We have put together 4 Fantastic Learning Activities for Preschoolers that you can use in the classroom, or at home. Preschool age children learn best when having fun and learning hands-on. They don’t have long attention spans, and they are always on the hunt for adventure. So learning through play is a great way to teach this age group.
Learning Binders
Preschool binders are a great way to have many activities, printables, and worksheets all in one place. They are great for morning baskets, repetitive, and hands-on learning. You can create your own using printables and worksheets by placing them in protective sleeves and using a dry erase marker. I also love using velcro so they can physically place objects and answers onto the pages. It’s a great way to reuse material, so you don’t have to break the bank with printing, and the kids love doing hands-on activities like this. We have some great printables you can use in your binder!
Here are a few activity ideas to put in your learning binder:
- Upper and lower case ABC’s
- Tracing their Name
- About the day page (month, day of the week, weather)
- Month’s of the Year/Days of the week
- Colors
- Shapes
- Numbers
- Counting activities
- Pattern Recognition
- Differences/Similarities
Sensory Bins
Sensory Bins are another great hands-on learning activity that preschoolers love! It encourages critical thinking, creativity, world-building, and imagination. They are sand, rice, cereal, water, with objects thrown in. Usually, they are themed as well. It’s also something you can have pre-made and take out whenever you need something hands-on for them to do. Encouraging play in learning is so important, it’s what keeps the learning spark alive. There are also endless ideas for sensory bins, they can be just for fun, or you can add a lesson theme to them as well.
Here are a few fun and education sensory bin ideas:
- Number Find – have them find the numbers in the bin
- ABC Dig – have them dig out the Letters in play-dough, or sand
- Name Search – Find the letters that make up their name
- Color Sorting – Dig through the sensory bin to find colors and sort them in colored cups or mats
- Puzzle Hunt – hide puzzle pieces in the bin, find them, and put the puzzle together.
- Gardening – Fill with dirt and toy veggies and fruits, with toy gardening tools
- Dino Dig – Fill with sand and add toy dinosaurs. Have them name the dinosaur, or talk about them individually
- Bug Find – Fill with dirt and add toy bugs. Have them pull out the bug as you name them, and incorporate a lesson on bugs.
- Worldbuilding – add dirt or filler of choice with blocks, toy trees, cars, houses, animals, and people. Letting them create their little world through play.
- Inside My Body – Put body parts in the bin, and have them match them to an anatomy photo to learn the parts of their body.
STEM for Preschoolers
STEM is fun for kids of all ages, but I find that preschoolers love these activities. They are hands-on, interactive, and engage their curiosity. If you don’t know, STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Preschool age kids love asking why, why why! STEM activities are a great way to show them just why and how things work. We have some great STEM activities in our site store!
However, here are a few ideas for you to try:
- DIY Rain Bag – Teaches about weather
- Build A Robot – Use toilet paper rolls, googly eyes, straws, popsicle sticks, and other craft items to build a robot!
- Cup Phones – Attach two plastic or paper cups together with a string
- Tornado In A Bottle – Put water in a bottle and swirl it around to show a cyclone
- The Best Nest – Build a birds nest with twigs and feathers, put toy eggs inside, and read The Best Nest by P.D. Eastman
- Cheerio Tower – Put a wire or piece of raw spaghetti standing up using play dough. Then have them place cheerios on the wire/piece of spaghetti to build a tower.
- World Building – Using blocks, toy figures, and other building materials to create their own little world/town/city, etc.
- Cereal Box Ramps – cut the bottom off a cereal box to use as the ramp, blocks or legos to prop the ramp up, and place cars or balls at the top and watch them go!
- Walking Water – Fill 6 cups up with rainbow food dye, one color per cup, place a long strip of paper towel into each cup, so that it dips into each cup joining them. Watching as the water spreads along with the paper, and forms a rainbow.
- Building Bridges – Using cups and popsicle sticks, build bridges they can drive their toy cars on.
Educational Games for Preschoolers
Games are one of my kids’ favorite things to do. Games are a great way to encourage social interaction, team building, critical thinking, and hands-on learning. You can easily create a game for any lesson, unit study, or theme. Games are also something kids can do at home with family members to get involved as well (Great for those virtual learning) and promote creative thinking. They can be reusable printable games or even educational games found at the store. I also love involving the kid’s imagination and coming up with our own games to make learning fun.
Here are some Ideas for Educational Games:
- Bingo! – so many options for this, and different themes you can do to make learning fun.
- ABC Go Fish – Make ABC Cards and play go fish with them.
- Memory Games – Again so many options, ABC cards, colors, numbers, sight words, etc.
- Uno – Great for matching numbers and colors, and most households have this card game.
- Puddle Jump – use sheets with sight words, numbers or letters, etc on the floor to help develop their understanding of the alphabet. They have to say what it is before they can jump on it.
- Trouble – My daughter loves this one, it’s Minnie Mouse themed! Helps with counting and colors!
- Candy Land – Helps learn colors, and they love the illustrations.
- DIY Board Game – Have them help you make a board game, can be a team effort for classrooms as well.
- I spy – Can spy colors, shapes, things that start with a letter, or themed objects.
- Dice Games – Helps learn numbers, and you can have them match the dice with a number, or create a graph or how often a number shows up. Throw two dice and have them add the numbers together. Great for beginner math concepts.
Now that you have some Fantastic Learning Activities for Preschoolers, you’re on your way to making education fun them!
Have more fantastic learning activities for preschoolers? We would love to hear them down in the comments!
Written by: Brittany Coleman
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