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One activity that your kids will surely love doing with you is cooking. You don’t need to cook elaborate food to make it fun and exciting. Making cookies is simple and easy, but will be enjoyable to the kids. This will give you time to bond with your kids, and at the same time teach them simple lessons on responsibility and helpfulness. You can do this on special occasions or celebrations like Halloween.
What you will need:
- 1 ½ cup powdered sugar
- 1 cup butter or margarine
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ tsp almond extract
- 2 ½ cups flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp cream of tartar
- Cookie cutters
How to do it:
- Mix powdered sugar, butter or margarine, egg and vanilla and almond extracts.
- Mix in flour, baking soda and tartar. Mix well.
- Cover your mixture and refrigerate for two hours. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Make sure that your kids do not touch the hot surface to avoid burning.
- Divide your dough into halves. Roll out on a lightly floured board.
- Using cookie cutters, cut the dough into different Halloween characters or symbols (e.g., pumpkin, ghost, hands, etc.)
- Place them on a lightly greased cookie sheet.
- Bake for 7 to 10 minutes.
- Give “Halloween life” to your cookies by letting your kids adorn them with colorful sweet icing tinted with your favorite Halloween colors of black, yellow, orange, red, and other dramatic colors that your kids may surely enjoy mixing and messing.
photo credit: eyeliam;
Preschool Toddler Games
Kids have the greatest imagination. They love to pretend they are Doctors, Chefs, Teachers and all sorts of other imaginative people and creatures. There are so many fun Preschool Toddler Games you can play. This was a creation of my children and I. We called it Cafe’.
Steps:
- Your kids help create a name for their cafe and create the signs. We had three cafe’s.
- You then take the play food you have, plastic plates and set them up however your kids like to prepare the food.
- Create a menu – put pictures of the food next to the words so they can have clues as to what each item is. We made fun food like, apple sandwiches, chocolate covered strawberries and more. They love making up all the foods they will serve
- Get a little Pad for them to take orders
- Give them a special towel and soap for washing the dishes after they make their meals and serve their customers
- Hang up the signs in the play area (we did it in their rooms) and let them open for business!
This is such a fun activitiy for Toddlers on up! Enjoy and have fun!
photo credit: tomeppy
Have you ever wondered how teachers can come up with preschool education games – those simple games that teach some basic skill like listening or color recognition or whatever? It’s really just a matter of breaking down daily tasks into their simplest elements and then making a fun way to learn them.
Say for example you want your child to learn to listen quietly (a very important skill). Create a game that makes it fun to listen closely. Like – “I am going to make an animal sound and you tell me what the animal is?” Or, “Can you tell me what kind of thing makes this sound?” and make a car or truck sound.
If you want your little one to learn their colors or shapes, then take the time to point out various colors and shapes until you think they have them down and then ask them to find a red truck or play I Spy a green rectangle and have them point it out to you.
Children love to interact and puppets can be a different way to get them to interact if they seem disinterested in you. So take a paper lunch sack and draw a face of a person or animal or robot or whatever and then teach them using your puppet.
You can make a different puppet for each letter in the alphabet as you introduce the ABCs. You can introduce colors by making one puppet a brown bear or a yellow flower. Let your imagination run wild. And have fun playing preschool education games with your child.
What games do you play with your child?
Fine Motor and Counting Activity
There are many preschool education games out their to enhance your child’s development. Children’s fine motor development is an important part of there growth. It is a critical part of their learning to write. This fine motor activity is very simple, fun and educational.
To complete this activity:
- Print out the Fine Motor Activity Template (click the link to the left to get it)
- Get some small round stickers
- Demonstrate for your child how to put a sticker inside the box, trying not to touch the lines.
- Have your child put the stickers in the grid.
- Count all the stickers you put on the grid.
This is great fine motor practice for your child. In addition you will reinforce their one to one correspondance when you have them point to each sticker and count each one they point to.
Another of the many preschool educational games out their is a variation on this activity. You can play tic tac toe using stickers.
Tic Tac Toe Game:
- Print out TicTacToe Template (click the link to the left to get it)
- Get two different type of circle stickers
- Explain to your child how they win- by getting 3 and a row
- Play the game! Allowing them to put their stickers in the spot they choose!
I’d love to hear if you try any of these activities how you liked them! If you have fun games you play with your children please share them in the comments below.
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10 Fun Activities For Toddlers
- Box in and out game-Get a big card board box, then get some objects, like shape blocks, or wooden blocks, small cups etc. Demonstrate putting them in and out, then let your toddler have fun doing it!
- Ride on Toys-Toddlers LOVE to use Ride on Toys-I always had a couple in the basement and the back yard.
- Finger Painting-They love to get dirty, as you know, so what’s better then getting paint all over your hands, feeling the texture and creating?!
- PlayDough- Make some homemade playdough and then let them loose!! Give them a rolling pin, some playdough toys to stamp with and let them create.
- Table Top Play- I have always found young toddlers around age 1-2 love this. Let them sit in their high chair or booster chair. Give them some various size cups, objects to put them in and some blocks, and watch them play. Through some cheerios on there for eating and discovering how to put them in and out of the cups.
- Large Puzzles, with big pegs. Show them how to put the circle in and out and then let them try. A simple puzzle with maybe three big pieces to put in and out is best.
- Shape Sorters – Name the shapes with your child while you play with it and show them how to put them in. Great way to teach shapes and matching.
- Stacking Buckets - These are great. Kids love building towers with them and then knocking it down. Then try to figure out together how to get the buckets into eachother.
- Stacking Rings – Show your shild how to put on and take off, then let them try. They will love mastering this.
- Side Walk Chalk – Get some big pieces of sidewalk chalk-and let them create!! They can make a track for their cars or a big picture.
What activities do you play with your child? Let us know in the comments below.
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