Keep a Game and Art Box on hand for your preschooler to entertain himself. Fill a shoe box, or other cardboard box with art materials, puzzles and other games, and keep it away for a rainy day - literally! When the weather is too bad to play outside, simply drag the box out, and let your child explore. These boxes are also great to send with your kids when they go to visit their grandparents.

Here are some of the things you can include:

• Picture puzzles
• Humpty Dumpty puzzles. Cut out an egg shape from cardboard, and paint on a pair of eyes, and a big brown belt in the middle. Cut into pieces - the younger the child, the fewer the number of pieces. Drop the pieces in a small ziploc bag, and into the box.
• Wash and cut out pairs of juice box fronts - pair up different flavors, and mix all these up in a ziploc bag. Drop this into the box too.
• Cover bottle lids with stars and hearts stickers on each, and put these into another bag. She can match these in pairs.

To take care of art supplies, throw in(in separate ziploc bags)

• wrapping paper pieces
• craft foam pieces
• pieces of felt
• paints and crayons
• glue,
• glitter gel
• stickers
• satin ribbons
• craft shells

You probably can’t have messy crafts supplies to occupy your child on a long drive, but you can have crayons, marker pens etc.. Stick a piece of clear plastic on the inside of a blank paged book, to form a pocket. Throw in a few crayons and markers in there, and keep the book in the dashboard. Pull out when you need a break from that non stop chatter.

Enjoy!

This weekend, choose a theme that you want your preschooler to pick up (colors, shapes etc.)  Make a telescope out of an old wrapping paper tube, or other card board tube.  Paint and decorate the tube.

Decide on particular shapes that you want your preschooler to spy (something that’s round)

particular colors (something that’s green or yellow)

particular textures (something that feels rough)

particular objects (something made of fabric - any type)

Any combinations of the above for an older child who finds these too simple

Enjoy!

Maybe because their memories of anything in white coats aren’t necessarily pleasant, kids love to play at being a doctor. It gives them a chance to torture some one else with a shot! Encourage this, and use it to introduce measuring activities and language skills.

Set up a clinic for her.  Give her a chair, and a table, with an empty writing pad to make her notes in, and a sheet of paper to record data.  If she has a doctor’s play kit, all the better.  Use her teddy bears and dolls as prop patients.

Act as the patient’s Mommy with four of your “kids” coming in to see her.   First up, let her measure the weight of each “child” by placing the doll on your kitchen weighing machine.  Let her note down the weight of the doll herself.

Next, let her use a measuring tape to measure the height of the child. D on’t worry about specifics – just the figure closest to the actual reading will do.

Tell her what’s wrong with the baby – she’ been sniffing and hasn’t been eating too well etc. etc. If she has a play doctor’s kit, she could use her stethoscope to listen to their heartbeat, give them shots etc.

Let her arrange all her patients by height, and weight.

There are plenty of opportunities to learn in everyday games.  If you play games with your preschooler that encourage learning, I’d love to hear about them.