We’ve all been spending more time at home recently, and that’s especially true in the winter. While outdoor play is healthy and necessary, sometimes staying indoors is the only option. But just because you’re inside doesn’t mean the fun and learning has to stop! We’ve compiled a list of 28+ indoor educational activities for preschoolers that your 3 and 4-year-olds will absolutely love. From energy-busting gross motor activities to quiet-time threading and fine motor practice, you’ll find lots of fun options to keep your child engaged.
These easy indoor educational activities will save the day when you need an idea fast!
Indoor Educational Activities for Preschoolers
We have a lot of fun options for indoor activities that are engaging and educational. You’ll find some of our favorites below.
Milk Magic Science Experiment
Our Milk Magic Science Experiment is a simple and fun way to introduce your preschooler to chemical reactions and colors. The fun thing about it is that you can do this every season or holiday, changing out the colors to make it look more festive. Red and blue are great for patriotic holidays, while red and green are perfect for Christmas!
Winter Preschool Themes
Need some inspiration for your homeschool or preschool classroom? Our Winter Preschool Themes post offers more than 35 fun winter themes that preschoolers will just love! Ideas include polar bears, hibernation, animal tracks, and so much more. You’ll find plenty of interesting ideas to engage your little learners.
Unicorn Science Activity
If your child loves unicorns, you must try this colorful, fizzy Unicorn Science Activity. All you need is a unicorn mold and common household ingredients to set up this fun experiment for your preschooler. It’s your typical baking soda and vinegar reaction with a frozen, colorful twist.
Snowflake Art
Children who love art will have a blast with our Snowflake Art Activity. Kids can trace large decorative snowflakes and fill them in with paint or simply paint their own designs freestyle. There’s no wrong way to do this simple art process activity. It’s simply an invitation to play with snowflakes, to study their design, and to just be creative!
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For even more ideas to engage your curious preschooler, check out the indoor educational activities below!
More Fun Indoor Educational Activities
STEM Challenges with Popsicle Sticks from teachingideas.ca: Use plastic or paper cups and popsicle sticks to see who can build the biggest tower! This STEM activity works at home or in the classroom and can be a great team-building exercise for students or siblings. Popsicle sticks help stabilize the levels, particularly for younger children who have never stacked cups before. Allow for plenty of time for the children to explore the materials and learn how best to stack them.
Moving Body Gross Motor Game from lifeovercs.com: Wiggle your elbow, twist your hips, and point your foot! It may sound silly, but kids will get a kick out of this fun gross motor game that gets them moving from head to toe. And it’s simple for busy moms to set up, too. Just print the paper dice, assemble them, and you’re ready to play!
Dinosaur Tangrams from simpleeverydaymom.com: Tangram puzzles are a fun way to get your kids thinking about early math skills such as shapes. Use them to work on problem-solving, sorting, counting, and other valuable skills.
Caterpillar Pom Pom Mats from craftplaylearn.com: Practice color matching and work on fine motor skills simultaneously. Use tongs or tweezers to grab pom-poms to place on the appropriate color on the caterpillar mat. Of course, your child can use their fingers, too.
Printable Penny Spinner from littlebinsforlittlehands.com: Spinners are a lot of fun for kids, and you probably remember spinning pennies yourself when you were a kid. Make that activity a little more colorful and fun with these printable penny spinners! Color each section a different color or draw designs on them. Insert the penny and take them for a spin.
Name Hop Gross Motor Activity from fantasticfunandlearning.com: It’s so important for kids to practice the spelling of their names. This name hop activity is a fun way to do it! Put the letters of your child’s name on paper plates, put them on the floor, and let your child hop to it! This is also an engaging way to practice the spelling of sight words with older children.
Number Treasure Hunt from team-cartwright.com: Number sense activities like this one are important for building early math skills. Adding numbers to a sensory bin provides preschoolers with fine motor skills practice, number recognition, and sensory stimulation. It’ll also keep the kids busy for a while, which is perfect for keeping kids away from screens!
Fun Educational Activities
Polar Bear Activities and Books for Preschool from thepreschooltoolboxblog.com: The free polar bear resources available here will help you make a fun polar bear unit for your preschooler. Read lots of polar bear books, count polar bear paws for some math practice, and follow polar bear tracks to get the kids moving indoors.
Preschool Math with Magnetic Numbers by fromengineertosahm.com: Introduce numbers to your preschooler in fun, simple ways. Magnetic numbers help kids identify and learn to recognize numbers. Make sure your magnetic set has more than one of each number to practice number matching.
