Activities for 3 year old kids

My twins are now 4, I often find myself taking pictures to document the things we do.  I am amazed at the activities we have done ever since they have started to discover what their hands are able to do.

Pouring activities which teaches concentration.  Place items on a tray so you won't mind the spills.

Rainbow painting activities with milk, dishwashing detergent, some food coloring, and chopsticks

Handpainting, cutting and taping, puzzles, painting, tracing and beading activities which are relevantly common in our little homeschool.  The materials are readily available for them to grab from our shelf.

We do letter matching (using letter puzzles), clay, coloring and pattern blocks just so often!

This is one important random activity we do even after dinner.  It is just making use of any toy with the alphabets and a letter flash card.

One of their favorite and which improved their motor-skills is beading.

This was taken at 9PM where my girls just grabbed this lacing activity from our shelf which was just collecting dust since they were 1.5.

A letter punching activity using a paper with a letter to punch (I traced the letter of the week on it) then clipped on a mouse pad which they will punch either with a small screwdriver (precision screwdriver), or a pen would also work. 

For art, we did these pipecleaners and googly eyes puppets.

Cutting - my twins have mastered this at age 2.5.  I allow them to use scissors at 1.5 but with my supervision.  At 3.5, they can handle even sharper school scissors without my help.

We learn letters through Handwriting without Tears and Starfall.com on the iPad. 

Some of our other activities:

Letter tracing with clay!

Letter tracing with sticks!

Doing Kumon tracing.

She can do 3 pages a day of Kumon tracing.

Kumon is one of our weekly thing.

Actual writing activity by my 3.5 year old.

Hooked on Phonics flash cards!

Boggle Jr.!

Trinkets to make a letter!

There are times that they don't feel like doing anything.  So, we would take a snack break or completely stop school if they are not into it for the day or days or even weeks! I am not in a hurry anyway.

Wet-Dry-Try on the iPad and the real thing using Handwriting Without Tears.

During our letter B day!

These are some of our math, art and other sensorial activities.

We do a lot of read-alouds.  But, for younger kids, I usually allow them to do building activities as I read to them.

Lego will always be part of their lives.

Telephone!

Manila paper indoor play.  Simple drawings of star, sad face and happy faces and some coins to throw.  Even my 8 year old had fun with this activity.

Thee did clay especially during the Bible story "The Creation".  The one on the right is Eve! :D

We made snakes out of construction paper during our Bible story.

Lining up sticks is a favorite activity.

Color matching activity

They love Mighty Mind.  This is one of their favorite things to do when they wake up.  Callie here went to her room and played with it.

Still on Mighty Mind

They leave me with this after a painting session.

Melissa and Doug painting is less messy!

Sometimes, I see them doing this with the Mighty Mind can! They keep on saying "I am a robot, mom!"

To teach proper table manners, we do a tea party!

A giant craft paper makes a good tool to learn parts of the body!

Many times, my girls play dress-up.  They would pretend to be going into a snowy place or even travelling to the moon!

Most importantly, I let them experience being a kid who ca appreciate nature!  They are able to catch fireflies, touch a butterfly, play with snails, be messy and just enjoy being a kid.

These may be a lot, but we don't really have a structure.  I just follow their cue and see what they like to do.  We sing songs a lot and read books a WHOLE lot!  We memorize our memory verse each day and read the Bible too.

Manners and values are more important for them now.  It is what they will need a whole lot besides knowing how to read, count and write.  Part of their life is knowing that they are loved and that they are safe with us.

We are on Instagram and most of our activities are there too!

Baby Ballet for the twins at Infinity Tutorial Services

Seeing my little girls in their ballet class for the 1st time makes me feel so giddy. I wasn't expecting anything and I thought they'll just distract the class (which they partially did). But, they enjoyed and loved it all at the same time.

One day while I was on the internet, I saw kids who were ballerinas. They posed with perfect posture and grace. It was really beautiful - it is very artistic to look at. I also love classical music and that made it even more better.

While I was scouting for some activities for my twin girls like looking for a weekly playgroup or having them join a music class, I saw a free trial class for ballet at Infinity Tutorial Services at the Fort!  I asked my friend who teaches ballet if 2.5 years old is too young to try ballet. She just asked me to bring them and to let them try it out.

It was their 1st Ballet Class! They had so much fun and at the end of the day they were telling me that they now have a "school"! (Yes, they call it their school because they are very envious seeing their big brother go to school each day). Their eyes lit every time I would ask them about it. Days after the trial, they have been asking me when will they go back to their ballet "school" again. So, we are definitely coming back.

Look at them intently enjoying the class. They were running around the studio until Teacher Chuckie needed to sit them apart from each other. Teacher Chuckie gently but firmly got their attention to join and just have fun

Have your little princess try out ballet. Inquire and do let them know that you got a refferal code: MamaMia. Use my referral code and get additional 5 hours free ballet lessons!

