🎓 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.

🏃 Gross Motor Development — Large-movement activities develop the coordination, balance, and muscle strength that underpin physical confidence and school-readiness fitness.

💬 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.

One of the skills a preschooler can learn early is his or her colors. What better way to do that then by having them identify colors of their choice and putting it all down in a notebook to carry with him or her. This activity can be done at home or while out at a friend or relative's house when the preschooler needs to be kept busy. It will also help develop his or her cutting and gluing development skills.

What You Will Need

Any kind of spiral notebook

Old magazines or colorful sale fliers

Safety scissors

Tape or glue

Crayons or markers

How To Do It Step 1: Have your preschooler pick a color that he or she likes -- primary colors work best at first.

Step 2: Help him or her go through old magazines, sale catalogs or store fliers and find pictures that have those colors in them.

Step 3: Cut out the pictures and glue or tape them into the notebook.

Step 4: Help your preschooler write out the name of the color on the top of the page with that same color crayon or marker.

Step 5: Decorate the front of the notebook any way your preschooler would like.

Make It Even More Exciting

Find a theme -- i.e. toys, food, clothes, etc. and each week change what type of pictures you are looking for. If your child can't find a certain picture with that color in it, have them draw it themselves.

As Your Preschooler Learns to Read and Write

When you are done with colors, you can do shapes and even the letters of the alphabet and numbers. Learning to sound out the pictures you are cutting may take a little more time and may be a bit more challenging, but nonetheless, still fun for you preschooler. This notebook will be wonderful to refer back to when your child is studying colors, shapes, numbers and letters in school.

Other Preschool Activities

Have your child bring the notebook and some crayons or colored pencils on a road trip. Along the way, have your preschooler refer back to the notebook when he or she sees street signs, cars, trucks or other signs along the way. Have him or her draw a picture with the corresponding crayon or pencil.

Another Educational Preschool Activity Dixie Cup Alphabet

Need something a little different for your preschooler's bedtime routine? This educational preschool activity is as simple as giving your child a drink of water and recognizing the letters of the alphabet at the same time.

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.

Helpful Tips for Parents - Outdoor activities should be a daily priority year-round. Research consistently links outdoor time to better attention, mood, and sleep in preschoolers. - Narrate what your child is doing during activities: "You're sorting the red blocks from the blue ones." This vocabulary exposure accelerates language development. - The clean-up is part of the activity. Involve children in restoring the space — it develops responsibility and makes future activities easier to launch. - 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. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How long should a preschooler's activity session last? Most preschoolers engage most deeply in 20–40 minute activity windows. Shorter sessions don't allow for the warming-up and deepening that makes activities richest; longer ones risk overtiredness. Watch the child's engagement rather than the clock — the right time to end is when engagement is still high, before it drops. ### What activities are best for a preschooler with high energy? High-energy preschoolers benefit most from activities that have a physical component: outdoor obstacle courses, dancing, chalk activities, nature scavenger hunts, and water play. When indoor time is required, use the whole body: yoga poses, freeze dance, and rolling/throwing activities in a hallway. Matching the activity intensity to the child's energy level prevents meltdowns far better than expecting stillness. Related reading: See also our chalk activities and our pretend play guide for more ideas on this topic.