🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop

• 🏃 Gross Motor Skills — Running, jumping, hopping, and climbing build the large muscle strength, coordination, and body control that physical activities, sports, and even handwriting readiness depend on.
• 🤸 Flexibility & Agility — Stretching, bending, and quick direction changes develop flexibility and agility — the physical qualities that support athletic movement, injury prevention, and the body confidence that active children carry through life.
• 🤝 Social Skills & Teamwork — Physical games with partners or groups teach children to cooperate, cheer for others, follow a leader, and recover from competitive disappointment — the social-emotional skills that classroom cooperation requires.
• 🌱 Lifelong Active Habits — Children who have joyful physical experiences in the preschool years are dramatically more likely to be active adolescents and adults — making every positive movement experience an investment in lifelong health.

If you’re looking for a fun indoor activity to do with your preschooler, look no further than your imagination. Enlist your preschooler’s help as well, and together you can build a fun preschool jumping game.

Preschool Jumping Game Promotes Learning

Who says that fitness and learning can’t happen at the same time? With the preschool jumping game, your child will develop coordination and build stamina, while learning something along the way. With brightly colored jumping “mats” that you and your preschooler create, fitness will be fun and educational.

Materials You’ll Need

Put on your crafty hat for this one, because you’ll be creating brightly colored mats to use for the game. Gather the following together:

Construction paper or card stock
Markers
Crayons
Stickers and other decorations
Glue
Magazines
Scissors
Contact paper (clear)

Getting Started

Begin by brainstorming with your preschooler about possible ideas for your jumping mats. This may include shapes that you cut out or draw on the paper, animals, colors, letters, instruments, and more. Have your child help draw the pictures or find pictures in magazines or online that can be glued to the paper. For sturdier mats, use clear contact paper to laminate them for future use.

Playing the Preschool Jumping Game

Let the fun begin! Spread the mats out on the floor and call out a mat for your child to hop to – name a color, letter, number or animal (or whatever else you’ve created). Continue calling out items and letting your preschooler jump from mat to mat. When you yell “freeze,” your preschooler must stand still like a statue. This signals the end of the round – while there is no clear winner in this preschool fitness activity, your child will be having so much silly fun they won’t even focus on winners/losers.

More Preschool Jumping Fun

Add another layer of fun to your preschool jumping game by having your child perform when they hop to a mat. For instance:

If they land on a number, have them count to that number (forward or backward)
If they land on an animal, pretend to be that animal
If they land on a letter, name something that begins with the letter
If they land on an instrument, pretend to play that instrument

For additional fun, add some music to your hopping game. This activity provides plenty of opportunities for silly movement and learning at the same time.

I'm Wendy Michaels, the Preschool Fitness writer and associate editor for PreschoolRock.com. With an active preschooler of my own, I've experienced how easy it is to include exercise and healthy habits into a preschooler's daily activities. I'd love to hear more about your ideas for promoting fitness with your own preschooler. Please contact me with any suggestions, ideas or questions.