This weekend, fill up a box with sand, and bury little treasures for your child to find - a toy, plastic animals and sea creatures, shells painted in glitter, coins, small balls, painted cones etc.

Have your child put her hands into the box, and pull out treasures one by one.  Ask for the names of each treasure she pulls out, or have a sheet of paper for her to write down the names of each as you spell out the letters.

Enjoy!

You won’t exactly have to drag your child kicking and screaming to play with water! There’s almost nothing they like better than to splash about. Here are some ideas for your preschooler to have fun with water, and maybe even learn a thing or two.

1. Fill up two glasses of water, and give her a short straw, and a longer straw. (Tape a couple of straws together to make a longer one). Let her drink though each straw. Which glass empties faster? Is there a difference at all?
2. Fill up a glass of water, and let her count how many sips of water it takes to empty the glass.
3. Plug up your bathtub, or kitchen sink, turn on the H2O, give her a few plastic bowls, cups and glasses, some paper boats and let her have fun.
4. Pour some bubble solution and food coloring in a bottle of water, or use detergent instead of bubble solution.  Let her shake the bottle really hard, and see the beautiful results.
5. Fill a bottle with water, add blue color, detergent, a few small leaves, and a few plastic fish and sea creatures. Let her shake the bottle hard, and look at her “sea globe.”
6. Take a glass, wrap a piece of cotton cloth on the opening, and secure with a rubber band. Put some sand on the cloth. Take another glass of water, put some mud in it, and pour this muddy water into the glass with the filter cloth. Explain the concept of filtration. Why isn’t all the mud being poured down through the cloth and into the glass? For variation, use different types of cloth - muslin, even a paper napkin. What’s the difference in the water in the first glass when you pour through different filters?
7. Throw some water in the yard, and let her clean this up. Give her different materials to clean up - a sponge, a thick cotton cloth, your kitchen mop. Let her figure out how to get the water off the ground the fastest.
8. Have fun with the garden hose. Play a game of Squirt Me Quick, and see who can squirt the other more. Terribly messy, and bad for your hair, but she’ll love it!

Enjoy!

Rice doesn’t hold a major risk of suffocating or choking, so preschool activities with rice are safer for toddlers than those that involve dried beans, coins, peas etc.  Your younger preschooler will find these fun and messy, and you’ll love being able to clean the rice quicker and easier than sand!

1. Put some rice in a Ziploc bag, add two or three drops of carious food colors, and let her squish the bag around to mix the colors.
2. Pour a bag of rice in a large tray, give her a scoop and some bowls of various sizes – enough to keep her occupied for a while.
3. Let her pour out rice into separate sized bowls, and see which ones hold the most amount of rice – how many scoops of rice does it take to fill a cup? How many cups does it take to fill a bowl?
4. Give her a bowl of rice, an empty bowl, a funnel, a colander, a spoon, and let her experiment.
5. Pour some rice on the table, and let her make “roads” through it.
6. Make a large pile of rice on the table and let her drop a fistful of rice right on the top. Watch what happens – the rice begins to fall down the sides of the “mountain.”
7. Let her measure bowls, cups and saucers of rice on the kitchen measuring scale.
8. Draw an outline of a letter or numeral, or make some other drawing on a paper, and apply glue to the inside.  Let her use rice to cover the inside of the outline.
9. Fill a small bag or a man’s sock with rice, cut a hole at the toe, and use the falling rice to draw patterns on the ground – letters, numerals, her name.

 Enjoy!

Picture Courtesy: Flickr - PPDigital

Some ways to have fun with ice cubes:

1. Place ice cubes in two separate Ziploc bags, and place one near the window sill, and the other on a table. Which cubes begin melting faster?
2. Place ice cubes in a Ziploc bag, and let her use a small hammer (carefully) to crush the cubes. Let her open the cubes and see the results of her handiwork. Explain about force.
3. Color some ice cubes using juice of strawberries, blueberries, oranges etc. and let her sort by color. Then, let her suck on the cubes.
4. Place some ice cubes in a Ziploc bag, and let her place the bag on various objects around the house – a book, a steel bowl, a glass. Let her place the bag on each object for 10 seconds each – which ones get colder faster?
5. Experiment with the quickest ways of melting an ice cube – keep it on the table, keep it in a bowl with a tight lid, keep it near the stove, keep in a ladle and hold over fire…
6. Freeze little plastic bugs in cups, and have fun with it. Or freeze a trinket in a cup of water. Let her figure out how to thaw the ice really quick to get to the trinket. To make it a game, time how fast she can get her hands on the trinket.

