34 Fun and Creative Games For Three-Year-Olds

By age three, most preschoolers can sort objects by size and can understand longer sentences. They are ready to ride a tricycle, kick a ball, or play catch. They are also able to play simple board games, develop sight word vocabulary, and practice typing skills.

We’ve gathered a list of 34 games, creative activities, painting and drawing ideas, engaging memory puzzles, and fun physical activities you can use to help sharpen their growing literacy and numeracy skills while keeping their energetic bodies moving. Read on and pick out a few to try with your kiddos!

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1. Count Your Chickens Board Game

Get everyone settled down with a counting board game! Count Your Chickens is a classic board game that challenges your young learners to gather all their chickens into a coop. What a fun way to teach counting and cooperation skills!

Learn more: Amazon

2. Play Follow The Leader

Follow the leader is a classic game that’ll teach your kiddos many skills including following directions, sharpening concentration, and developing cooperative skills. It’s also a super way to strengthen physical skills such as speed, balance, agility, and motor coordination.

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3. Make Sparkly Slime

Most of your kids are probably slime and glitter-obsessed, so why not combine the two with a simple recipe? You can help them jazz up their slime by letting them add magical unicorns, trucks, or any toys of their choice for hours of fun playtime!

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4. Make a Lego Table

Although made up of small pieces, LEGO is safe for three-year-olds and provides hours of enjoyable playtime. Playing with LEGO gives your preschoolers a fantastic way to develop their problem-solving and logic skills while expressing their creativity. What will your little builders create?

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5. Felt Cookie Busy Bag

This activity is inspired by the hilarious children’s book “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” and is sure to have your preschoolers hooked. They’ll have plenty of fun getting creative with patterns and inventing colorful designs for their cookies. You may need to have some real cookies on hand though, as this craft could have them working up a bit of an appetite!

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6. Have Fun With a Fishing Game

Who knew fishing could be educational? This engaging game combines sensory play and fine motor skills and is an easy way to develop your kiddos’ color recognition, counting, and memory skills. They’ll love this water play activity!

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7. Matching Bug-Building Game

Your preschoolers will want these Cooties in their classroom! This matching bug-building game challenges your kids to build a Cootie bug, making for hours of creative playtime. They’ll each take turns to spin the spinner which will tell them which color and body part to add to their bug next.

Learn more: Amazon

8. Rainbow Counting Game

Bring some color to your math lesson with this sweet game! This bright printable activity will give your kiddos plenty of practice with number recognition, counting, estimating, and simple addition. Grab some cotton balls and dice, and let them have a go!

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9. Make a Jello Dig

It’s time for your kiddies to get their hands dirty! This slimy, squishy, and super fun activity requires nothing more than Jello and some toys or loose parts. You can mix up the jello and add in the toys before leaving it to set. Then it’s for your toddlers to discover!

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10. Construct a Bubble Pop Road

Build a recycled road! Create this reusable activity by laying out strips of bubble wrap on the floor, using boxes to simulate hills. Then it’s your preschoolers’ turn to test out different cars and trucks and see which ones will pop the bubble wrap!

Learn More: Hands-On As We Grow

11. Counting and Matching Online Game

Grab your preschoolers’ interest with an interactive online game! Letting them play this free educational game provides them with plenty of counting and matching practice that they’ll find super fun! With lots of examples of using ten frames, counting up, and number recognition practice, they’ll soon be experts in all their numbers up to 20!

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12. Play Peek-A-Boo with Farm Animals

What three-year-old doesn’t love animals? This free farm animal printable makes for a fun game of peek-a-boo! Your preschoolers are sure to love playing hide and seek with their choice of pigs, sheep, cows, or horses, as they practice their cutting and sticking skills!

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13. Play a Cooking and Baking Game

Why not let your young learners get creative by helping with easy recipes such as fruit kebabs or decorating cupcakes? It’s a great way to sharpen their cooking skills for later in life as well as being a fun family game.

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14. Sort Apples and Oranges

Combine your math and healthy eating lessons with this fun sorting activity! It’s a great way to develop math skills such as sorting and counting as well as discussing the concept of same and different. Other items like blueberries, cereal, small crackers, or even items from nature such as pebbles and leaves, will work just as well for this super activity.

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15. Develop Geometry Skills With a Fun Learning Game

What better way to learn about shapes than making silly faces? Let your kiddies’ imaginations run wild, combing bananas, pizza, and candy corn to make the funniest faces they can come up with!

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16. Loose Parts Play

Loose-part play is a brilliant early development activity. Parts can be anything from recycled items to tile pieces to rocks, pebbles, and beads. It’s a great way to expose your preschoolers to different textures and materials. You’ll be surprised at all the fun and imaginative ideas they come up with!

