Preschooler | Play

To play the Letter Matching Game, start with only the upper case letters. Explore some of the letters with your child. Does he recognize any of them? Can he find the first letter of his name? When he is ready to play, lay out four of his favorite letters, face up. See if he can find the two letters that look the same. He can keep the cards he's matched in a pile in front of him.
Read Letter Matching Game UPPER CASE

Children enjoy opportunities to take on the real-life tasks they see being performed around them every day. Here's an activity that turns washing dishes into fun.
Read Kids Cleaning: Washing Dishes and Mopping

Learning to recognize numbers takes practice. Luckily, this kind of practice is as fun as a treasure hunt.
Read Learning Numbers: What's the Number?

It's time for tea! A pretend tea party gives a child a chance to imitate the adult behavior she observes at home and incorporate it into her play.
Read Tea Party

Printing patterns onto paper can be a thoroughly satisfying process. It's fun to search for shapes to print, and the results will thrill your child. Best of all, setting up a home studio requires little more than assembling materials you already have on hand.
Read Printing Press

Crunchy Cereal Sandbox
Read Crunchy Cereal Sandbox

For this holiday dedicated to love, give your little ones the gift of generosity by helping them make gifts for friends and family. This project is fun and easy——and partly edible!
Read Valentine's Day Photo Frames

The days may be getting shorter, and you may be spending more time indoors, but that's no reason to stop paying attention to the outside world. In fact, winter weather can be the inspiration for a host of fun activities.
Read Weather Experiments

Creating a collage involves manipulating, arranging, and sticking various materials and found treasures on a flat surface. It's easy to encourage this rewarding creative process at home. Here's a short guide to getting started.
Read The Art of Collage

Like magpies, babies, toddlers, and preschoolers seem drawn to small, shiny objects. In fact, a cloth bag filled with large buttons was a traditional baby toy in frontier America.
Read Treasure Box Sorting Game

Let your child do some real work, just as she sees you do. Washing a car is ideal because it involves warm water, a sponge, and lots of bubbles.
Read Car Wash

Visiting a garden is a wonderful opportunity for your child to discover firsthand how to take care of living things. He can learn what plants need in order to grow, as well as more sophisticated concepts like absorption and evaporation.
Read Kids Gardening

The only ones who enjoy a good rain more than small children may be ducklings. When it pours, seize the day in all its wetness and take advantage of the opportunities for fun it presents.
Read Playing In the Rain

The nice thing about play dough is that it's so very responsive to poking, pushing, and rolling. Its pliability is what makes it so popular with young children, and it's a wonderful introduction to working with the more resistant modeling clay. Buy the commercial stuff, or mix a batch of your own.

Play dough is not for eating. Many young children are still finding out about the world by putting things in their mouth. Your first lesson should be simple: Let's just pretend to eat it...like this!
Read Play Dough Play

Many children this age are actively enjoying the world of make-believe. Your child may rock a doll or teddy bear to sleep, make pretend phone calls, or have animated conversations with imaginary friends. Help set the stage for imaginative play by creating a small house for her to move into.
Read Playing House