Category: Activities

November provides a wonderful opportunity for parents to engage their preschoolers in outdoor activities that encourage a sense of wonder and exploration. Despite the cooler weather, there’s much to discover in the natural world during this transitional month. We’ve got a list of some exciting outdoor activities that you can enjoy with your preschooler, fostering their love for nature while working on their fine motor skills. These activities are great to do throughout the year as well to discuss the differences and similarities from season to season!

Leaf Scavenger Hunt

November brings a vibrant display of autumn leaves. Create a simple scavenger hunt by giving your child a list of leaf shapes or colors to find in your yard or a local park. This activity not only encourages observation but also enhances fine motor skills! If you want to look for more than just leaves, we recently posted a fall foraging scavenger hunt on our Instagram page!

Nature Art with Fallen Leaves

Collect a variety of fallen leaves from your yard or local park and use them to create beautiful nature-inspired artwork. You can make leaf rubbings, leaf collages, or even dip them in paint to create leaf stamps. If you’re looking to keep your little ones occupied even longer, have them catch the leaves you’re going to use as they’re falling from the trees!

Bird Watching

If you have a little one who is interested in animals, get involved in bird watching! You can set up a bird feeder in your yard and observe the different bird species that visit. You can visit your local library to find a simple bird guidebook or download an app to identify them with your preschooler. You may also even get a few different visitors like squirrels and chipmunks!

Nature Journaling

Give your preschooler a small notebook and some crayons or colored pencils. Encourage them to draw and write about the things they observe in nature. This can be a fun way to document their outdoor adventures and improve fine motor skills. This is a fun activity to do every month or every season so your little one can go back and see all of the changes that happen in nature throughout the year!

Nature’s Sound Safari

Close your eyes and listen to the sounds of nature around you. Encourage your child to identify the different sounds they can hear, such as chirping birds, rustling leaves, or flowing water. This activity hones their listening skills and awareness of their surroundings.

Create a Nature Collection

Collect small, interesting natural items like rocks, sticks, or pinecones during your outdoor explorations. Create a “nature collection” together. This can lead to discussions about different textures, shapes, and sizes while also promoting conversations about nature about changes you might see throughout the seasons.

Kids rooms change so often – colors, themes, layouts – that it can be very costly to have to purchase new decorations and wall art each time you switch things up. A simple way to change the look of your kids’ room, and to have them help in decorating their own space, is to create some DIY decor from inexpensive items, or things you already have in the house! Below are a few cute DIY decor tips for your childs room:

1. Door Basketball Hoop: What a cute idea for the little one that loves to play sports! Paint the back of their door with black chalkboard paint, attach a cheap basketball net that you can get from Five Below, hot glue a plastic tub to the door for chalk, and you have an instant basketball court for your little ones to play with!
2. Activity Table: If you have an old table laying around, or even an old, smaller kitchen table that you can cut the legs down on, grab some paint and a round metal bowl, and get to work. You can paint the table with your child any color that you want – you can even decoupage it or the chairs for a really cool added detail – and if you cut a hole in the center of the table and hot glue a metal bowl into the hole, you have an area to hold pencils and art supplies! What a great idea!
3. Silhouette canvas art: Don’t purchase expensive canvas artwork for your child’s’ room – download free stencils instead and have your little one create their own artwork! They will be excited to paint, and even more excited to hang their beautiful creation on their wall! Simply tape the stencil to the canvas, and paint the entire surface. Once dry, remove the stencil and you have a cute piece of artwork that you can hang on your child’s wall that they will be proud of.
4. Photo Collage on a Letter: Kids love this project. It is simple, cheap, and a great way to encourage gross motor skills. You can head to any arts and crafts supply store and purchase a large foam or wooden letter, print a bunch of important photos of your child and your family, have them choose which ones they like the best and use double-sided tape to stick them to the letter, making a collage. You can apply decorative stickers for an added effect and a hint of extra cuteness. Once you have placed all of the photos where you want, paint a layer of Mod Podge overtop, wait for it to dry, and then paint a second layer to seal in the photos. Instant letter-shaped photo collage!
5. Checkerboard table: If you have a smaller table and chairs for your child (The IKEA’s LACK table is the perfect size and price, about $10), you can transform it into a checkerboard table with some paint, tape, a ruler, pencil, and some creativity. Once you have laid out the tape and created the squares, you can use small cork rounds that fit inside of the squares on the table. Use googly-eyes, paint, markers, and other items to decorate the 24 round pieces so that you can a creative, cute checker set!

These are just a few ideas that we found over at HGTV’s website. For a full list of DIY decorating tips, head over to their website and get full directions for the ideas listed above as well as more! It doesn’t take much to make a kids room look completely different, and with the creativity and items that you may have laying around the house, you can encourage your child to think outside of the box and help make their room a space that they love.

Winter brings a lot of wonderful things when it comes like fun holidays, an excuse to drink hot cocoa in excess, and beautiful coatings of snow. But with all of these delights come shorter days, freezing cold, and ultimately, boredom. When the nipping cold doesn’t allow your children to ride their bikes or go to the playground after school, the cabin fever starts to set in. So we’ve come up with a list of five fun activities to keep kids’ of all ages boredom at bay until the warmer weather comes back!

Continue reading “Winter Boredom Busters”

With snow making its first appearance of the season your kids might be getting a few snow days this year. Playing out in the snow all day just isn’t possible so we compiled a list of a few fun, inside activities to do for when your little snow bunnies are ready to come back inside. Check out the full list of activities on HerViewFromHome.

Continue reading “Snowed In”