Indoor Activities for Preschoolers
We’re all scrambling looking for ways to keep our little ones entertained indoors while schools and daycares are closed due to COVID-19. I know personally I have been trying to figure out a way to engage my 3 year old with learning and play while my husband and I both work from home. The key is to get her to stay engaged for long periods of time while we try to get work done or attend meetings etc.
I put together a list of some of the activities, projects and crafts we will be doing throughout the week or so. I kid you not, I stayed up late last night preparing my preschoolers activities for the day because happy kid= happy mom!
Be sure to share your ideas with me and others in the comments below. We can all benefit!
Indoor Activities and Resources for Preschoolers
Sensory Play
- Kinetic Sand– Hours of fun. To put a spin on it, just hide some “treasures” into it and have them dig for it.
- Colored Chickpeas– We love color sorting with the chickpeas, lots of counting activities and just plain old sensory play. To make the colored chickpeas, just add some to a Ziploc bag, pour paint and shake. Spread it out on paper towel to let it dry.
- Water and Sand Play– Perfect for an outdoor activity.
- Water Beads– Great texture and lots of fun tearing them apart. Freeze them and use a stick to break it apart for another day.
Egg Games
- It’s the best time to get some Easter eggs and there are many projects you can do.
- Egg Color Sorting– Get some matching egg colors and pom poms. Have them use tweezers to sort the pom poms into the appropriate colored eggs
- Scrambled Eggs– I used this template to color in different colored eggs and have my 3 yo find the eggs that coordinate with the paper.
- Egg Painting– Get creative and use the ends of the eggs to stamp circles with different colors or paint the eggs themselves
- Upper and Lowercase Alphabet Matching– On the top half of the egg draw an upper case alphabet and the lower half draw the lowercase alphabet. Have them find and match the egg.
Puzzles- lots and lots of puzzles
Puzzles keep kids busy for days! Some of our favorites are:
Fine Motor Skill Based Activities
Some of these activities require a little thinking which is a great way to build their motor skills and keeps them entertained a little longer
- Beading– Have your preschooler focus on putting beads through a lace or pipe cleaners. Give them a pattern to follow. Ex) purple, blue, green, purple, blue, green etc.
- Q-tip Painting/Tracing– Use this printable, a couple Q-tips and paint and have your preschooler follow a pattern. Get them to focus and paint only on the dots. This will be hours of fun!
Painting
You can never go wrong with painting. If they could they would paint all day, everyday and everywhere.
- Baking Soda Paint– With just a couple of ingredients you can make your paint fizz. Lots of fun to watch and the end product is beautiful! Use this tutorial to make baking soda paint
- Straw Painting– Put a couple of drops of paint on your paper. Then use a straw to blow paint in all different directions.
- Bathtub Painting– This is Hoda’s favorite. I give her finger paint, put her in the tub and let her paint away! Make sure you are in the area supervising so there are no accidents. It can get quite slippery.
- Snow Paint- We did this activity using shaving cream, glue and glitter. It’s a ton of fun and paint dries puffy. Click here for the tutorial.
I’ve created an Amazon Idea List to help you with toddler activity ideas. Check it out HERE.
This is week one! I have a few more ideas to prepare for and I will share that next week! Thanks for sticking around!
xoxo,