinner. Trust us — your kids will remember this experience forever. (Just don’t make it a habit!)

4. Make your own ice pops with juice or blended fruit.

5. Make a fort. Indoors or outdoors, a fort is a perfect place to spend the afternoon. Drape a sheet over a few chairs or over a low-hanging tree branch, and enjoy playing, reading, listening to music, and more inside!

6. Go to a farmers market. Give your child a few dollars to spend, and let her pick out a new or familiar fruit or veggie for dinner..

7. Pick berries. Picking your own berries is a great sensory experience for a preschooler. The colors, the tastes, the scents, the feel… it can be a delight to gather delicious berries on your own. It’s definitely different from selecting a basket at the grocery store. Go to PickYourOwn to find farms where you can pick fruit in your area.

8. Explore a nearby state or national park. Take advantage of the junior ranger program at national parks where children learn to explore, learn and protect.

9. Go for a hike. Find a new favorite trail for your family. Handy hint: Walking sticks help with preschooler endurance.

{How to Keep Your Preschooler Engaged on a Hike}

10. Find a new trail for bike rides. Do you have bike paths near your house or in your town? Challenge yourself to find a new one.

11. Go to the library. Participate in summer reading programs, get library events on your calendar, and make sure to let your child learn the joy of wandering through the library stacks to find a new book.

12. Go ice blocking. Sledding in the summer! Buy an ice block from your local grocery store, grab some winter gloves and a towel, and head to a nearby hill. Wear the gloves, place the towel on the ice block, and take a ride down the hill sitting on the ice block!

13. Put a twist on your sidewalk chalk art.
-Print out images of your child’s favorite cartoon character to copy.
-Create a family mural, in which each person contributes their own drawings.
-Make a path for your child to follow on a bike or by foot. Make zig zags, spirals, curves, and more. The only rule is your child has to stay on the path!

14. Go to a museum. Children’s museums are great, but try an art museum too!

{How to Take Your Preschooler to an Art Museum}

15. Explore new splash pads. You’ve probably been to most or all of the splash pads in your area, but what about the next town over? And the one beyond that?

16. Explore new parks. Create your own ranking system in your phone (number of slides, amount of shade, etc.) as a fun way to keep track of your favorite parks together.

17. Paint the fence with water. For a mess-free, but cooling, “paint” experience, give your child a few paintbrushes and a bucket of water. Let him “paint” the fence, front door, sidewalk, and house.

18. Paint rocks.  Leave your creations around the neighborhood for other kids to find.

19. Go for a day trip visit to a nearby city.

20. Vote for your favorite candy and/or ice cream. Like March Madness? Create your own brackets for the best candy and/or ice cream. After tasting and voting as a family or with friends, advance the winners until you have the final verdict.

21. Try a twist on s’mores. Use different candies and flavored marshmallows until you find your favorite combination.

22. Put up a tent in the backyard. Spend the day playing in the tent (find a shady spot to set it up!), or haul out your sleeping bags for a camping night in the backyard.

23. Go stargazing in the backyard.

24. Set up an obstacle course inside or outside.

25. Have a game night. Invite the neighbors over, or have a fun family game night. Snacks should be included, obviously.

26. Give your child a box. Or a bag. Seriously. See what she comes up with.

27. Make up stories.

28. Use craft sticks to beat boredom. Spend a few minutes writing acceptable quiet activities on craft sticks — reading, coloring, calling a grandparent, playing dress-up, stacking cups, etc. When your child inevitably says he’s bored, let him pick a craft stick and do the activity it instructs.

29. Read a chapter book together.

30. Have a picnic with themed food.

31. Go on a pajama walk. Surprise your kids at bedtime and announce it’s time for a pajama walk. Let them bring their stuffed animals as you walk around the neighborhood dressed and ready for bed.

32. Get a giant poster or large piece of butcher paper. Lay it on the floor, and let everyone color on it. Trace hands, feet, and bodies for extra fun.

33. Have a toy wash. Wash cars, Barbies, and other toys outside in buckets of water.

34. Play dress up.

35. Do yard work together. Buy kid-sized shovels and gloves to make your child feel included.

36. Deliver treats to firefighters. Have your child make a personalized thank-you card to include with the treats.

37. Make and deliver thank-you cards to your librarians.

38. Have a bike parade. Invite the neighborhood kids to decorate their bikes and join in a parade. Get the other parents to be parade spectators.

39. Visit a local farm.

40. Take a tour of a local factory.

41. Be a tourist in your town. Look at tourist websites for your town. Is there anything you haven’t done?

42. Cook together. Designate one night a week as your child’s night to cook. Let him plan the menu, and help him prepare the meal.