Cars Color Learning Activity from lorenaylennox.com: Practice colors in Spanish with toy cars! Odds are, if you have preschoolers at home, you probably have plenty of toy cars, too. Use them to practice the colors in Spanish (or in any other language your little one is learning). Park cars on the appropriate color name. Isn’t that easy and fun?
DIY Balance Scales from gosciencekids.com: Which item weighs more? This simple balance scale is easy to set up, and your child will enjoy running around the house to find different things to put on the scale. It’s a cute way to introduce your toddler or preschooler to physics concepts, i.e., the bucket that is heavier is lower.
Indoor Games for Kids
Solar System Button Snake from schooltimesnippets.com: Learn about the order of the planets and practice threading at the same time. Kids will get fine motor practice while threading the button and ribbon through each of the planets in order. This is a wonderful quiet time activity to wind down for a bit.
If I Built a House Preschool STEM Activity by fromengineertosahm.com: Are you working on getting your preschooler to listen to longer stories? This activity pairs beautifully with the book If I Built a House. This STEM activity keeps kids engaged with the story even after reading and is a fun way to build vocabulary related to the story. If you’re doing this activity at home, kids can even paint and decorate their houses once you’re finished “building” them.
Car STEM Experiments for Kids from taminglittlemonsters.com: Start introducing physics to your kids from a young age. This simple STEM activity beautifully illustrates the need for energy to move and the concept of gravitational potential energy. Of course, your preschooler may not understand the technical vocabulary, but you’ll be surprised at how quickly they catch on to the concepts!
Learning Activities for Preschoolers
Bilingual Painters Tape Activities from chalkacademy.com: Do you have painter’s tape on hand? It is a valuable learning tool with lots of potential. Make a hopscotch grid, practice forming Chinese letters, organize cars by color, practice shapes, and so much more. Line jumping is another fun activity for preschoolers that’ll help them get their wiggles out when you’re stuck indoors.
Sun and Planets Matching Game from simplefunforkids.com: Practice matching the sun and the planets to learn their names or put the cards in order to learn where each planet is in the solar system. You’ll find so many creative uses for these matching cards.
Learn Numbers with Tape from howwelearn.com: Here’s another fun option for painter’s tape. Practice number sense using tape and gross motor activities like walking or jumping to each number or fine motor activities like tracing them with a paintbrush.
DIY Stethoscope for Kids from team-cartwright.com: Preschoolers are just learning about how their bodies work, and they’ll find listening to heartbeats really fascinating! You can do this by building your own simple stethoscope using funnels, paper towel tubes, and a bit of tape to hold it all together. Kids can even use paint, markers, or stickers to decorate their stethoscopes. Fun!
Walk the Line Activity from littlebinsforlittlehands.com: Who knew painter’s tape was so versatile? Here are even more ideas for using it, including walking the line, jumping, rolling a weighted ball, following the lines to collect Easter eggs, and so much more.
Indoor Activities at Home
Lego Color Sorting Toss from lorenaylennox.com: Grab some bins and your kiddo’s Lego Duplos to set up a color sorting station. Simply toss the like colors with like in the bins. You may want to label the bins with the appropriate color if your bins are the same color.
Ocean Pattern Block Mats from simpleeverydaymom.com: Perfect for an ocean-themed preschool unit, these pattern block mats will give your preschooler a much-needed break from worksheets while still engaging their problem-solving and math skills. Laminate them to use year after year with your kids at home or in the classroom.
Bird Eating Worms Activity from prekinders.com: Work on fine motor skills using pipe cleaners and clothespins. The segmented pipe cleaners serve as the worms, and the clothespin is the bird. Move each to the basket until they’re all collected.
Preschool Activities
Rainbow Bears Color Printable from simplefunforkids.com: If you have a toddler or preschooler, you probably have counting bears on hand already! Use them along with this free printable to practice color matching. If you don’t have the rainbow bears, pom-poms, toy cars, and other household objects work just fine, too.
Dinosaur Color Match from craftplaylearn.com: And here’s yet another color match that’s perfect for preschoolers! This one features colorful dinos, which boys and girls will love.
Not ready to set up an activity yet? Pin this list of indoor educational activities for preschoolers so you’ll have plenty of ideas handy when your little one wants to play.
Educational Activities for Kids
Click Here for Over 60+ Indoor Games and Activities for Kids
Winter Preschool Activities
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