Fun Activities to Do At Home

Here are some fun ideas for activities to do with your kids with items you may have at home

Egg carton:

Sort materials such as beads, buttons, bottle caps, etc. Sort by color like in the picture below or sort by size, small items go in the egg slots and big items go on the other side. [Works on strengthening finger muscles and ability to differentiate items by color or size.]

Turn it upside down and create a small hole in each egg holder. Give your child popsicle sticks, pens/ pencils, straws, or pipe cleaners and have them place each item in one of the holes. [Good task to work on strengthening finger muscles and hand-eye coordination.

Empty food boxes:

Use for a fun new way to practice stacking or build a zoo for toy animals. Add in some pretend play if building a zoo or home for other toys. [Stacking and building works on cognitive skills connected to math. Pretend play works on social-emotional skills and language development.]

Painter’s tape (masking tape):

Make a track for cars or trains. Track can also be used similar to a balance beam by having your child walk within the lines. [Both activities help with coordination skills.]

Place tape on a table or other flat surface; tape down toy animals. Child will need to peel tape off of table or off of animals to rescue them. [Good task to work on strengthening finger muscles.]

Storage container:

Use an underbed storage container or any other shallow rectangle container as a water table. Collect some empty food containers (yogurt) or let them use your measuring cups as their scoopers. Add in items that float, like buttons or bottle caps, so they can scoop them up. Strawberry or grape containers are also fun because the water will pour through like rain! Or you can poke some holes in empty food containers to get the same effect. [Scooping water between different sized containers works on early math skills.]

Another day put some dish soap in the water table and tell your child that his cars need to go to the car wash or that his toy animals need a bath J [Both water table activities work on hand-eye coordination.]

Empty food jar:

Use an empty cylinder shaped container that can be opened and closed (i.e. yogurt container, coffee canister, large peanut butter jar). Cut a slit in it to make a slot bucket; the size will depend on what material you have that will be placed inside. Some examples are: cards, buttons, bottle caps, blocks, balls, etc. [This activity works on hand-eye coordination, strengthening finger muscles, and early math skills.]

No materials needed, use your body:

Do specific movement activities throughout the day or at a certain time per day declare it silly moves hour. Then, choose a different way of getting around than you would normally do. Some examples: crawl around on hands and knees, bear crawl, walk around the house with your hands up, or behind your back, or out to the side, walk backwards. There are so many options!

Dance!!! A few fun songs that we listen and move to regularly in class are:·
Wiggy, wiggles freeze dance
Head, shoulders, knees, and toes
Shake your sillies out
Walking, walking
If you’re happy and you know it
Wheels on the bus
Teddy bear, teddy bear
One little finger
Slippery fish