5 Activities Preschoolers Should be Doing

Every Single Day

by Tanja Mcilroy https://empoweredparents.co/activities-preschoolers/

The early years are a time when children are learning and growing at a rapid rate. As a parent,
you may want to know what is the best way for your child to spend their time.

When is it that most of the learning occurs and what are the best activities for preschoolers to be
doing in order to learn optimally?

The answer is simple.

Play!

If your children are engaging in hours and hours of play every day you can rest assured they are
learning!

Read on to find out about simple play opportunities you can set up that your children will benefit
from doing every day!

Learning Numbers and Letters

Let’s first take a look at learning numbers and letters before we get into the real business of play.

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As a parent, you may be concerned with whether your child is learning letters and numbers, or
reciting the days and months in order. During the preschool years, learning the letters and
numbers is actually not that important!

Why? Because your child will learn those things easily when they are ready. And they will be
ready because they will have engaged in the right activities that develop pre-reading, pre-
writing and emergent Maths skills.

Here is a quick look at learning numbers and letters, followed by 5 activities that your little
ones absolutely should be doing every, single day! 

Numbers

A child may count to 100 but they are not necessarily mature enough to have any concept of
what those numbers actually represent.
They learn the value of numbers when playing, for example, in the sandpit or the bath. When
they fill up a cup of sand and turn it over, then fill another and turn it over next to the previous
one, they are learning concepts such as two items or one more.

The more they play and discover, the more concepts they learn – they compare numbers, make
patterns and experiment with sizes.

They may be able to rattle off the numbers out loud, but this is only one aspect of mathematics –
rote counting. Children develop a true number sense when they learn one-to-one
correspondence and conceptualize what the numbers actually mean.

Letters

In order for your child to recognize the sounds in letters, they need to develop their auditory
processing skills through play. Nursery rhymes, poems and songs serve more of a purpose than
just entertainment and fun!

Then, learning to write requires building gross motor skills through movement and play. Fine
motor skills are then developed which enable a child to hold a pencil, control it and form letters
carefully.

These pre-skills cannot be rushed and pushed aside.

The last level is being able to recognize the letters and the sounds they represent when combined,
and putting them together into meaningful words and sentences to be read.

Therefore, it is not necessary for children to be writing, adding numbers and reading in
preschool.

The preschool years are for play. Very intentional play. During these years, all the most
important foundations are being laid down and the skills needed for formal education are being
put in place.

Download Your FREE Activity Pack!

The printable pack includes short stories, action & counting songs, listening &
vocabulary games, art activities, music games and more!

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5 Preschool Activities to do Daily

What then are the activities that little children should be engaging in every day?

Most activities do not involve worksheets, workbooks or any formal work and they can be
categorized loosely into about 5 different types of activities.

They are all centred around play and they are the activities that all good preschools have built
into their daily programs.

If you are looking for activities to do at home with your child, as long as they fit into one of the
following categories, you will know they are age-appropriate and your child is learning a lot
from them.

1. Movement Activities

Movement involves free play, during which children get time to run, skip, throw, catch, gallop,
jump, hop, bend, balance, walk, climb, hang, etc.

Guided movement activities are also great and can be planned by adults with a specific purpose
in mind. Here are some examples:

 Obstacle courses
 Balancing beams
 Throwing and catching games
 Hopscotch, leapfrog, etc.

2. Music Activities

Music involves activities such as:

 Learning simple rhymes and poems

 Singing songs
 Playing with musical instruments (especially home-made ones)
 Discovering sound through body percussion
 Dancing and rhythmic moving – which also develops gross motor skills
 Playing music games
Music is not just about learning to sing and play instruments. Through music, children improve
their vocabulary, memory, cognitive abilities, listening skills, auditory processing skills, rhythm,
and many, many more things.

Many of these skills are needed to be able to learn to read.

Children are naturally drawn to music and enjoy it without the self-consciousness that many
adults develop when singing and dancing.

3. Creative Art

Which child doesn’t love art? Most children want to draw, paint and be creative every day. They
should have exposure to many different activities and mediums:

 Drawing with wax crayons, pencils, pens, chalk, etc

 Painting – including finger painting, bubble painting, painting with brushes and sponges,
etc
 Box construction – such as building things out of waste materials
 Cutting, tearing, pasting and collaging

Here are some really awesome creative art activities that are simple and require no prepping!

4. Reading 

The benefits of reading are endless and it should be fit into every parent’s schedule, every single
day. Parents should read to children in order to develop many skills.

It is also a great time to stimulate higher-order thinking skills and get your children involved in a
discussion that is sure to develop critical thinking and vocabulary.

5. Play
I’ve left the best for last. Although the four activities listed above are still part of play, I thought
I’d list this separately just to mention the various types of play children engage in. During play,
children are learning non-stop! Here are some types of play:

 Fantasy, dress-up or symbolic play

 Physical play
 Structured games with rules, such as Duck, Duck, Goose
 Memory games and card games
 Construction play (e.g. building with blocks or lego)
 Sensory play
 Fine motor play activities such as puzzles, pegboards and threading beads

Know that if your children are coming home from school filthy from head to toe, with drawings
that don’t resemble anything vaguely recognizable and happily signing a tune, they are probably
getting a very good education.

Does your child come home with beautiful artworks that the teachers have guided? Or lots of
coloured in worksheets? Hmmm, I would think twice about that environment.