Home Activities For 3 year old & 4 year old Children

Post-It Note Scavenger Hunts
What I love about these simple educational scavenger hunts is that you can make them as long and complicated as you want, meeting your 3-year-old or 4-year-old right where they are at with their letter recognition and beginning math skills.

How to play:
Write letters or numbers or draw shapes on individual Post-It Notes and stick them around your home. Invite your child to find them all!

Variations:

• Make it more accessible for beginners by hunting only for the first few letters in your child’s name.
• Focus on matching upper and lowercase letters by writing out letters in both cases, hiding one ( for example, an uppercase B) while you keep the lowercase b in a “home base.” Invite your child to find the matches.
• Work on subitizing or counting. Write numbers 1-6 on the Post-It Notes and hide them. Roll a die, and then search for that number.
• For children who have mastered the alphabet, use family names instead! These are often the first words children recognize.

Shaving Cream Letters

I encourage parents to try this at home because writing ( forming letters) with your finger is much easier than using a tool like a crayon or chalk. There is no rush to learn handwriting, but children often want to know how, and research supports the idea that letter formation activities help with letter recognition. This is a great activity – it doesn’t force them to do anything they aren’t ready for.

For this sensory literacy activity, you will need some shaving cream and a cookie sheet or another smooth surface like a tray. Spread some shaving cream on the tray or sheet evenly. Show your child that you can use your finger to write letters in the shaving cream by pressing hard on the surface. Start with the letters of their name, writing both the upper and lowercase versions of these letters. You can “erase” between letters by spreading the shaving cream smoothly over the surface.

Letter Find & Spray

Gather some sidewalk chalk and a water spray bottle, then head outside. Write letters on the ground and invite your child to play. Call out a letter and have your child spray it with the spray bottle.

Meal Time Restaurant Play
Pretend play is an effective way to develop many skills. All you need is a clipboard, some paper, a pencil, and a child who is eager to take on the role of a server. Invite your child to be the server, taking orders and writing them down. It doesn’t matter if they can write recognizable letters—it’s all part of the play, and play is a form of practice. If your child is interested in writing more, you can prepare a menu in advance along with a check for whoever is “paying”!

Letter Hunt In A Book

Write out a few letters of the alphabet on a Post-It Note. Sit down with a familiar book. You won’t be reading it, just using it to find letters. Look for each letter on the Post-It Note. Turn the page from time to time for a new search area. Need to make it more accessible for a beginner? Search only for the letters in your child’s name. Look for sight words instead of letters for children who need a challenge.

Go find 5 or 4 or 10

This simple game is a great way to get your child moving and learning. It’s a lot of fun to play outdoors. All you need to do is ask your child, “Can you go grab five rocks?” Your child will then search for and collect five rocks, and you can count them together. You can also play indoors using items like socks, books, or blocks. Just keep repeating the activity with amounts of objects!

Variations:
Swap in shapes, textures, and more: “Go grab three things that are square, go grab four soft things, go grab three things that start with this sound….”This exploration boosts vocabulary and prior knowledge and works on counting, too!