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17. Bubble Wrap Learning

Lean into the addictive qualities of bubble wrap by using it as a learning tool! Write letters or numbers onto colored stickers, and place each sticker on a bubble. Then let your preschoolers’ take turns popping the bubbles that correspond to the letter or number you’ve called out.

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18. Cotton Ball Fun

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Hone your kiddies’ fine motor skills with this simple activity! Grab some cotton balls and an empty container and have them place the balls into the container. This is a fantastic way to develop their fine motor skills as well as discuss relevant vocabulary such as ‘soft, squishy, and white’.

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19. Make a Block Tower

There are so many ways to incorporate learning with blocks. You can challenge your kiddos to match base colors, practice their counting skills, or just let their imagination run wild while developing color recognition and matching skills. The possibilities are endless!

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20. Try Painting With Rolling Pins

Experiment with bubble wrap and paint! Have your kiddies combine rolling pins and bubble wrap to create a fun, inventive, and super-engaging painting project. The final effect is textured and vibrant, making for a beautiful display or keepsake.

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21. Animal Sound Game

Engage your little ones’ senses and memory with this Animal Sound Game. You can play the sounds of various animals and have them guess which animal it is. Not only does it familiarize them with different animals, but it also develops their listening skills.

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22. Sock Puppets Show

Create easy sock puppets using old socks! Encourage your kiddos to get creative by attaching buttons and yarn, and using fabric markers to create their puppets. Then let them create stories and perform a little puppet show! This boosts creativity and storytelling abilities, providing endless entertainment.

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23. Shadow Puppets on the Wall

Turn off the lights, grab a flashlight, and let the fun begin! Show your preschoolers how to make hand shapes to project fun shadows on the wall, sparking imagination while developing their fine motor skills. From barking dogs to fluttering birds, the shapes you can make are endless!

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24. Hide and Seek with Soft Toys

Ready or not, here I come! Play a whole-class game of hide-and-seek by hiding various toys around the room and guiding your kiddos to find each one. This game enhances their observation skills and develops their positional vocabulary of words like under, above, and behind.

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25. Musical Bumps

Play some music and encourage your kids to dance around and burn off some of that energy! When the music stops, they have to sit down as quickly as possible. This energetic game helps to refine their reaction times and gives them a fun dose of physical activity. Let’s get dancing!

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26. DIY String Bead Necklaces

Get creative with this necklace-making idea! Give your kiddies large, colorful beads and string, and have them thread their own necklaces. This super creative activity promotes fine motor skills and pattern recognition while giving them the chance to make something they can actually wear!

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27. Nature Scavenger Hunt

Take the fun outside! Lead your little learners on a walk outside and give them a list of items to find. As they collect leaves, pinecones, and flowers, they’ll be honing their observational abilities and learning all about the great outdoors!

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28. Bubble Blowing Fiesta

Challenge your kiddos to build a tower of bubbles! Mix some soap solution and let them use bubble blowers and straws of various shapes and sizes to try and create their bubbly creations! Who will be able to create the tallest tower?

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29. Dress-Up Relay

On your marks, get set, go! Lay out various clothing items and challenge your preschoolers to dress up as fast as they can. It’s a fun way to improve their self-dressing skills and understand different types of clothing. As a bonus, they’re sure to find the resulting wacky outfits hilarious!

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30. Jump the Stream

Practice jumping with this fun, play-pretend game! Place two ropes or strings a short distance apart on the floor, to create a “stream.” Then, encourage your kiddos to jump across without falling into the water. You can adjust the distance for difficulty, helping them develop their gross motor skills and sense of distance.

Learn More: YouTube

31. Feather Balance

Give your kids a feather each and challenge them to stand it upright and balance it on their hands. They’ll need to focus and move around to keep the feather from falling over! This fun game is a super way to teach patience and concentration.

Learn More: YouTube

32. DIY Sensory Bins

Spark curiosity with a sensory bin! Start by filling a container with items like rice, beans, or sand, then hide small toys inside for your little ones. They’ll spend hours digging to discover and play with all the hidden toys. These are a fantastic way to introduce a new theme or topic!

Learn More: Little Bins for Little Hands

33. Sticky Spider Web

Let your kiddos practice their aim with this sticky spider web activity! Create your web with painter’s tape, then give them lightweight balls or paper to throw and stick to the web. What a great game to develop their motor skills and hand-eye coordination!

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34. Paper Airplane Challenge

Introduce your littlest learners to basic physics and aerodynamics concepts with this simple activity! Show them how to fold paper planes together and then hold a competition to see whose can fly the furthest or highest! Have them decorate their planes to make things even more exciting!

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