When you have a little one at home, you need a range of new and exciting games to play with them to keep them interested and engaged. We have carefully selected the games below to help pre-schoolers widen their vocabulary, practice their skills and develop their interaction skills, both with other children and with adults. An added bonus is that these games also help your little one to develop their understanding of early STEM concepts in interesting and exciting ways!
1. Apple Boats
This is an amazing seasonal activity to do with your little one. Help them to learn more about floating and sinking, and wind-propelled movement, with this incredibly simple activity. You can have races to see which boats win, and you can have competitions to see which is the best-designed boat!
Learn More: Here Come The Girls Blog
2. Learning Resources Buddies Pet Set
This is a really useful game to play with your pre-schooler, which will help them to develop their understanding of math concepts. Each separate game helps them to develop a new skill, such as building color recognition with puppies, learning about shapes with cats, and counting number skills with the bunnies.
Learn More: Bounceback Parenting
3. Gobblet Gobblers
Your pre-schooler won’t even realize that they are developing crucial skills such as critical thinking, memory skills, and spatial awareness skills with this game. It’s a bit like tic-tac-toe, but with the added twist that you can gobble up another person’s piece because the game pieces are like nesting dolls.
Learn More: Happy You, Happy Family
4. Numberblocks MathLink Cubes
These MathLink cubes offer a huge range of ways to help your pre-schooler learn about numbers, and how numbers can be made in different ways. Additionally, linking and unlinking the cubes allow for lots of fine-motor skill development in their hands and fingers as they manipulate the cubes into place.
Learn More: Good Housekeeping
5. Ride to the Number
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For an added level of challenge, ask your child to ride to a total of two numbers, for example, “ride to the 1+1”. Don’t worry if they’re not old enough to recognize the numbers – fill the circles in with a color instead, animals. It’s a brilliantly versatile game for pre-schoolers.
Learn More: Made For Mums
6. Play Float or Sink
Your child can compete with you to predict which items will float and which will sink – you could even give out points, and the person with the highest total wins. You can help your child develop early maths sorting skills as they sort objects into those which float and those which sink.
Learn More: Made For Mums
7. The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game
This game is just right for pre-schoolers. The feel of the acorns in their hands and the length of play make it the perfect way to engage your child in developing their understanding of turn-taking and color matching. Additionally, this game helps your little one to develop hand-eye coordination.
Learn More: Bounceback Parenting
8. Go Fish
This game comes in different versions, which makes it a great option for varying things up as once you get the basics of the game right, you can play it in different ways. Go Fish gives your pre-schooler opportunities to develop recognition of numbers and quantities, matching pairs and sorting.
Learn More: Happy You, Happy Family
9. Paper Butterfly Science Kit
Whilst this is a game for kids aged 7+, with supervision your pre-schooler would get so much out of this activity! This half-science, half-art game will help them to learn about capillary action and how water moves through different materials as they make the butterflies. They can then display their gorgeous creations.
Learn More: Good Housekeeping
10. Shaving Cream Clouds
This game is super-easy to set up. Add a competitive element by getting your little ones to see who can make the most rain, and who can have the most different colors before the colors merge into brown. Remember – the less water you use, the faster your rain will drop.
Learn More: One Little Project
11. The Spotting Game
This is a great game to play literally anywhere you are. You can make the list of objects to find as long or as short as you like, depending on the needs of your child. You can also add in a maths element, such as looking for numbers or colors.
Learn More: Made For Mums
12. Balloon Toss
This is a great game for helping your pre-schooler to develop their gross motor skills as they throw the rice-filled balloon at a target. You can add a challenge by asking them to throw the balloon at certain numbers, colors, graphemes, or words. They can also collect points – whoever gets the most points wins!
Learn More: Made For Mums
13. Code ‘n Learn Kinderbot
This is a great product to help your little one develop several skills at once! They’ll be using simple coding skills to control the Kinderbot’s movements, and they will be practicing colors, letters, and early maths skills too. If they’re playing with a friend, they’ll also be practicing interaction and turn-taking too.
Learn More: Good Housekeeping
14. Dash Coding Robot
The Dash Coding Robot is the next step after the Kinderbot. When used with apps, your pre-schooler will develop their coding skills to make the Robot sing, draw and move in patterns that they have pre-determined themselves. This is great for developing their understanding of digital cause and effect.
Learn More: Good Housekeeping
15. Animal Upon Animal
This game is so versatile that even the youngest pre-schoolers will be able to play it! In stacking different animals, your pre-schooler develops their fine and gross motor skills. In deciding how to stack the animals, they are developing their strategy and prediction skills. It’s also great fun when they all come crashing down!
Learn More: Happy You, Happy Family
16. Listening Lions
This is a great game to help calm pre-schoolers down after a busy day! It can easily be adapted– for example, ask them to listen to the sounds around them for 30 seconds. When the time is up, they can tell you what sounds they heard.
Learn More: Made For Mums
17. Avoid the Crocodile
This is a great game for helping your pre-schooler to develop their gross motor skills as well as their proprioceptive skills. Proprioceptive skills enable your child’s body to sense movement, location, and action and are present in every movement you have. Without it, you wouldn’t be able to move without thinking about each step.
