What You Need

1/2 cup of butter, room temperature

1 egg

1 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/3 cup granulated sugar

2/3 cup brown sugar

1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/3 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup of chocolate chips -- any size or any flavor

1/4 cup of chopped walnuts

What To Do

Step 1: In large mixing bowl cream butter and sugars; beat in the egg and vanilla.

Step 2: In smaller bowl, sift together the flour, salt baking powder, and soda; stir into the first mixture, blending well.

Step 3: Stir in chocolate chips and nuts.

Step 4: Drop teaspoon-size balls of dough on ungreased cookie sheet. Place about 1 1/2 inches apart.

Step 5: Preheat oven to 350. Cook for about 8 minutes or until golden brown.

Step 6: Remove and put on cooling rack for about 15 minutes.

Step 7: Eat with a tall glass of cold milk.

Step 8: Makes one to two dozen cookies.

More Preschool Food Activities

Fun With Noodles

Let your preschooler experiment with textures, shapes, colors and smells with this fun food activity -- playing with pasta. Your child can spend hours creating art with cooked noodles.

S'mores Kabobs

Even if your weather doesn't permit you to barbecue anymore, you can still have fun, tasty s'mores made indoors without all the mess. The preschool food activity allows your child to be creative with only a few ingredients.

Harvest Marshmallow Pumpkins

One of the great things about autumn is the beautiful color in the scenery outdoors. Well bring that color indoors in an easy treat that will not only tempt your preschooler, but other adults too.

Hidden Treat Cupcakes

Nothing says surprise more than cupcakes with a special treat hidden within. This fun food is great to make for your family or for your preschooler's afterschool treat or a party.

Don't Throw These Snowballs Cookies

Nothing is more exciting to make during the winter than snowball cookies. This easy family favorite allows your preschooler to have fun making a tasty treat.

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.

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Helpful Tips for Parents

• Join the activity briefly, then step back. Your presence signals importance; your withdrawal enables independence. 5 minutes of participation often unlocks 30 minutes of independent play.

• Connect activities to real life: cooking math, laundry color sorting, grocery store counting. Embedded learning is the most transferable kind.

• Rotate activities every few weeks rather than making everything available at once. Novelty dramatically increases engagement and play depth.

• Allow enough time. Preschoolers need 20–40 minutes to reach deep play in any activity. Rushing to the next thing prevents the richest developmental work.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I get my preschooler to try new activities?

New activities need low-pressure introduction. Set the activity up invitingly and let the child approach at their own pace — forcing participation in new activities creates resistance. Joining the activity yourself (playing with the materials in their presence) is the most reliable way to ignite curiosity. A child who watches a parent enjoy something usually wants to try it.

How do I keep a preschooler engaged when they keep abandoning activities?

Short attention span for activities is developmentally normal in preschoolers and shortens further when activities are too easy or too difficult. The sweet spot is a challenge that requires real effort but is achievable. Also consider time of day — activities attempted during tired or hungry periods have dramatically shorter engagement windows. After-nap or mid-morning are typically the richest activity windows.

Related reading: See also our pretend play guide and our sorting activities for more ideas on this topic.

🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop

• 🤝 Social Skills — Activities done with others — siblings, classmates, or parents — teach children how to take turns, negotiate, collaborate, and read social cues that form the basis of healthy relationships.
• 🌈 Sensory Exploration — Safe exploration of varied textures, temperatures, and materials helps children build a rich sensory map of the world and supports self-regulation in children with sensory processing differences.
• 😌 Emotional Self-Regulation — Managing the feelings that arise during activities — frustration when something doesn't work, excitement, disappointment at the end — builds the self-regulation foundation that distinguishes emotionally ready kindergarteners.
• 🧠 Executive Function — Planning an activity, following multi-step directions, and seeing a project through to completion builds the executive function skills — working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control — that are the strongest predictors of school success.

Who doesn't love chocolate chip cookies! And with this recipe, you can make only a small amount -- enough for a small gift during the holidays.