Enjoy!

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!

“There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million.”
- Walt Streightiff

When it comes to preparing your preschooler for the big bad classroom, there’s really no need for a fixed curriculum per se. The world is his classroom, and everywhere you turn, there are opportunities to learn through play. Here are some ways to convert everyday routines into learning experiences.

English

1 - Look for alphabets everywhere – let her search for her initials on cans and packs in the supermarket, on license plates, on store signs and billboards, traffic signs etc.

2 - Play I Spy Games that require her to look for objects that begin with a letter inside the house or garden.

3 - Practice language abilities all the time, every single day. What is the color of that girl’s dress? What are the letters on that traffic sign ?

4 - Enrich her vocabulary by constantly pointing out objects and things. Start with the things they love -animals, birds, fruits and vegetables – and follow up with household items, shapes, water bodies, vehicles.

5 - Write names of objects around the house on index cards, and stick them on these –doors, windows, bed. Point these out often.

Math

6 - Look for numbers everywhere – on cans in the super market, ion book, the telephone directory, newspapers, license plates etc.

7 - Count and often – how many people are standing in the bus stop? How many yellow flowers are there on that tree? How many coins does it take top buy a candy bar? How many steps does it take to get to the car?

8 - Do plenty of sorting activities at home – sorting is great practice for counting. Forks and spoons, a mixed bowl of peas, dried beans and pebbles, laundry sorting – all these can be used for great sorting activities.

9 - Sing counting rhymes together, and often.

Social Studies

10-Watch movies with an international theme. Mulan is a great start.

11- Experiment with various cuisines – Chinese, Spanish - and talk about those countries.

12- Do flag crafts. Paint one on paper or make one out of fabric.

13- Make model towns out of empty milk cartons and shoe boxes, and label them – fire station, hospital, library etc.

14- Include toy cars and trucks in play, include boats in the bath tub, and talk about how they help in transportation.

15- Play shop – set up a store, have fake money and let her sell you stuff.

Science

16- Blow bubbles. Use little jars of bubble solution with blowing rings. Add food coloring to make colored bubbles.

17- Make a weather chart. With your help, a preschooler can learn to read temperatures with an outdoor thermometer with large numerals, and record them in a record book.

18- Change activities according to the season. During rainy days, puddle jump, look at the difference in the sky and cloud formations, and monitor the movement of rain drops on your window pane. During summer, measure his shadow at different times in the day at the exact same spot. In winter, make a snowman together, or make snow angels.

19- Visit a zoo or a farm close by.

20- Make a day trip to the museum.

21- Experiment in the garden. What happens to plants that are not watered or are faced away from the sunlight?

22- Experiment with magnets. What objects do they stick to? Can she lift small objects with them?

23- Experiment with mirrors.

24- Have fun in the kitchen – measure rice, sugar

25- Teach her about personal hygiene and nutritious food.

26- Make snacks or schedule making dinner together.

Second Languages

27- Sing foreign language songs. Spanish ones are always great fun.

28- Teach single words in a foreign language – words that can be used regularly like adios, or emotional ones like J’taime.

If you need ideas, check out

Preschooler’s Busy Book: 365 Creative Games & Activities To Occupy 3-6 Year Olds

There are plenty of activities in there. They are not particularly ingenious, but they are non fussy, easy to do and easy to set up, and inexpensive.

Enjoy!

So Melitsa asked me this question:

We sit around the table for our meals. I have a 5 yr old, a 2 year and soon to be born little one. Can you give any tips for starting points of what to talk to the kids about?

