Here are some great indoor boredom busters you can do with your preschooler. These engaging activities will help your 3-, 4-, or 5-year-old develop and grow in many ways, from improving hand and finger skills and expressing his creativity to learning about numbers, shapes, and letters.
- Form geometric shapes. Show your little one how to draw shapes like stars, triangles, and diamonds on paper, and then let him decorate the shapes, too, with markers, glitter, paint, or whatever you have on hand.
- Cut and paste paper. If you have child-safe scissors at home, your little one will enjoy cutting shapes from paper, and gluing them onto another sheet to make a collage. Another idea involves your preschooler cutting a hairstyle for a toilet paper roll “troll.” To do this, take a clean toilet paper roll and draw a face on the lower half using a black marker. Then cut long strands of hair by cutting it into the roll vertically. Once the troll is ready, let your preschooler cut the troll’s hair however he’d like to. Get ready for some crazy hairdos!
- Play card and board games. A great family activity can be playing simple card or board games that are suitable for your preschooler’s age and attention span. Just keep in mind that your child may get upset if he doesn’t win every game.
- Experiment with clay. Your preschooler will like making all kinds of shapes and balls with clay. One idea is to help him roll the clay into a large egg shape. Then let him make it into an “egg head” by adding colorful feathers as the hair, fake eyes or beans as the eyes, pipe cleaners as the mouth and ears, and a pom-pom as the nose.
- Draw and paint. Your child can have fun creating art with crayons, markers, or pencils. Or have him do some finger painting or painting with a brush (or other painting tools). Select a few artworks to put into a memory book, or display some on a wall or on the fridge.
- Make paper plate faces. If you have some paper plates at home, get out some arts and crafts supplies and let your preschooler decorate the plate. Let him use his imagination to add eyes, a nose, a mouth, rosy cheeks, and hair.
- Explore books that introduce concepts. As you pick out some books to read together, include some that cover concepts such as the days of the week, the seasons, size (e.g., big versus small), the alphabet, counting, and the names of geometric shapes, for example. The focus shouldn’t be on pressuring your preschooler to learn; rather, the books should be so engaging that your little one is interested in finding out more.