Free Preschool Activities

I remember helping our preschoolers get ready for the evening of Santa’s visit. There was a carrot for a hungry reindeer. A glass of milk for Santa’s thirst. And of course, cookies! Here is an easy recipe you can use with your preschooler to make no-bake oatmeal cookies for Santa. They do require the use of a microwave and parental supervision.

I enjoy baking with preschoolers because it helps teach them measuring skills, pouring skills, hand-eye co-ordination, the importance of following instructions, plus the result are always delicious!

What you need:

2 c. white sugar

3/4 c. butter

1/2 (12 oz) can evaporated milk

1 pkg. instant butterscotch pudding mix

3 1/2 c. quick cooking oats

What you do:

Combine the sugar, butter and milk in a microwave safe bowl. Cook on high for 2-5 minutes, until the mixture comes to a boil. Let the mixture sit for 30 seconds. Then stir in the pudding and the oatmeal. Drop by teaspoon onto wax paper lined cookie sheets. Let sit until firm, around 15 minutes.

Remember to save some for Santa!

It’s so much fun playing Santa for young preschoolers! I just found a really cool website that can add to the magic of the season for you and your family. You can get a photo of Santa in your house! It isn’t free, but it is very affordable, and the memories your child will have of the Christmas  you caught Santa in the act will be priceless! Here’s the link to get a photo of Santa in your house this Christmas.

Are you still wondering what to do with last year’s Christmas cards? Sometimes they’re too pretty to recycle. And preschoolers are often attracted to the colorful and creative pictures. Here are some things your preschoolers can do with your used Christmas cards  - besides recycling.

Make a Christmas card wreath. Give your preschooler a wreath shaped piece of cardboard or construction paper. Then let them glue their favorite Christmas card pictures around the wreath. Decorate with a bow and hang up for a pretty wreath.

Make Christmas ornaments. Punch a hole on the top of your preschooler’s favorites. Help them to pull a piece of colorful string through the hole and tie it. Voila! You have new ornaments for your Christmas tree!

Christmas lacing cards. Punch holes on a pretty card and turn it into a lacing card for your preschooler.

Give them to friends and family members. If there’s no writing behind the picture, this can be your preschooler’s chance to send out his or her very own Christmas cards. Help them practice their printing by writing a short Christmas message and their name.

Here’s an easy to follow recipe you can use to make Christmas ornaments with your preschoolers! The article talks about making letters with the dough, but this is a great opportunity to get out those Christmas cookie cutters and make fun shapes for your Christmas tree!

Ornament Dough Recipe by Nancy Murphy

Are you looking for a new way to help your children learn “hands-on” the letters of the alphabet?  Would your child like to make a gift for a relative?  Are you looking for a project for a rainy day? Creating play dough letters and ornaments is a fun way for your child to do all these things.

Ingredients for the Ornament Dough Recipe:
4 Cups of Flour
1 ½ Cups of Water
1 Cup Salt

Here are the steps to follow to make the dough:
1.    Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
2.    Put all the ingredients in a bowl.
3.    Mix them together.
4.    If the dough is too stiff add more water to get a workable consistency.  The dough should be easy to handle.
5.    After you are done mixing, knead the dough for five minutes.
6.    Next shape the dough into fun shapes and letters.  Try writing your name on some of them.
7.    Place your creations on a greased cookie sheet.
8.    Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.
9.    After baking, you can paint the dough with markers or paint.

This ornament dough makes great gifts for friends and family.  Just make them an ornament with their name on it, or create a fun shape.  Try using cookie cutters to make your shapes.

This brings back wonderful childhood memories.  I had so much fun making the ornamental dough when I was a child.  My sisters and I used the dough to make ornaments with each of our names on them.  Everyone had their name on the Christmas tree when we were kids.

You can find more helpful parenting articles like this at www.Blooming-Babies.com.  Nancy Murphy is the owner of http://www.Blooming-Babies.com an online baby and children store.  She is the proud mother of two little girls.

Article Source: http://www.wahm-articles.com

I love making this Advent calendar with the kids! It’s just so simple, and is a good way to keep track of how many days until Christmas.

What you need:

• Christmas picture to color. You can find several coloring pages here
• construction paper in Christmas colors or your child’s favorite
• child-sized scissors (You and your preschooler will LOVE the ones that come with the Super Scissors Book.
• Glue or tape

What you do:

Have your child color and cut out the Christmas picture you chose.

Count how many days there are left until Christmas morning. Cut a strip of construction paper for each day.

Tape or glue each strip into a ring. Make them into a chain and attach to your picture.

For some extra fun, see if your child can create a pattern with the colors.

Hang the chain up where your child will see it everyday. Before he or she goes to bed each night, have them cut one ring off the chain.

When you cut off the last ring, the next morning is Christmas!

The best Christmas present my daughter Cassidy received when she was a preschooler was a special book that convinced her Santa was real. Even at 3 years old, she wasn’t 100% convinced the jolly elf could make his way into our home at night and secretly leave his gifts behind. But that all changed the year she got Peef the Christmas Bear for Christmas.

Peef: The Christmas Bear is a delightful storybook about a magical bear Santa creates one Christmas. Peef is never quite satisfied with his life as Santa’s helper. His real dream is to find a home where he will be loved by a child.  And, because it’s Christmas, Peef’s dream finally comes true. This book is a perfect gift for Christmas morning, especially when you bundle it with the Peef Bean Bag Bear. That’s what Cassidy received the year she was 3, and she was convinced that Peef had chosen to stay with her!

My daughter is now 12, and tonight I asked her, “Do you remember Peef?”

She got the same look on her face that she had 9 years ago when she first received the bear and his book. “I loved Peef,” she said wistfully, remembering that magical Christmas morning too.

