Star + Fish = Starfish
Prep: 15 Minutes / Activity Time: 15 Minutes
Learning about compound words will help to build your child’s phonological awareness. Here’s a fun activity that uses oral as well as visual clues to help your child succeed.
At-Home Activities for 4-Year-Olds
Story Bags
Prep: 10-15 Minutes / Activity Time: 15-20 Minutes
You can provide inspiration for creative storytelling by just putting some items into a brown paper bag. The idea of opening up a bag to find surprises inside creates mystery and excitement, while the storytelling involves creativity, oral language skills and humor!
Little Chef
Prep: 5-10 Minutes / Activity Time: 15-20 Minutes
Many 4-year-olds love to imitate experiences they’ve seen in real life, and pretend play is a great way for your child to strengthen creativity and oral language skills. In this activity you'll transform your child into the next great chef!
Face Talks
Prep: 2-3 Minutes / Activity Time: 10-15 Minutes
Being able to detect others’ emotions through their facial expressions is a facet of nonverbal communication. This activity is a great way to find and identify facial expressions and leads to conversations about what the causes of certain emotions might be.
My Name is Magical!
Prep: None / Activity Time: 10-15 Minutes
Children like to see their names and like to write their names themselves. This activity will seem like magic to your child!
That’s My Name!
Prep: None / Activity Time: 10-15 Minutes
In the early stages of beginning writing, children may make letters incorrectly, but this improves as your child sees his name in print and is offered opportunities to write his name in fun ways. Help your child create a special name sign for his bedroom door with this activity.
Name That Word!
Prep: 1-5 Minutes / Activity Time: 5-10 Minutes
Four-year-olds love all sorts of games. We can teach little ones all about segmenting and blending sounds within words long before they learn to read with this fun puppet activity.
Guess My Word!
Prep: 2 Minutes / Activity Time: 8-10 Minutes
When you play simple word games with your 4-year-old, you are teaching him that spoken words are made up of individual sounds and that words can be broken into smaller parts. In this game, your child will learn to listen carefully to the first sound in a word and then “guess your word” by blending the remaining sounds together.
Bowl of Nonsense
Prep: 3 Minutes / Activity Time: 8-10 Minutes
If your preschooler delights in all things silly and fun, he will enjoy this game. As you play together, you will be helping your child pay attention to the ending sounds in words, and helping him discover what it means when we say that two words rhyme.
Match the Pins
Prep: 10-15 Minutes / Activity Time: 15-20 Minutes
This activity lets your child have some fine motor fun while reinforcing letter knowledge. Your child will match uppercase to lowercase letters using clothespins and cardboard.
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