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It is essential to keep young children engaged through activities as their mind and body need proper stimuli for healthy growth and development. Physical movement keeps the body healthy and boosts brain development. Creative activities improve their imagination, make them feel good, increase their self-confidence, and develop a sense of independence.
Educational and Learning Activities
Here are some educational and learning activities for 5-year-olds:
1. Word Board
This is one of the simple activities for 5-year-olds at home that can be done with the easily available material.
How to Play?
Use a bulletin board and write down words on strips of paper. The words should be those that your child comes across in everyday life during play time, mealtimes or in school. Put a picture next to the word to indicate what it means. For example, truck, car, bus, toy, daddy, mummy, rain, sun, etc.
What Does it Teach?
It improves their reading ability.
2. Skip Counting
This activity is one of the simple math activities for 4-5-year-olds.
How to Play?
Draw or stick pictures of objects like apples, cars or butterflies on cards to help your child count in twos, threes, etc. For example, to do skip counting by twos, stick two apples on the first card, four apples on the second, six apples on the third, and so on.
What Does it Teach?
It improves their math skills.
3. Dice Game
This game is a math activity that can be played with easily available items in the house.
How to Play?
You need an ice-cube tray, a couple of game dice, whiteboard markers, and kitchen tissue. Put one of the dice into one ice-cube hole and the other into the adjacent hole. Use the marker to make plus, minus, and equal-to signs between the holes where the dice are placed. Help your child add or subtract the number indicated on the dice to arrive at the answer.
What Does it Teach?
Improved basic arithmetic skills
4. Butterfly life-cycle activity
This activity can be done using craft paper or different shaped pasta.
How to Play?
Draw the stages of a butterfly’s life cycle on a chart paper. Use craft paper or pasta shapes to make the shapes of the egg, caterpillar, cocoon and butterfly.
What Does it Teach?
Teaches kids about the life-cycle of a butterfly.
5. Junior Scrabble
It is structurally similar to regular scrabble but designed for young kids.
How to Play?
The words are already printed on the board. All your five years old has to do is match the tiled letters on to the letters on the board.
What Does It Teach?
Improved vocabulary
Art and Craft Activities
Here are some examples of art and craft activities:
1. Origami
Origami or paper-folding is an activity that children will enjoy immensely.
How to Make?
You can use coloured origami paper, craft paper or plain old white sheets coloured with crayons for this. Teach your child how to fold paper to make interesting shapes like aeroplanes, rockets, boats, birds, etc.
What Does it Teach?
Improves spatial reasoning
2. Craft Box
This is one of the fun activities for 5-year-olds that helps them explore their creativity.
How to Make?
Fill up a craft box with supplies like pipe cleaners, craft eyes, colourful yarn, safety-scissors, coloured mini-puff balls, ice-cream sticks, felt squares, and tape. Let your child get creative with these. For example, your child can draw a garden scene or playground scene on paper and make it come alive by sticking green felt for grass, puff-balls for flowers and trees, etc.
What Does it Teach?
Improve the imagination and creativity of the child.
3. Squeeze Paint
Kids love this activity as it is a lot of fun and they can let their imagination run wild.
How to Make?
Put plain white glue in several empty, squeezable plastic containers and add various watercolours to make bottles of different coloured glue. Now let your child squeeze out various coloured patterns onto white chart paper and let it dry. This will make a colourful display piece once the glue has dried.
What Does it Teach?
It teaches them about colours and art.
4. Art with Seeds and Grains
This activity is fun to do for kids and can keep them engaged for hours.
How to Make?
Draw the shape of a flower or an animal like a dinosaur, duck or dog on a sheet of paper. Spread glue inside the shape and ask your child to fill it with seeds and grains to make the picture beautiful. You can use bird seeds, toor dal, masoor dal, moong dal, chana dal etc. to fill the picture.
What Does it Teach?
Kids develop better hand-eye coordination when they pick up little seeds and glue them onto paper.
5. Parts of a Plant Craft
This is a simple craft idea that is also a learning activity.
How to Make?
Use markers, ice-cream sticks and coloured paper to make a picture of a plant on chart paper. Once this is done, label all the parts such as flower, petal, stem, leaf, root, etc. and teach your child the part of a plant.
What Does it Teach?
This teaches the kids about the different parts of a plant.
Fine and Gross Motor Activities
Here are some activities that boost the development of your child’s fine and gross motor skills:
1. Lego City
This activity makes kids use their hands, wrists, and fingers, thus helping them develop their fine motor skills.
How to Make?
Use legos, regular building blocks, toy cars, trucks, aeroplanes, and small animal and human-shaped toys to build a city. You can let the children use the entire room, including the bed and study table. They can make a parking garage to park trucks and cars, use railway lines and trains to build a railway crossing. They can also put little shapes of animals and humans in various places in their toy city.
What Does it Teach
This activity makes kids use all the muscles of their body, thus helping them gross and fine motor skills.
2. Barbie Dress-up
This is another activity that helps children develop their fine and gross motor skills.
How to Make?
Kids love to play with dolls. Create a theme such as a house party or day on the beach and help them dress up their dolls with dresses and accessories to suit the theme. Let them make up stories about each activity that the dolls are engaged in. They can also comb or braid the dolls’ hair and style it with tiny clips that come as doll accessories.