They also offer the following:

• After School Tutorials (Grade 1-10)
• Math Clinic
• Science & Technology
• Languages (for kids and adults)
• Violin Classes

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Infinity Tutorial Services
Units 1003-1006 Trade and Finance Tower, 7th Avenue cor. 32nd St., The Fort, Taguig
(02) 4785957 or text 09064306264

Tot School: F is the letter of the week!

The twins are 28 months old and they are begging to do school. From the spontaneous tot school activities we've had, it is now time to a more structured tot school (because they are literally begging for it!). Since, we already have Sonlight's P4/5, I figured we can still follow the same pattern - only... in a faster pace because they are still tots and when tots are bored... they just don't want to do school anymore.

How did we start tot school today? C woke up at 7:30am singing her usual la-la-la song while on her bed. She woke me up with her song and suddenly climbed onto my tummy and said "Mom, I want school! want school, mom!" So, that was it. We ate breakfast, but since she was insisting that we do school right away, I asked her to play puzzles with her yaya (nanny) which she shove away and told her "No, mommy only! Mommy, teach school only". :)

So, our letter F for the week goes this way.

Our 1st activity was memory verse: (2 minutes)
"Pay attention my child (index finger on head) to what I say (finger on lips), listen (hands on ear) carefully" - Proverbs 4:20

2nd activity: (2 minutes)
We were supposed to read a bible story, but today, we reserved our nightime reading to bible stories so we read a Mother Goose story Jack and Jill instead.

3rd activity: Introducing the Letter F! (3 minutes)
I have 2 fabric flowers and a magnetic letter F. So, I told them "The sound of F is... /F/ for flower! Here's 1 flower for C and another for D! Hurray!" "This is letter F... /F/ /F/ - flower!" Then we traced a letter F using their finger on the table.

4th activity (3 minutes): Wooden sticks - I bought from Handwriting w/o Tears at Sonlight.com. You can use Pocky sticks or wafer sticks if you don't have the wooden sticks from HWOT.
I gave them 2 short sticks and 1 long stick, then we played "tap the sticks" then, I asked them to "Raise the long stick! Now, tap.. tap.. tap... tap your.... shoulder! tap.. tap..tap your... head! hands, nose." After this, we started building the letter F with the sticks.

Wooden sticks are from Handwriting without tears. We use this a lot to teach body awareness and  correct handwriting strokes.

5th Activity (10 minutes): Color and add stickers INSIDE the letter F.
Download the activity sheet here.

I instructed them to color within the lines (inside the petals) as this is a good exercise for fine motor skills. On the left is C's work, which shows that she is more interested  in these types of activities.

D is more interested in making funny faces rather than coloring activities. So, I said... "Wow! That's right, D! F starts with Funny Face!!!"

6th Activity (10 minutes): Sensory Bin aka Magic Letter Box with all F things like Fish, Fork, Feather, Four, and the letter F itself! I just filled it with Beans so they feel different textures in the box.

Buried treasure!

They were crazy over this sensory bin. As they pick up and find a treasure, I would ask them what it is and to tell me if it starts with /f/ - F!

7th activity: Line tracing. Butterfly and flowers (5 minutes).
Download the activity sheet here.

 You can download the free worksheet which I have done specially for my readers.

Busy.. busy...

8th activity: Art with flower petals. (8 minutes)

You need to cut out 5 petals from a flower gift wrap (just my choice), trace those petals as a flower on a paper. Have the kids stick those petals using a glue to follow the puzzle-like pattern and color or decorate them.

Ready for art!

Building art with the letter F!

9th activity: Clay making with the letter F. Since I really do hate cleaning up clay which all ends up on the carpet, I just allow them to play 1 color of their choice per day per child.

Making a letter F, I joins in to teach them how to do it.

Just a tip: Try sticking the paper/worksheet with a tiny piece of tape on top of the paper attached on the table. This prevents the paper from moving around the table and this frustrates tots.

We did not finish all of this in one sitting! We do 1 letter per week or sometimes, we even do longer or go back to a letter for review. It doesn't matter, just as long as there's mastery before we move on to the next. Since they have mastered the letter A, the sound of A and what starts with A (As, I have introduced that letter for 3 months already) so it's just time to introduce a new one - the letter F!

I follow mostly the lead of my tots (which is way different in handling my 7 year old). With tots, If they don't feel like doing a certain activity, I just carry on, do something else, stop it and do it again next time.  No pressure needed for this age. Try engaging them to 1 activity for a day, do 1 letter a week (or 2) and follow your heart to teach what will best suit your little one!

Till, next time! Do share if you have done any of these activities! :)