Below is a guide to activities for preschoolers to do regularly so that all the most important skills can be developed in early childhood. Many activities will work on multiple skills simultaneously. This means that these activities are excellent for the overall development of your child.
Instead of just teaching your preschooler to read, develops your auditory and visual perception so that you are ready to read when school starts. Here are some types of activities to incorporate into your child's daily playtime.
Fine motor activities
- Artistic activities with various tools and media (paint, chalk, wax crayons, large brushes, sponges, etc.)
- Thread and tie
- Accounts
- Cut, paste and tear
- Finger games
Gross motor activities
- Lots, lots of free outdoor play (especially on climbing structures)
- Obstacle courses in the garden
- Play catch and chase games
- Games that involve jumping, hopping, or hopping
Auditory perception games
- Learn many rhymes, poems, and songs.
- Playing games with words that rhyme, for example, do these two words rhyme? What word does not fit on this list? (develops auditory discrimination)
- Play games with sounds in words, for example, What sound does dog hear at the beginning?
Visual perception games
- Show your child 5 items, then cover them up and ask your child to name the items (develop visual memory)
- Play a picture memory game (develop visual memory) or a card game
- Detects differences in two similar images (develops visual discrimination)
- Match, order and categorize shapes, blocks, beads, etc.
- Make a picture using cutouts of basic shapes
Spatial perception games
- Lots of free play and opportunities to crawl through tunnels and climb over things
- Play with blocks, wooden boards, and construction toys.
- Play a game of chase and catch with siblings or friends
- Build puzzles
Listening games
Part of auditory perception, but the focus is on listening carefully to the information)
- Play broken phone
- Say a series of commands and ask the child to follow them all in order
- Clap a sequence or make a series of sounds on a drum and ask the child to repeat it
- Play a game where your child hears you say a list of words and has to say which one does not fit (for example, a list of animals with a fruit in the middle)
Vocabulary and cognitive skills activities
- Talk to your child frequently to develop his speaking skills (grammar, vocabulary, etc.)
- Talk about your child's day at school, events, friends, etc.
- Talk about interesting topics frequently (for example, sharks or how trees grow) and use a variety of new vocabulary
- Ask your child lots of questions to get personal opinions
- During story time, ask various questions to develop higher-order thinking skills, such as questions about how to predict the outcome, how a character can solve a problem, what the action will result in (cause and effect), etc.
- Play games that require solving problems or puzzles.
- Build puzzles
Pre-writing activities
- Allows opportunities for creative art every day
- Play with play dough (for finger control and strength)
- Play with foam, rubber or wood letters (letter recognition)
- Make patterns in sand or large paper (for example, zigzag, waves, lines, etc., to mimic the strokes found in letters)