🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop

🎨 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.

🎯 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.

📐 Spatial Reasoning — Thinking about how objects relate in space — fitting shapes together, building structures, filling containers — develops the spatial intelligence that predicts success in mathematics and STEM fields.

🔁 Cause & Effect Thinking — Noticing that one action produces a predictable result — mixing colors, toppling a tower, adding water to powder — is the earliest form of scientific and logical thinking.

Your children won't want Santa Claus and his reindeer to pass over your house this year, so make up some edible reindeer food that your preschooler will enjoy making (and eating too) this year. The great preschool food fun activity takes only minutes to make and can be done alone or with other children or adults.

What You Need

Medium plastic bowl

Dry oatmeal or other grain-filled cereal

Diced pieces of dried fruit such as apples, raisins or bananas

Colorful sugar crystals

Decorative holiday baggies and ties

What To Do

Step 1: Mix the oatmeal and dried fruit together in a bowl. Add only a touch of the sugar crystals for sparkling color.

Step 2: On Christmas Eve, sprinkle the reindeer food in the front and back yards.

Step 3: Go to bed and wait for Santa Claus to arrive. His reindeer will definitely have a treat that night, as will your preschooler while making and passing out the fare.

Give Some Of It Away As Gifts

Package up some of the Magical Reindeer Food ahead of time in the baggies and pass out in your preschooler's classroom or to neighbors in a 'You've Been Gifted' surprise bag.

More Christmas Preschool Activities 'You've Been Gifted' Christmas Preschool Activity

Want to surprise your friend or neighbor for Christmas? This delightful preschool activity combines a lesson in art with one in sharing and giving.

Preschool Advent Calendars

One of the ways to count down the days until Christmas is through an Advent Wreath and Advent Calendar, which in the Christian faith traditionally has dealt with the Nativity and birth of Jesus Christ. This simple preschool activity will allow your child to learn the story of Advent.

Christmas Gifts From The Heart

Nothing says "I love you" more than making a homemade gift for someone you care about. This preschool activity will allow your child to search deep within himself to find the perfect gift without spending much money.

I'm Mary Beth P. Adomaitis, the Preschool Activities writer 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.

Helpful Tips for Parents - Rainy days are activity opportunities, not obstacles. Build an indoor obstacle course, create a fort, or set up a water tray in the bathtub. - Photograph your child's activity setups and creations — the photo record becomes a source of pride and helps children revisit and extend earlier play ideas. - Mix active and quiet activities through the day to match your child's natural energy rhythms: active in the morning, quieter after lunch. - Simple is better. The most educational activities for preschoolers — blocks, sand, water, paint, books — are also the most affordable. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Are screens acceptable as a preschool activity? The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends limiting screen-based media to 1 hour per day of high-quality, co-viewed content for children aged 2–5, and avoiding screens except video-calling for children under 2. The quality of content and whether a parent is watching and discussing together matters enormously — passive, commercial, or violent screen content has negative effects; educational co-viewed content has minimal harm. Screens are not a substitute for the physical, social, and creative activities that develop preschool brains. ### How do I handle the mess from activities without discouraging my child? Establish a predictable cleanup routine rather than reacting to mess with visible frustration — your emotional response to mess teaches the child's relationship to mess. Contain messy activities to mess-appropriate spaces (outside, a table covered with a vinyl cloth, the bathtub). Make cleanup part of the activity, not a punishment for making it. Children who participate in cleanup develop responsibility; children who are sent away while adults clean up in frustration learn that making things is risky. Related reading: See also our pretend play guide and our sorting activities for more ideas on this topic.