We are living in a strange time, right? The Coronavirus is shutting the country down and kids are out of school. While this is not the first pandemic to hit the world, this is the first time (that I know of) that all students are required to essentially become homeschooled. While my Kindergartener is LOVING this, my autistic 5 year old is preferring to do NOTHING throughout the day other than playing with trains and watching PBS Kids.
Although his Pre-K did not send home any kind of work for him to do, his learning can not just come to a stop. We have only a few vital months before he goes to the big boy world of Kindergarten.
Here are 10 hands-on learning activities for preschoolers that you can do at home!
#1 – Puzzles
You can read all about the benefits of your child becoming a whiz at puzzles here. It is truly amazing how much doing a puzzle can help your child with essential life skills. We did a 48 piece puzzle as our activity. Adjust for your learner’s puzzle skills! Here’s the puzzle we did today:
#2 – Practice emotions with Stone Stories!
This is super cute and easy. Working on identifying and describing emotions is important for all learners – but I can see my autistic little guy benefitting greatly from this. You can read about some of the struggles that children with ASD have here and why it is important for those children to learn about emotions and regulating them.
Read more about this great activity here!
#3 Hidden Alphabet Watercolor activity
Check out this activity here. We had so much fun with this! Grayson was completely engaged when he realized that there were hidden messages under the paint waiting for him!
For increasing the difficulty level, write sight words in the circles instead of letters!
#4 Erase the ABC’s
This is so EASY but GOOD! You could do this activity on a window in your home or on a dry erase board (if you have one). You can also make it more challenging by doing sight words instead of ABC’s!
Check out this entire activity here!
#5 Practice Patterns with an ice cube tray!
Check out this activity here. If you don’t have colored buttons, you can get creative! You can do skittles, m&m’s, beads, hair bands, and so much more that you can use to do it! Patterns is heavily practiced in preschool – so doing this at home will help your child!!
#6 Alphabet Letter Splash
This is PERFECT for those of you who feel cooped up inside and need to get the kiddos outdoors!!! The blogger in this article uses a fence to complete this activity, however, you could use your driveway as well! To add difficulty to it, make it spelling words or sight words instead of letters!
#7 Playdoh letters!
This site is full of fun ideas for your preschooler! The activity that caught my eye is the play dough letter activity. You don’t have to have a fancy printout to do this, just simply grab some paper and draw a letter (or even do old school bubble letters)! Make your own play dough or use the store bought kind.
#8 Matching Objects to Words Activity
I love this clever activity to help with word recognition! One of my favorite parts is that it’s pretty universal and easily switched up – everyone has some sort of objects in their home that a word can be associated with (get creative!) and to give variety, just find new objects!!!
Grab this awesome activity here!
#9 Practice Cutting Spaghetti!!!
This sounds absolutely crazy, right?! But cutting spaghetti can help your little tot prepare for cutting paper! Grayson has been learning to cut in Occupational Therapy for a while now… so on our days home we do more of the next activity vs. this one. I do, however, love how creative this activity and it will truly stimulate your child in all kinds of senses!
#10 Make a Paper Rainbow to practice cutting skills!
Because Grayson’s cutting skills are pretty solid, we are practicing this activity while being home to advance his skills a little more! Check it out – it’s completely adorable!
Be sure to give all of the blogs that I linked some love – they have amazing ideas for hands-on learning activities for preschoolers!!!
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