43. Go to an outdoor movie.  Many cities around the country show outdoor movies during the summer. If your preschooler can stay up late from time to time, this is a great, free, fun thing to do as a family   Here is a list of local outdoor movies for Utah in 2019.

44. Play balloon tennis. Grab some paper plates, glue, balloons, and giant craft sticks. Glue the sticks to the backs of paper plates, and hit a balloon back and forth.

Why Your Preschooler Desperately Needs Time Outdoors — and What to Do Once You’re There

preschool outdoor time

Kids these days seem to spend less time outdoors than we did when we were children. There are plenty of reasons for that: our lives are filled with more activities, we have access to more screens, backyard sizes and green spaces are shrinking, safe outdoor spaces are harder to come by…

Whatever the reason, though, it’s important we do what we can to give our children more time outdoors. The benefits of outdoor time for preschoolers are too good to pass up.

Outdoor Time for Preschoolers Increases Physical Health

As soon as the door is flung open to your backyard or the car door opened to a park or field, you’ll notice you preschooler burst into the outdoors with energy and enthusiasm. It’s almost impossible for a young child to not run, skip, hop, and jump when the space is available to do so.

And that’s such a good thing!

More time outdoors means your child will be moving more, building motor skills, and strengthening muscles and bones.

Exposure to Sunshine Improves Health

The sun is a funny thing. Too much of it can, of course, cause sunburns and serious health concerns. But not enough sun exposure can cause health problems as well. Sun exposure helps your body make vitamin D, which is crucial for bone development and healthy immune systems. It also helps regulate sleep cycles and improves mood. So lather up with sunscreen, wear a hat, and head outdoors.

Time Outdoors Builds Executive Function Skills

Playing outside, especially when the play is unstructured, gives your child the chance to hone her executive function skills. Executive function skills refer to the skills we all need to help us prioritize, multitask, plan, and troubleshoot. Outdoor time is full of opportunities to practice these skills. Figuring out how to climb the tree involves planning and troubleshooting. Tracking down worms  with a friend involves cooperation and multitasking.

Outdoor Time Increases Attention Spans

Multiple studies have found that exposure to nature increases attentiveness, even more so than doing a physical activity indoors. As your preschooler grows and is expected to pay more attention in school settings and other places, this becomes more and more important.

Children who spend more time playing outside are often more curious, self-directed, and confident. They have more opportunity to start and create tasks and activities on their own initiative, and are more likely to stick with a task for longer periods of time.

Ideas for Outdoor Activities for Your Preschooler

Don’t underestimate the power of free, unstructured play outside. You don’t have to do a whole lot of planning to create a good outdoor experience for your child. Just open the door, drive to the park, head to the mountains, or find a walking trail!

In addition to unstructured outdoor time, try these fun ideas for outdoor play.

Take a Nature Walk

At UDA Creative Arts Preschool, we like to take nature walks as the seasons change to look for signs of the new season. You can print out a nature walk journal page for extra fun.

Collect Nature Items

Let your child collect blossoms, blades of grass, rocks, and more (as long as it doesn’t disrupt the area). Keep the items in a spot in your backyard or by the window for a few days. Or incorporate them into an art project.

Add Objects

Get creative, and add objects to your outdoor environment. Bring wooden spoons, plastic bowls, and planks to the backyard. See what your child does with them.

Act Out a Story

Tell a story, or read a book outside, and then encourage your child to act out the parts.

Color with Sidewalk Chalk

It’s such an easy outdoor activity. Hand your child some chalk, and let them draw what they want. You can also make a path for their bike to follow, draw a hopscotch board so they can practice jumping, or create a series of steps for them to follow (Jump up and down 5 times on this spot, do 3 jumping jacks on this spot, etc.).

“Paint” the House or Fence

Give your child clean paintbrushes and a bucket of water. Let him “paint” a wall of your house, the fence, the sidewalk, the trampoline… whatever his heart desires!

Add Explorer Props

Gather a magnifying glass, a clipboard and pencil, a butterfly net, a measuring tape, jars, a backpack, and anything else you can think of to aid in a good exploration. Watch your child’s imagination run!

Eat Outside

Have a family meal outside, whether it’s in your backyard or at a nearby park.

Cut Grass

Really! This is a favorite activity of our students all year round. Let your child use a pair of safety scissors to cut the grass. It won’t do the job of a lawnmower, but it will strengthen your child’s hand muscles and improve fine motor skills.

Take Indoor Activities Outside

Basically, almost anything you can do inside can be done outside in some way. If your child wants to paint, why not do the art project outside? Want to read books? Throw a blanket on the grass and read away. Practicing letters? Do it on a clipboard or with sidewalk chalk.

You get the idea.

Now get outside!