🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop

🖐️ Fine Motor Skills — Manipulating small objects, tools, and materials during hands-on activities builds the hand strength and finger dexterity children need for writing and self-care.

🎨 Creativity & Imagination — Open-ended activities that let children direct their own play grow creative thinking, original problem solving, and the confidence to express personal ideas.

💬 Language Development — Narrating play, hearing new vocabulary, and describing what they're doing dramatically expands children's language range and the sentence complexity they'll bring to reading and conversation.

🎯 Focus & Attention — Sustaining engagement with an activity long enough to complete it builds the voluntary attention control that children need for listening in class, reading, and all forms of academic learning.

Your preschooler will enjoy showing off his or her new homemade t-shirt created especially in honor of the new baby. Made with your preschooler's footprints, this shirt will definitely become a family keepsake.

What You Will Need

Washed baby's Onesie and child's t-shirt (get one size larger to allow for shrinkage)

Fabric paint or markers in a variety of colors

Preschooler's feet (and baby's feet once he or she is born)

How To Do It

Infant shirt:

Step 1: Pour fabric paint onto cookie sheet (the one with lips/sides) -- one bottle should be enough.

Step 2: After washing and ironing the Onesie (and making sure your preschooler's feet are clean), have your child step down firmly into paint with right foot.

Step 3: Lift child's foot and place on the shirt, in the middle but slightly to the right. Do the same with the left foot.

Step 4: Let stand about 24 hours or until paint is dry to the touch.

Step 5: The next day or once the paint has dried, use another color and print the following phrase on the back of the Onesie -- "My brother (or sister) walks all over me."

Step 6: Let dry overnight.

Preschool shirt:

Same method as above with the new baby, except you can print the wording on the front of the t-shirt above and/or below the footprints.

Washing The Shirts

Wash in cold water; line dry. In time, the paint will begin to wear, so you may only have your children wear them for special occasions.

Make The Shirts A Keepsake

After the baby is born, have portraits of the siblings taken. It will definitely be a conversation piece in the family for years to come.

Related Preschool Activities During Pregnancy Ideas

Top 10 Mommy and Me Activities

More than anything, your preschooler wants to spend as much time with Mom (Dad too) before his or her new baby arrives. Put aside a few hours a week just to spend that time alone with your preschooler doing all sorts fun activities including reading, baking and designing some fun items for the new sibling.

Welcome New Baby Book

Even though your preschooler probably can't write full sentences yet, he or she may be experiencing many feelings about the arrival of their new sibling. Let them express those feeling through pictures, stickers and drawing.I'm Mary Beth P. Adomaitis, the Preschool Activities writer and associate editor for Preschoolrock.com. As a mom of a preschooler, I love hearing from other parents and teachers of preschoolers. If you have any preschool activity ideas, suggestions or questions, feel free to contact me.

More Activities ideas · Browse all topics