What Does it Teach?
The kids develop their fine motor skills when they work with tiny doll accessories to dress up the dolls.
3. Sorting Coloured Candy
This activity is excellent for helping kids develop their fine motor skills.
How to Make?
Give your kids a bowl full of coloured candy like jelly beans or gems. Ask them to sort them colour-wise and arrange them in different cups.
What Does it Teach?
This teaches kids about colours.
It also helps them develop their fine motor skills as they use their fingers and hands to sort the little candies.
4. Art using Leaves and Petals
This is a fun activity that helps children develop both gross and fine motor skills.
How to Make?
First, ask your child to go out to the garden and collect different leaves, petals and tiny sticks. Next, use chart paper to draw an outline of scenery, flowers or a tree. Now spread glue over the outline and stick real petals, tiny branches and leaves to form a beautiful picture.
What Does it Teach?
This helps kids develop both fine and gross motor skills.
It also teaches them about nature and plants.
5. Bubble Art Using Straws
This is an activity that 5-year-olds find immensely enjoyable as they love blowing bubbles!
How to Make?
Fill several cups with mild soap solution and add drops of different food colour to it to make colourful liquid soap. Let your child blow bubbles into the cup with a straw. Make sure the child does not sip or swallow the soap solution. When the bubbles rise to the surface of the cup, place a white card over them. As the bubbles burst, they leave a colourful imprint on the card, making beautiful patterns.
What Does it Teach?
This helps kids use the muscles of their hands, fingers and lip, thus helping them develop fine motor skills.
Montessori Activities
Here are some Montessori activities for young children:
1. Things that Go
Young children love vehicles. This activity will keep them constructively engaged for hours.
How to Make?
Get them vehicles of various types, like cars, trains, trucks, diggers, buses, auto rickshaws, etc. Let them play with the toys.
What Does it Teach?
This teaches kids about various means of transport and the types and uses of different vehicles.
2. Animal Habitats
Animal habitats are fun to make and can keep your child engrossed for a long time.
How to Make?
Collect plastic animal toys like bears, apes, lions, giraffes, polar bears etc. Help your child use cotton and thermocol balls to make an Arctic habitat covered with snow and icebergs. You can put toys such as polar bears and arctic foxes in the habitat and teach your kids about how these animals live in such places. Similarly, you can make an African or Amazonian jungle.
What Does it Teach?
This teaches kids about animals and their habitats.
3. Study of Colours
This activity is fun for young children as they love learning about colours.
How to Make?
Cover one or two colours at a time. If you are studying red, collect various things that are red, like a picture of a ladybug, a strawberry, etc. teach your child about that colour.
What Does it Teach?
This teaches kids about colours in nature.
Indoor Activities
Here are some indoor activities that can be performed in the comfort of your home:
1. Story Time
This is one of the best quiet time activities for 5-year-olds.
What to Do?
Use different voices, impressions and facial expressions to make the story more fun and animated.
What Does it Teach?
This activity helps you bond better with your child and teaches a love of reading.
2. Watching Favourite Shows
This is one of the perfect rainy day activities for 5-year-olds.
What to Do?
Pick a favourite animated movie such as Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, etc. and watch it with your child.
What Does it Teach?
The sad and happy moments in the movie will teach kids about emotions and how to handle them.
3. Building Blocks
This is an indoor activity that can keep your child usefully occupied for hours.
What to Do?
Give your child legos or building blocks and ask her to make different constructs with them.
What Does it Teach?
This can teach kids about the stability and balance of a construct and help them develop better hand-eye coordination.
Outdoor Activities
Here are some outdoor activities for 5-year-olds:
1.Sand Pit
Children love playing in the sand, so this will be an enjoyable activity for your child.
What to Do?
Get your child a sand castle building set and let her play in a sand pit with other children, building sand castles and shapes.
What Does it Teach
It teaches kids about the feel and texture of dry and wet sand and also about how to share things and play well with others.
2. Running through Sprinklers
This is a really fun thing to do for kids.
What to Do?
Turn on the garden sprinklers and let your child run through them, getting wet.
What Does it Teach
It teaches kids about water and balance. It also is immensely amusing for the children.
3. Bug Hunting
This is an interesting outdoor activity for young kids.
What to Do?
Go bug-hunting with your kid in the garden. Find different insects and explain about them to your child.
What Does it Teach?
It teaches children about nature and insects.
4. Gardening
This is an enjoyable activity and also is educational.
What to Do?
Get your child to help you with weeding the garden or planting a sapling.
What Does it Teach
It teaches kids about plants, soil and how plants grow.
5. Play Park
This is the best outdoor activity for kids.
What to Do?
Take your kids out to a play park and let them play with other children.
What Does it Teach?
It teaches kids about how to behave with peers in a social setting and teaches them to get along with other kids of similar age.
With these 26 activities, you’re bound to keep your kid occupied while at the same time taking care of their development.
It is important to give your child different games to play every now and then, because each one has the ability to develop 8 different kinds of ‘smarts’ in your child. To help nurture these ‘smarts’, get your hands on FirstCry Intellikit– a fun activity box that encourages learning through play. To know more or subscribe to the Intellikit, click here.
