Learn 3 new activities that can help preschoolers play and learn! We tried these with our students at Cathy’s Nursery School. Each activity helped teach them different skills and are great for early childhood education. They also kept their focus and allowed kids to be creative and have fun at the same time!

Learning Letters with Alligators

These wooden alligators helped with learning! This week we were focusing on the letter “A” in Nursery School. The children learned all about alligators and were excited to color and take home their own alligator to play with. I enjoyed how each alligator was as unique as the child who made it. Once they were done coloring them with washable markers, they could immediately play with them!

Interlocking Stars Manipulative Set

This beginner-friendly manipulative set has large, easy-to-hold star pieces in bright colors that interlock from all directions, perfect for preschool kids to explore building, patterning, and open-ended design. It promotes fine motor development, spatial reasoning, color recognition, and creative play through building and experimenting.

Give children a pile of interlocking stars and invite them to create whatever they imagine, from simple shapes to animals and colorful patterns. Encourage them to count how many they used, sort by color, or build tall towers. This promotes fine motor skills, spatial reasoning, and creative thinking!

Pattern Play

Unifex cubes are so easy for little hands, and they stick together really well. We started playing with them in a guided group setting, where the teacher worked with the children to talk about patterns. Each child then created their own pattern. Once their patterns were complete, they snapped them all together to make one long tower that we laid on the floor. They took turns lying next to the tower to see if they were taller than the tower!