Here are some ideas:

1. I can’t resist the opportunity to enrich vocabulary at the table – point out new foods that she’s unfamiliar with.
2. Talk about her day – what she did, where she went, what did she play there?
3. Introduce a new word to describe foods – delicious, scrumptious, tasty, yummy, delectable.
4. Ask her what was the absolute worst thing that happened to her that day and the absolute worst.
5. Ask questions about foods, cutlery. Is that a blue pudding? Is this a round plate?
6. Introduce her to taste words – spicy, sweet, bitter.
7. Ask questions that encourage creativity – if you were an apple, what color would you be?
8. Fantasize about her dream dish, with all her favorite ingredients – sugar, her favorite fruits, her favorite choice of meat etc. The end result won’t be palatable, but it will make her smile.
9. Ask her to bring a favorite object to the dinner table – it could be a favorite toy or picture, something from her nature table, a book, anything. Now ask her what’s so important about the object and why it means so much to her.
10. If you can, choose a theme for dinner. Maybe an upcoming family event or reunion, or a vacation. It’s easy to get kids talking when they feel like they are participating in adult events.
11. Select a day as Dress Up for Dinner Day and ask your kids to dress to the hilt – tiaras, feather boa, clutch. Help them get ready in all their finery, and include the costume as the central theme at dinner time. Why did she choose that dress? Who is she tonight? What kind of jewelry is she wearing?

So, what do you talk about with your kids at meal times?

When you’re stuck somewhere with an impatient preschooler to entertain, play these games to save your sanity:

1 - Play a game of What If?

• What is our pet was an elephant?
• What if horses could fly?
• What if you were Mommy?

2 - Play a game of This or That. Give her a choice of things to choose from

• Cats or dogs
• Vanilla or chocolate
• Walking in the rain or playing in the sun
• Swing set or see saw

3 - Ask your child to stand a distance away and throw a soft plastic ball at him. Shout the name of a body part just before you throw the ball. For instance, leg, head, etc.  She has to use that body part to hit the ball.

4 - Play a body part game. Start with her eyes. Let her tell you a few thing she can do with her eyes – see, blink, squint. Continue with other body parts.

• With his hands – clap, shake,
• With his legs – walk, dance, run, kick etc.

5 - OK, So I ran out of boredom busters. Any ideas?

This weekend, sing the song “Skip to my Lou” with your preschooler, and substitute the words, with the the names of animals and the sounds they make.

For instance,

Dogs in the kennel go bow wow wow…

Cows in the farm go moo moo moo…

Pigs in the sty go oink oink oink…

Use only animals and sounds she’s familiar with.

Enjoy!

Playing dress up and role play are the most important things you could encourage in your preschooler – probably even more important than teaching her the alphabet or numbers.  It helps those little minds blossom, and imagine a world full of possibilities. 

Finding costumes can be tricky though. Here are some ideas to create costumes for your kids:

• Check out thrift stores, and dollar stores for shiny paper garlands, flower necklaces and bracelets, feather boas, tiaras, hula skirts, boys’ suits, jackets, and retro clothing.  The gaudier the clothes, the more chances your child will actually like wearing these!
• Adjust older clothes she has to provide some dramatic flair.  Glue colored pom poms to a black beret, or to the edges of a scarf or muffler.
• Paste sequins, satin flowers, and rhinestones on hats, scarves and skirt hems.
• Recycle. Hand down your old handbags and purses to your daughter to use as accessories when she’s all dressed up for an evening out. If you have short dresses from your pre-baby days that you’ve given hope of ever fitting into, they can be used as elegant full length gowns for your daughter. Use pins to adjust.
• Use appliqués to decorate T-shirts
• If you need to play animal characters for a story time session, make your own animal smocks. Take a large paper bag, and cut open the side panels and remove them .Cut a large hole in the bottom of the bag, enough to slip over her head.  Use black marker to draw eyes, teeth and whiskers on the bag.  Slip your child’s head through the hole, so the bag is hanging like a smock on her, with the animal’s face in front.
• If you’re playing shop, cut out small pieces of sponge, and stick them on an empty shoe box.  Write down numerals on each sponge. Voila! You have a cash register!

 
Do your kids ever raid your closet?  It’s probably a girly thing, because I don’t see my boy interested  in hubby’s wardrobe…