Learn More: Made For Mums
18. Pete the Cat’s Cupcake Party
This is a great cooperative game for families! It helps to develop turn-taking and interaction skills you work together, as well as fine and gross motor control as you spin the spinner, dance, and move the cupcakes. Your child will be practicing literacy and numeracy skills without even realizing it.
Learn More: Bounceback Parenting
19. Colorama
The advantage of this game is that it can be played in different ways, with the different options allowing your pre-schooler to develop different skills around recognizing shapes and numbers. It takes about 20 minutes to play, so it’s also useful for developing your child’s attention span in a fun way.
Learn More: Bounceback Parenting
20. Cardboard Tube Marble Run
This classic game will engage pre-schoolers and adults alike! Creating a marble run that takes a marble from one place to another will help your pre-schooler develop their understanding of gravity and motion. They will also have to use their test-and-see skills to try out their ideas, changing them if they don’t work.
Learn More: There's Just One Mommy
21. Balloon Rockets
Have a race with a balloon rocket – mark out lines on the ground, and see whose rocket travels the furthest. This is a great game for developing early reasoning and prediction skills with your pre-schooler. You could try a mini-investigation and test out whether certainly shaped balloons travel further than others.
Learn More: YouTube
22. Balloon Tennis
Balloon tennis is a great way of helping your pre-schooler develop their gross motor skills. They can also develop their counting skills as they count how many times you can rally the balloon between you before it drops. Your child can predict if the next rally will be longer or shorter, so it’s great for comparative language.
Learn More: Made For Mums
23. GeoSmart Mars Explorer
This is a great activity-into-a-game product. Older pre-schoolers use the magnetic pieces to build the vehicle, and then the vehicle can be used in context-specific challenges such as “who can move the most space rocks?” It’s a fabulous activity for developing an understanding of magnetism, as well as of cause and effect.
Learn More: Good Housekeeping
24. Straw Rockets
This is another great activity that easily turns into a game. After making the rockets, your pre-schooler will learn about forces and motion as they propel the rocket into the air using the power of their lungs. Introduce the concept of measuring by comparing how high the rockets can go.
Learn More: Taming Little Monsters
25. Charades for Kids
Charades is easily overlooked, but it’s a fabulous game for pre-schoolers to play with the whole family! It’s easily accessible on many levels and allows your little one to develop an awareness of how they can present ideas to others in a way that is easily understandable in a non-verbal way.
Learn More: Bounceback Parenting
26. Sequence for Kids
This is a great game for helping pre-schoolers as young as three to develop their understanding and use of strategy and memory. Sequence for Kids can also be played in different ways, which means that you can alter the game according to the needs and stages of your kids as they get older.
Learn More: Bounceback Parenting
27. Letter Dance Party
Digital games are as good for pre-schoolers as real-world games, and they have the added benefit of helping your child develop their use of technology. Letter Dance party helps your child to learn the alphabet in a fun and interactive way and can be used across a variety of devices.
Learn More: Sesame Street
28. Numberblocks Make and Play
This is a great digital resource to help your child to develop an understanding of numbers alongside developing their use of technology. There is a range of different online games that you can play with your pre-schooler to help them develop their understanding of early numbers, number patterns, and number sequencing.
Learn More: BBC
29. Scavenger Hunts
Treasure hunts are amazingly versatile - they can be specific, where you give them pictures of the things they need to find, or you can just hide objects for them to seek out. Nature treasure hunts are great for getting the whole family out and about, enjoying the benefits of the great outdoors.
Learn More: Made For Mums
30. Plastic Egg Submarines
This activity can be turned into a great game for pre-schoolers. Trying to make the plastic eggs sink can be turned into a great competition – Who can sink the most eggs? Who can sink an egg the fastest? Plastic egg submarines are also a great way of sparking a discussion about floating and sinking.
Learn More: There's Just One Mommy
31. Magnet Exploration
This is a great sorting game for little monsters as they sort objects into magnetic and non-magnetic ones. Once they have worked out which items are magnetic, they can then predict and test which other objects are magnetic too. Make this activity more competitive by seeing who can collect the most magnetic objects in two minutes.
Learn More: Taming Little Monsters
32. Shopping List
Shopping List is a Number 1 best-selling toy for a good reason – it enables your children to develop their memory skills using a familiar scenario of shopping for food. An additional challenge can be added by supporting your pre-schooler to segment the words into separate sounds, developing their early phonemic awareness.
Learn More: Orchard Toys
33. Letter Balloon Smash
This is a great activity to encourage your child to get moving in the outdoors as they develop their early awareness of sounds and letters. You can also use the water balloons to make simple words, depending on your child’s needs and stage of development. Or you could just enjoy getting wet!
Learn More: School Time Snippets
34. Tin Can Bowling
Tin cans are great – they can be used for playing with skittles, for walking on and also for making into phones! Your child is developing their fine and gross motor skills as well as their aiming skills if they are playing skittles. A great thing about them is that you can use your own clean tins straight from the recycling.
Learn More: A Girl and a Glue Gun
35. Follow the Line
Grab the chunky chalks and draw long, squiggly lines along the ground. Can your pre-schooler help untangle the lines by walking along them? How can they work out which is the right way to go? This game is great for developing your child’s proprioceptive movement, and awareness of how their body moves around a smaller, more complex space.
Learn More: Pinterest
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