Engaging and Educational Activities To Do At Home For Kids Aged 3-4 Years Old
With my (almost) 4-year old son’s school closing again due to the pandemic, we’re back to online learning and finding activities to do at home.
I think most parents around the world are in agreement that “teaching” or “home schooling” with older toddler and children is hard. My son’s teacher recommended a wide range of activities to do and resources to use to keep him engaged at home. The activities below are the ones my son really enjoyed and I wanted to share them here, in case it can help inspire or help you think of ways to engage with your kids at home.
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Counting
Use a ruler with counting worksheets.
Place the ruler before each row of objects and ask your child to count the objects (point and count with them if they are reluctant or struggling). Ask what the number looks like on a ruler and then write it out.
Draw different length lines using a ruler and identify the number on the ruler. Discuss which lines are short and long and/or which numbers are smaller and higher.
Colour and count with a storybook: The Hungry Caterpillar is a great book to do a simple counting activity. Play or read the story, pause on each day of the week, ask what fruit and how many did the caterpillar eat, and then colour in the worksheet accordingly.
Colour by numbers
Simple worksheets where children have to recognize the colour with the number assigned to it and colour pictures accordingly. My son really enjoys this activity.
Arts & crafts
Paper plate jellyfish: You’ll need streamers or paper cut into long strips, half a paper plate, glue, and anything which can be used to decorate (pencils, paint, markers, glitter etc). You can either draw on eyes and mouth or find quirky ones online to print and stick.
Paper plate fish: You’ll need a paper plate, scissors, glue and anything you have to decorate (pencils, paint, markers, glitter). Cut out a triangle shape for the tail and stick it on. This is a nice activity to talk about shapes — circles and triangles.
Friendship bracelet: You’ll need a tissue roll, double-sided tap, and glitter / coloured paper. Cut the tissue roll into smaller circles about 1-1.5cm wide, stick double-sided tape all around the tissue roll , and get to decorating!
Role play with storybooks
Choose your children’s favourite storybooks and find ways to recreate scenes at home. In this example, we used the story “Rainbow Fish” and created an ocean floor using blue garbage bags, shiny pasta for the ocean floor, and print outs of fish stuck to large lego pieces. Talk about what happens in the story, ask questions (“So where did the octopus go?”) and create alternative storylines. If you don’t have a specific book, then search YouTube for videos of story narrations.
