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Secret Sounds Game
Here's a game that builds listening skills and encourages your child to think about cause and effect. This game can be played with friends at a party or by an adult and child on a quiet day.
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Feeling Faces
This activity may help your child to feel and express empathy.
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Making Friends with S.A.S.H. Role Play
Help your child feel more self-confident in social situations by talking about and working on specific friend-making strategies.
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Kids' Day Planner
Steal a teacher trick for helping kids understand time and sequence: create a reusable day planner.
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Activity: Pasta Picasso!
Who knew the perfect preschool food would also make the perfect crafting material?
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Play Patterns
Help your child extend patterns with colorful shapes you create.
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Activity: Come to your senses
Help your child sharpen her five senses and explore the world around her.
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Which Hand?
One of the most important aspects of thinking in all of mathematics is inference. Help your child develop his ability to infer with this activity.
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Little Maestro
Start a music collection for your child, and expose your child to a variety of musical styles.
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Activity: Puppet play
Puppets are a perfect tool for your child to express himself and put his active imagination to use.
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Boxes of Fun
This fun art project will also help keep your child’s toys, treasures and tools organized.
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Activity: Create an ocean
Help your child make waves with this fun and easy art project.
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Blowin' in the Wind: How to Make a Windsock
Your child will know which way the wind blows after she creates a colorful windsock.
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Activity: Big hands, small hands
With your child, create an impression that will last a lifetime.
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Activity: Festive candle holders
These decorative crafts can be tailored to any holiday.
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How To Make a Box Guitar
Strike a chord in your child’s music interests by helping him make his own box guitar.
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Activity: Rain stick
Help your child make his own version of a rain stick.
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Activity: Scratchboard painting
This activity will help reveal your child’s artistic abilities.
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Activity: So long
Here’s an activity to help your child identify and sort different measurements.
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Activity: Jellybean colors
Here's a rainbow-colored sorting activity that's perfect for a rainy day.
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Activity: If the jar fits
Here's a hands-on matching activity using common objects around the house.
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Activity: Sock it to me
This activity will increase matching skills and burn energy on days stuck indoors.
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Activity: Popsicle patterns
This colorful activity works on your child's pattern recognition.
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Activity: Great acting
Encourage your child to use his imagination by acting out one of his favorite stories for you.
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Activity: Creative wrappings
Let your child use their imaginations while making gift giving more personal.
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Theater in a Sack
The restriction of resources can inspire creativity and inventiveness.
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Activity: What do you all day?
Discover how your child sees you.
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Activity: Fancy frames
Let your child create colorful picture frames that show off his artistic masterpieces or favorite family photographs.
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Activity: Fashioning fairy tales
Have your child create illustrations or fashion arts and crafts that illustrate popular fairy tales.
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Activity: Buttoning
Help your child gain practice in sorting and sequencing.
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Activity: It’s in the bag
Help your child explore the world through the sense of touch.
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Activity: Bug Out
Give your little explorer a magnifying glass and go on a bug hunt together.
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Activity: Memory Upgrade
Play “what’s missing” with your preschooler to improve her memory skills.
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Activity: How do you teach painting?
This activity will give your child the opportunity to express feelings and unleash their imaginations.
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Magnificent Museum
Your home can be a museum when you artfully display your things. Use this activity to talk about how and why we use the things around the house.
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Story Go Round
This game is perfect for a camp fire, slumber party or long car ride. Kids of all ages can play together.
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Activity: Alphabet Drops
Make a set of "alphabet drops" and help your child learn the letters while staying active.
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Activity: All together
This activity will help your child create compound words.
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Activity: Buying beginnings
Use a pretend shopping trip to practice recognizing letter sounds.
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Activity: Odd word out
Help your child recognize words that rhyme.
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Activity: Build a word
Create new words by changing the beginning sound.
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Activity: Letter cube
Show your child the differences between uppercase and lowercase letters.
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Activity: Put it all together
Help your child practice putting sounds together to make words.
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Activity: Letter card art
Help reinforce the alphabet with tactile letters the two of you make together.
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Activity: Letter path
Here’s a great way to learn the alphabet while playing outdoors.
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Activity: Alphabet book
With your child, make a book of the alphabet that your child can refer to over and over again.
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Activity: Animal ABC book
With your child, make a book of the alphabet using animals as letter reminders.
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Activity: Toss the penny
Turn listening for consonant blends into a carnival game.
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Activity: Rhyming words riddle
Use simple riddles to encourage your child to make rhymes.
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Activity: Letter charades
Use charades as a way to teach new vocabulary.
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Activity: Quick or quiet?
Build your child's vocabulary with this action word game.
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Activity: Letter forms
Using silly surfaces to practice writing letters or words makes learning fun.
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Activity: Write now!
Help your child learn to print his first name.
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Activity: Letter sound match
Help your child match the letters of the alphabet with the sounds they make.
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Activity: Letter Boxes
Make Letter Boxes to help practice recognizing the sounds for each letter.
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Activity: Hands-On Letter Learning
Use play dough to shape letters, then play a letter guessing game.
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Cook Up Math Skills with a Kids' Granola Recipe
Cooking with your child can be a great way to reinforce early math skills such as measuring and counting. Try this easy granola recipe that's fun for kids to make and eat!
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Activity: What's missing?
Let your child practice number sequencing by playing fill-in-the-blank on the refrigerator door.
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Activity: Counting on science
Combine science and nature to help your child count.
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Activity: LeapFrog!
This number learning activity will keep them hopping!
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Activity: Snack math
Snack time is the perfect time for addition practice.
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Activity: Ten buttons
Use buttons to teach your child the different number combinations that add up to 10.
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Activity: How many scoops does it take?
Teach volume and capacity by encouraging your child to guess how many scoops of rice will fill different size containers.
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Activity: Block power
Block out time for playting with blocks! Blocks are great math tools.
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Activity: Trace and sort shapes
Give your child practice recognizing different shapes.
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Activity: Measure for measure
Armed with a ruler or tape measure, set your child loose to measure the world.
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Activity: Bean counters
Help your child establish the the one-to-one connection between number and object.
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Activity: Will it float?
Use this simple experiment to introduce your child to basic science skills.
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Activity: Sun pictures
Create rudimentary photographs with your child and teach her the power of the sun.
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Activity: Habitat mural
Give your child the chance to explore ecological diversity with this activity.
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Activity: Volcanic action
Simulate volcanic action in your own backyard as you stimulate your child's interest in science.
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Activity: Tweet Tweets - Homemade Bird Feeder
Create some tasty treats for the wildlife in your child’s own backyard.
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Activity: Garden on a windowsill
This activity introduces your child to botany, demonstrating how roots absorb water and anchor a plant in the ground.
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Activity: Farmers' market
Take a field trip with your child and explore how food gets to the dinner table.
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Activity: African safari
Play traditional games and hear stories from other parts of the world to increase geographic literacy.
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Shower Curtain Village
Make a community playmat with your child from an inexpensive shower curtain liner. This creative activity builds map skills and can help your child become more aware of the purpose of various buildings in your community.
