Creative Activities for Preschoolers at Home

We love Mo Willems books and are so excited to be sponsored by Disney-Hyperion for the #ReadMo Ambassador program! Regardless I only recommend products and brands we truly love.

Maddie Grace has been a ‘hands on’ type of kid her entire life. She’s not a sit down and watch TV type of person. She wants to cook something, or make sculptures, or practice gymnastics all the time. She always wants to play pretend and assigns roles to everyone around her. It can be exhausting, yes, but I love it about her and it’s a lot of fun to watch her do these things. Mom and dad definitely never get a break, but why would we want one? I’ve also noticed that where she struggles with some things (letters and numbers mainly), she really excels at anything creative and artistic. She has an imagination well beyond her years. Because I see this in her and I really want to focus on her strengths and building up the things she loves, I’m always looking for creative activities that we can do together during her time at home. Here are some things that have worked well for us:

Activity Books

Maddie Grace isn’t always one to sit down and focus, but she will when she’s doing art or workbooks! Our favorite is the Mo Willems We Are in an Art-ivity Book (an Elephant & Piggie Book) which combines the two. It’s interactive, engaging, and has her favorite characters in it as well as a new one that we all thought was cute – Art Vaark. The book does a great job of introducing kids to a variety of art styles and has a ton of fun activities from coloring to cutting out figures. We already love everything Mo Willems and Elephant & Piggie, and I’ve really never seen a workbook that is appropriate for a preschooler that contains so many interactive activities. Maddie Grace has been requesting it on a daily basis and I highly recommend it to other parents of creative preschoolers out there. It’s in stores now so make sure you check it out!

Backyard Scavenger Hunts

Our backyard is basically the universe for Maddie Grace’s insane imagination. One second we are on a pirate ship, the next we are exploring in the jungle, and next we are on a plane to the beach. Being outdoors for some reason just sets her free to do all these cool adventures, and I love really finding ways to further delve into that. One way recently is with backyard scavenger hunts. We will come up with a list of things to find in the backyard (she usually calls the list our treasure map) and we set off to find them. They include leaves of a certain shape/color, branches, animals, nuts, and even sometimes lost toys that I know are out there. I really like doing this because yes we are using imagination and just being outside which is always good, but having the scavenger hunt adds a level of organization and guidelines for her to follow for it which I think is really good for her.

Cook Together

I’ve always enjoyed getting creative in the kitchen. And Maddie Grace seems to take after me in this way. She wants to help measure everything, and is always suggesting flavors and spices to throw into our recipes. Sometimes they are terrible ideas, and sometimes they are good. But she loves when she gets to decide what we are putting in and coming up with what we are making. I love encouraging her to do this as well. Because in real life you don’t always have to follow recipes and you can create your own dishes, and I want to get this into her head at an early age! Plus while doing so she’s learning about numbers when we count the eggs, and measuring out water into measuring cups. She’s learning about science when she sees how mixing different ingredients causes different reactions. And it’s a great bonding activity for the two of us!