10 Activities and Games to help your Preschooler learn
Toddlers and Preschoolers reach big intellectual and cognitive developmental milestones . Activities that involve sense, touch, play,listen, observe can help a great deal with intellectual develepment in preschoolers and toddlers.
Here are 10 activities which are not only fun but can help a great deal to teach your little kids learn and develop . They help in understanding and observation, vocabulary development and are great brain building exercises for tiny minds.
I love doing these with my daughter, and I hope you implement them too if you are not already
1. Read together
Read to your toddler or preschooler several times a day. Read story books, newspapers, word books.Discuss the illustrations in the books together. Ask your child to tell you what she sees. Discuss colors, letters.
2. Sensory bins
Sensory bins are probably the best activity for cognitive skill development.Textures, colors, patterns, counting etc can help develop great deal of fine motor skills and cognitive learning. To add to this , they are just true fun for kids, they just love it!
A quick google search will give you some amazing ideas for sensory bins. And Happy Hooligans gives you a huge number of sensory bin activities . We had fun doing the Alphabet bin in sand and Animal sensory bin.
3. Pretend Play
It might not sound very interesting for you to participate in pretend play activities with your kid all the time, but I swear by it. From giving her pulses and grains to play with, to pretend playing a doctor, I know the kid learns a great deal from pretend plays.
4. Magnets to learn words
Magnets are so much fun! And even more for kids who are starting to learn words. Passive learning is stress free and teach a great deal. We love using fridge magnets to learn words. Start with teaching your kid with his/her own name and see the joy they get out of it!
5. Flashcards for learning
I had a detailed post dedicated to learning with flashcards for toddlers and preschoolers. You could find a great deal of info on the post LEARNING WITH FLASHCARDS.
6.Cooking with kids
Cooking with your little preschooler is a wonderful experience.At this age, he’s so keen to learn and loves to be a good helper.Plus they like to be treated as a big girl or boy ,so get him involved with every part of the cooking session – choosing the dinner menu, getting out all the ingredients, preparing all the utensils – there’s really no job too small for a growing preschooler. Heres my post on what all you could cook and how to go about COOKING WITH YOUNG KIDS
7. Boardgames and cardgames
Kids UNO , snakes and ladders, and even a simple stacker game can teach math ,counting and numbers to your kid. Dont underestimate the power of playing while learning!
8. Introduce organization
The sooner the better! This also inculcates discipline. Everyday we sing the “cleanup song” . Ask the kid what each item belongs to as you go. This may slow down your household chores- but its a great learning tool and also inculcates the much needed discipline and independence in kids.
9. Label up!
Use labels on various households, from kitchen items to even lamps and tv, stick on labers and point it out to your kid, remembet to mention the letter it starts with. And encourage learning new words.
10. Grocery and mundane necessity shopping
Lug your preschooler along, help him get a card and ask him to pick up items for you at the department store. A great learning exercise and keeps your kid excited and full of joy!
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I agree with every thing you’ve mentioned!! Although the shopping one is a bit tricky
). My personal top pick would be baking together – weighing ingredients helps learn about measures and numbers, they also learn the meaning of words like sifting, whisking etc. and it brings a completely new charm to baked goods! My son now refuses shop-bakery cupcakes; he wants only the ones Mamma makes 
).
Fab recently posted..Recipe for the Week – Apple Pie (Baking Partner’s Challenge #6)
Great post, will be needing it it in a couple of months I guess.. Thanks for sharing…
Lovely post Poonam ! All the activities you suggested are awesome. I personally love to pretend play with my daughter because it gives me a chance to observe how developed her social skills are.
Swapna recently posted..Win Wooden Magnet Sets from The Pipal {Valentine Giveaway}
Such an extensive and amazing post Poonam. Have tried commenting earlier on your bookmarks post, but was unable to. If I use my URL, the post isn’t getting published.
My angel is 20 months old and we will love to introduce all these activities to her. She loves animal sounds and loves to sing and dance to her nursery rhymes. Me and my husband Vishal love to join her and that is such a beautiful family time.