Preschool is such a fun age for classroom activities – the kids are ready to learn things, but you have to keep things interesting, different and colorful and hands-on.
It can be tricky to find the best preschool activities if I’m honest. A lot of the same sorts of things come up all the time. But I’ve been hunting down the best preschool classroom activities, so you don’t have to.
Here, I’ll be sharing with you my hand-picked shortlist of the best preschool classroom activities out there. They are all fun, colorful, hands-on and educational.
And without further ado, let’s get straight to it!
14 Best Preschool Classroom Activities To Try Today
(The following activities aren’t listed in any particular order.)
When they get to preschool classroom age, the kids know what their name is, so it’s exciting for them to learn how to spell out their name, and recognize the relevant letters and their correct order.
But rather than simply write out their name, as they will continue to do throughout their school career, this activity is much more fun…
There are colored sausage dogs, and to complete the puzzle and put the parts of the sausage dog together, the kids have to find the correct colored squares with the right letters to spell out their name.
Kids love learning about animals, and this fun game of bingo features colorful pictures of various rainforest animals, rather than the usual numbers that you see on traditional bingo cards.
Preschoolers are old enough to understand how to play games such as bingo. And the game is also something that you can elaborate on through storytelling and so on.
This is such a great activity for teaching kids about vowels, and how they can be used to help make short words.
There is a large background with lots of pockets into which the kids can place cards to spell out the words for various nouns, alongside pictures of the objects that the words represent.
There are a staggering 147 words included to spell in this pack, with at least 24 instances of each of the 5 vowels.
Preschool kids are not too young to learn about science! And this activity combines science teaching with crafting and balloons.
First, the kids make a pretty colorful butterfly on a piece of cardboard, complete with googly eyes and colored tissue paper for the wings.
Then you or the kids blow up a colorful balloon, and create static electricity by rubbing the blown up balloon in their hair.
Then, when the balloon is gently lowered down to the butterfly, the butterfly tissue paper wings will start to rise, creating a flapping motion as the balloon is moved up and down.
This is a great activity for teaching the numbers from zero through to 10, because it involves coloring and teaches what the number looks like in both text and digits, as well as teaching following rules.
Each of the worksheets features one main number. The kids trace the number, color the correct number of objects next to the figure they have traced.
And then, underneath, there is a color-by-number activity, where each space within the design must be colored according to the number within and its corresponding color, culminating in the number they have just traced above.
Each of these pictures depicts the number written in letter form.
This science experiment is colorful and fun – provided that you can keep the kids from eating too many of the jelly beans!
All the kids have to do is sort the jelly beans into transparent cups so that matching colors are grouped together.
Then you fill each of the cups halfway full of liquid, such as water. Ask the kids what they think will happen. Give it an hour or so, and then check on them. The jelly beans will color the water.
This is a great activity for kinesthetic learners, since it is so hands-on, and as such it’s also great for developing fine motor skills as well.
There is a different number mat for each figure from 1 through to 10, featuring a large picture of the figure, and the number spelled out in letters.
The kids are tasked with making the correct number of dough balls on the left-hand side, and then they make long sausages of dough in order to make the shape of the corresponding figure.
Then they make the correct number of dough balls to be placed in the 10-square grid.
With this activity, the kids get to be letter detectives, and you place all the letters of the alphabet into colorful plastic Easter eggs (one letter per egg). Uppercase, or lowercase letters, or both.
As a group, the kids are tasked with finding all the letters of the alphabet in the eggs that can be anywhere in the classroom, or simply in a box or basket.
If you use magnetic letters, the letters can be placed where the kids can see them, and then record which letters have been found on their sheets by writing or coloring in the letter on their worksheets.
Another great activity for kinesthetic learners, and this time, the kids get to play with fidget spinners.
The kids place a fidget spinner in the center of a spin wheel printable, and watch where the fidget spinner lands. The spin wheel features 8 segments, with a smiling 2D shape in each segment.
The kids then use colorful counters to record how many of each shape the fidget spinner has landed on until the counters of any shape reach the top of the graph.
More color for the youngsters! The kids pour water into small transparent jars, and you then add a little liquid watercolor or food coloring to each of the jars.
Then the kids have to guess what will happen when you add paper towels, linking the jars to one another. When the paper towels are added, they will soak up the color, and you can get a pretty rainbow effect.
You can use this activity to explain how plants suck up water from soil to help them grow.
This is a simple and fun activity that teaches color sorting, less and more, numbers, and graphing.
You will need lots of small toy cars of approximately the same size in various colors. You make a bubble wrap road, and label the x-axis with the car colors, and the y-axis with figures.
The kids then sort the cards onto the bubble wrap road according to color, and then you can ask them questions about the cars on the road to check their comprehension and understanding.
Here’s another colorful science project suitable for preschoolers!
You need to add carbonated soda to 5 party cups placed on a level surface. The kids place Mentos candies into other, sorted by color. Place a little baking soda onto the candies.
Add a mix of dish washing liquid and vinegar into each cup of soda, then drop the candy mixtures into the cups of soda, and amaze the kids with what happens next!
This is a really fun and colorful way to teach kids about the butterfly life cycle, using just uncooked pasta shapes and paints in bottles.
Small, unpainted pasta shells are used to represent the eggs, then painted fusilli pasta is used to represent the caterpillar stage, then larger painted pasta shells are used to represent their chrysalis, and finally bow tie pasta can be used to represent the butterflies.
The pasta shapes should be sorted by the kids into the correctly labeled transparent bottles.
Wrap Up
Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed browsing through my suggestions. I’m sure you’ll agree that these activities are all fun and colorful, and can help teach the kids different skills or learn about the world they belong in.
Hi, my name is Helena Waters and I was a teacher for 40 years before retiring last year.
During my time as a teacher I dedicated the majority of it to making classrooms as fun as possible, with educational parties, fun activities, and low cost entertainment that made the children excited about learning.
I taught children of all ages, from preschoolers to high school students. Now, with the pandemic having uprooted everything that children once knew about school and learning, I think that the need for my ideas is bigger than ever.
That is why I created School Sparks, a place in which I can write down and share all of my ideas on how to get students excited about going to school again. I hope that you’ll find some useful within a school setting, even at home too!
