Move & Learn Their Way Through Preschool

Click here to read Move & Learn Their Way Through Preschool on Hands On As We Grow®

Have fun moving and learning all the tools a preschooler will need. From letter sounds to science projects.

Get your preschooler active and moving while learning everything they will need to know. From letters, to number, science and more!

Preschoolers are learning a lot every day. Especially when they are in school.

When they’re home, they are too, of course.

We have the most fun learning and reinforcing what they learned in school when we do activities that require movement.

Hence, the move and learn. Plus its an added bonus for me, because, well, they have a lot of energy they need to burn.

These learning areas are geared toward preschoolers.

But don’t let that deter you from trying it with a toddler!

Because I just bet they might be able to do it too, especially if you twist it up a bit for their learning development.

This post is kicking off a Move & Learn series I’m doing with The Pleasantest Thing and Coffee Cups & Crayons.

We’ll be exploring learning through movement in the upcoming weeks.

Today we’re just kicking off with a lot of fun move and learn activities.

I’m sharing preschooler activities, while The Pleasantest Thing had a move and learn activities for toddlers post, and Coffee Cups and Crayons is sharing move and learn activities for kindergartners.

Download the Move & Learn Week of Activities

Here we go! Let’s move and learn our way through preschooler with these gross motor learning activities for preschoolers.

Practice writing skills.

Trace lines on the driveway to practice writing in a big way. Or set up a cave and have them draw on the ‘walls’.
Walk along letters in tape the way they’d write them to learn the movements. – Words of His Heart
Write with ice on a warm day outside on anything, cardboard, sidewalk, fence, whatever you can find! – Cultivated Lines

Learn to spell their name!

Spell out their name along strings strung around the room!
Play name basketball. Spell their name with balls! – Toddler Approved
This giant connect the dots to spell your name gets preschoolers to hop, jump, roll and dance to spell them name over and over.
Lots of name activities, not all moving, but lots of fun! 35 Name Activities for Preschoolers.

Begin small! Learn lowercase letters.

Set up a lowercase scavenger hunt maze to find their way through and match up the letters with the uppercase ones.
Match lowercase and uppercase letters on the sidewalk with lines.
Go on a letter scavenger hunt and match the found letters with their lowercase counterparts.

Let’s learn letter sounds!

Play alphabet ball! It can be tailored to whatever you’re learning, but The Pleasantest Thing guest posted here with a fun way to throw a ball and learn letter sounds
Go on a hunt around the yard for beginning letter sounds and have a toy wash.
Write out words on the sidewalk and walk along them sounding them out, focusing on the letter sounds. – Coffee Cups & Crayons
Even more ways to learn letters, letter sounds and lowercase letters, not all gross motor activities, but all fun learning the alphabet! 50 Incredible Alphabet Activities for Preschoolers.

Count all the way to 20.

Make a scavenger hunt to match up found numbers to the ‘dice’ number.
Make a grid of numbers to count and find their way through to 20.
Tape a maze on the floor and number it to 20, have them count their way through.
More counting and number activities for preschoolers. Not all moving and learning, but definitely learning! 40 Number Activities for Preschoolers.

Expand and practice color and shape recognition.

Roll a ball or hop from shape to shape. Tape out various shapes on the floor. – 1+1+1=1
Make a hopscotch with shapes! – Creative Family Fun
Play rainbow games. Rainbow, May I? or have Rainbow Races! – Coffee Cups and Crayons
Go on a scavenger hunt for the colors of the rainbow.

What’s that? Body Parts.

Make moving body parts dice and have preschoolers roll the dice and follow the directions for each body part. – Life over C’s
Pop bubbles with a body part! – Motherhood on a Dime
Dance with a body part. – Strings, Keys and Melodies

Experiment, predict, observe. Science projects.

Test out Newton’s Law of Motion with this balloon rocket race experiment! Try it inside or outside.
What’s heaviest? – Science Sparks
Paint and make chemical reactions with baking soda and vinegar.

Don’t forget to get creative! Big Art!

Draw full self-portraits.
Kick and paint. Gather balls and other objects to kick across the paper full of paint.
Get target practice in with this cotton ball throw painting idea. – The Chaos and the Clutter
Plenty more creative ideas in the Big, Big Art Collection. There’s 40 ideas!