Over the years, we’ve spent so much money and energy on finding the perfect gifts for our children, but the most memorable is this little book and stuffed animal!

If you’re looking for an easy way to put some more magic into your preschooler’s Christmas morning, Cassidy and I suggest you share the story of Peef with your children.  We just read through the book again tonight, and the last lines still make us smile:

And as he vanished, one small child was thrilled beyond belief.
For right beside a pillow there, a little bear said, “Peef!”

I love making gingerbread houses! Over the years, we’ve made several different kinds. Some were a lot of work, but the results were beautiful. Others were a lot of work, and the results were disastrous! (They still tasted good, though.)

After all this trial and error, here is my favorite way to make gingerbread houses with young kids. They can even do a lot of the work on their own.

What You Need:

500 mL empty milk cartons, with the top taped shut to form a roof.

Graham wafers

Icing

Candies to decorate

What You Do:

Using the icing as glue, cover each side of the milk carton with a graham wafer. Attach graham wafers to the top for the roof.

Decorate as you like, using the icing to make the candies stick. Your preschooler can easily create an entire village of these.

If you’re more daring than I , and want to spend more time building your gingerbread house, a gingerbread house cookie pan can be a lot of fun too. All the pieces of your gingerbread house will come out perfectly shaped… and you can even make a gingerbread man and gingerbread tree to go along with it. (Much better than rolling out a big sheet of cookie dough, and cutting the shapes out by hand… which we have also done!)

Whatever method you choose, building gingerbread houses with preschoolers is a blast, and tasty too.

The countdown to Christmas has begun! Over the weekend, we brought out our Advent Snowman.  Every day we change the number on his sign. The smaller the number grows, the more excited the kids get!

You can help your preschooler count down the days until Santa’s arrival and Jesus’ Birthday Party by making an easy advent calendar. This is one of my favorites to make with preschoolers, because they can do almost all the work themselves, and they get to practice their cutting skills.

What You Need:

A Christmas picture from a coloring book, or draw one yourself. You can use a Santa picture or one of Baby Jesus.

Colored construction paper. Christmas colors like red, green and white are nice, but any colors will do!

A stapler (to be used by the adult)

child sized scissors

What You Do:

With your child, look at a calendar and count how many more sleeps there are until Christmas Day. Counting “sleeps” is an easy way for preschoolers to keep track of the days.

Then cut a strip of construction paper for each sleep.

Make the strips into a chain by making each one into a circle and stapling the ends together.

When you have made all the strips into a chain, staple the entire chain to your Christmas picture.

Hang the advent calendar in your child’s room, so they can see it regularly.

Every morning, your child can cut off one of the rings. When the rings are gone, Christmas is here!

One of my favorite Christmas activities to do with kids of ANY age is baking cookies. It’s a fun way to spend time together, and your kids can learn a lot about measuring and following instructions. All the pouring, mixing, and molding is also a good way to help develop your child’s fine muscle coordination.

Even very young preschoolers can have fun baking cookies, you just have to be well-prepared! I found this fun article written by a mom who enjoys cookie baking with kids as much as I do. There’s also a great cookie recipe you can make with your preschoolers. To turn them into Christmas cookies, just use holiday-themed cookie cookies and add Christmas-colored sprinkles.

Bonding over Cookie Play by Dominique Goh

When one thinks about baking and cakes you normally visualize kids age 5 or 6 and above doing the activities. This activity can actually be taken down to toddlers aged 2-4 and done under parental supervision.

This weekend my boys and I had great fun attending a cookie baking playdate with his friends. They enjoyed squishing their hands through the cookie dough and pressing out the various shapes using the assortment of cookie cutters that I have.

The boys learned and practice how to share with their friends as we had limited cookie cutters and all of them were eying the Thomas the train cutters. They took turns and shared what resources we had.

This activity is very easy to prepare as you can do the dough before hand and store it in the fridge.

Recipe Ingredients

1 c. (2 sticks) butter, softened

3/4 c. granulated sugar

3/4 c. brown sugar - lightly packed

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

2 1/2 c. all-purpose flour

Put the butter, both sugars, salt and the baking soda in a large mixing bowl and beat with a mixer for about 3 minutes. Blend in the eggs and vanilla extract. Reduce the mixer speed and add the flour gradually.

This cookie dough is best used when chilled so try to mix it up ahead of time to allow for a couple hours in the refrigerator. Chill between batches.

Bake at 375° for 10 to 12 minutes on an un-greased cookie sheet.

Do try it out with your kids. They will certainly enjoy it.

Dominique Goh, elementary school educator and mom to two active boys. Catch my writings at my blog- http://www.dominiquegoh.com

Article Source: http://www.wahm-articles.com

I hope you have some a great time baking cookies with your preschooler! A delicious way to serve your freshly baked cookies is with hot cocoa, and a candy cane as a stirring stick.  Candy cane flavored hot cocoa! Yum. Enjoy!

Oh  my! I’ve been away from this blog for far too long!

I’ve been working on a big project for one of my other websites. But it’s almost done, and then I’ll be back, sharing with you from my boxes full of fun, educational, and FREE! activities for your preschoolers.

I thought you might be interested in seeing what I’ve been up to…

I’ve just published my first ebook.  It’s called Saving Christmas: Magical Tips for Creating Lasting Memories.

It’s a compilation of almost 30 articles to help busy moms and families enjoy a meaningful Christmas, without the stress. It’s selling for $9.97, BUT it also comes with almost $100 worth of bonuses for you and your kids! Including coloring sheets and paint by numbers.

If you’re a mom or a grandma who’s feeling a little stressed out at the thought of having Christmas without enough cash, you’ll think this book was written for you. And that’s because it was! Here’s the link.