Preschool Activities
Preschool Activities Sub Categories
Tips for Making Applesauce and Cinnamon Ornaments with a Preschooler
Normally I only post preschool activities that I would give a solid “A” on a traditional grading scale. Making applesauce and cinnamon ornaments, sad to say, is not one of those activities. It might be right for someone…Just not us.
I think the problem is that the return on investment was so low. Applesauce and cinnamon ornaments are a lot of work! Rather than enjoying quality time with my son while making beautiful stocking stuffers, I ended up spending the whole time trying to keep his cinnamon encrusted fingers from decorating everything else in the room.
On the plus side though, my son had the opportunity to practice some valuable skills, so I would consider this a good preschool cooking activity for parents who have the time and inclination.
Preschool Cooking Skills:
- How to stir
- How to use a rolling pin
- How to push the cookie cutters straight down so that you get a clean cut
- How to arrange the cookie cutters to get the most out of the dough
- How to carefully move the cookies to the drying racks
If you do decide to tackle this activity, I found fantastic instructions for making applesauce and cinnamon ornaments. But, before you attempt it with a preschooler, learn from my mistakes:
- Prepare everything beforehand. Walk through the entire activity in your head and get all of the supplies together.
- Cover the table, your kid, the floor, and yourself with materials you don’t care too much about. (I covered the table with a cheap vinyl tablecloth which worked great.)
- Don’t count on being able to make any ornaments yourself.
- You might want to do the mixing yourself. Cinnamon has a tendency to explode into clouds of brown smoke when a preschooler does it.
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Practice Preschool Computer Skills…Send an Email!
I just love this activity, and we don’t do it as often as we should. Having your preschooler send an email can help your child:
- Feel more comfortable with computers and keyboards
- Practice their alphabet and spelling
- Learn where letters are on the keyboard
- Understand basic computer functionality like backspacing, space bars, and the enter key
Now, I am not suggesting that you create a separate email address for your preschooler and have them check it. Of course, if you have the time and inclination, you certainly can. I just use my own email account.
My son can pick who he wants to email or I can choose for him. He tells me what he wants to say and I tell him how to spell it and when to press the space bar. It is a long and grueling process, but it is worth it.
My biggest challenge is keeping him from holding the keys down too long. The first couple times, it was an accident, but then he starting doing it just for fun.
This was my son’s first email:
hi omi.. i lovvvvvvvve yooooooooooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu…..
He had no intention of removing the extra letters and it didn’t seem right for me to clean it up before we sent it. Besides, Omi (his grandmother) didn’t mind.
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Is it wrong that I am happy my preschooler lost at UNO?
There are rules to playing cards that go beyond the rules of the specific card game you are playing. There is a certain etiquette to dealing, playing, winning, and losing. There is a vocabulary; dealer, shuffle, draw, discard pile. The only way you can learn is by doing it.
Last night, I set out to teach my son how to play UNO. Before we started, I removed all of the Skips, Draw 2′s, and other funky cards as well as all cards that were higher than 5. This left us with a more manageable deck and a lot less to teach/learn.
So, we played…
Dealing 7 cards is different than counting 7 cards. So, as I dealt, I said, “One for Edison…One for Mommy…Two for Edison…Two for Mommy…”
I explained the deck, the discard pile, and the basics of how to play. He picked it up pretty quickly. Without a doubt, his favorite part was yelling, “UNO!” each time he got down to one card.
The advantage of playing UNO with a preschooler is that their hands are too little to hold the cards in such a way that no one can see them. When I had the opportunity to play a card that would help him out, I did. But, I never held back a card that I could play or let him “accidentally” play the wrong card. Letting a child win leads to false expectations and poor losers. Plus, they can’t get better if they always win.
We played 2 games. The first game, he won. You would have thought that the sky had opened up and rained fruit-juice lollipops and Transformers. He was ecstatic. We high-fived and he asked to play again.
The second game was a different story…It took him a moment to realize that he hadn’t won. Then, the waterworks started.
I hate to say it, but that is exactly what I was hoping would happen. It presented the perfect opportunity to talk about good sportsmanship. After he calmed down, we had a nice little talk about how it is nice to win but not winning is fine too.
“That’s how we learn,” I said.
He will have to lose a lot more before he learns how to be OK with it, but last night was a great start. This morning, he wanted to play UNO first thing. He won, fair and square. Afterwards, we shook hands and said, “good game.”
Great job, Little Man! 
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Edison’s Favorite Free Online Preschool Game
A while ago, I asked my son, “If you could play any computer game, what kind of game would it be?” Without a second’s pause, he answered, “Robots!”
So, I did a search for, “online preschool games robots”, and came upon Widget’s Build a Robot. It is a free online preschool game that immediately become Edison’s favorite.
I have a love-hate relationship with this game. The first time he played it, I thought it was sweet. But it wasn’t long before the cute little sound effects made my eyes bleed. Whatever though…Preschoolers love repetition, and this isn’t the first time that a theme song or voice from a toy has driven me crazy.
Now for what I love about it…This free online preschool game is such a great way for Little Man to practice his computer skills. A lot of games are tough because they require that you click and hold the button down as you drag a piece around the screen. With this one, you click the button to pick up a piece, drag it to where you want it, and then click again to place it. Sounds stupid, but it makes it much less frustrating for a new computer user.
You can tell it was totally designed for the preschool mentality. There are a number of different robots that they can put together. When they finish putting each robot together, it does a little dance or lights up or does something that my preschooler totally thinks is the bees knees.
Once, he clicked on a chicken robot that I had seen him put together a million times. I said, “I think I am going to like this robot.” Now, every time he gets ready to put any robot together, he says, “Mommy? Are you going to like this robot?”
Makes me smile..
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Preschool Cooking Activity: “Doctor” a Pizza
This is one of those “Well, Duh” activities. Obviously, bored preschooler + frozen pizza = cooking activity, but I am going to post this activity anyway because maybe there is one parent out there who hadn’t thought of it…
I always keep a few healthy frozen pizzas in the house for nights that we don’t have enough time or energy for a proper meal. By healthy pizza, I am referring to the whole grain crust, veggie pizzas that taste almost as good as the box you buy them in. You really have to add some unhealthy stuff for them to be palatable. We call this “doctoring” the pizza, and it is as necessary as preheating the oven.
This is the perfect activity for Edison. He pulls a chair up to the counter and crumbles bacon, distributes veggies, etc. We have one of those fancy, $3 cheese shredders with 5 sides, and each face of the shredder produces a different type of shredded cheese. Edison is fascinated by this thing. We end up with five different sizes of shredded cheese and way more dairy than we really need, but it is an activity in itself.
The best part is, when Little Man “helps” with the cooking, he is much more likely to eat well. All in all, this activity is messier and more time consuming than cooking alone, but it is totally worth it!
