Three year olds are curious, active – at least mine seem to have an endless supply of energy. They are beginning to make comparisons and differentiate patterns, colors and love to play pretend. Here are just a few of our favorite three year old activities. These activities were gleaned in part from from our weekly kids meme, It’s Playtime.
.
Go on a color hunt through your house. Seek out items that are all the same color. This is a great clean-up activity.
Play with paint. Tinkerlab blew the paint around the page with straws with her kids. My three years olds loved this activity.
Make a stamping “wheel” with an old packing tape roll and foam stickers.
Dye pasta with food coloring and rubbing alcohol. Kids love to make dimensional collages with the colored pasta.
Practice picking up pom-poms with tongs and play a matching game putting them into muffin tins (via Crayon Freckles).
.
Create a batch of fizzing sidewalk paint. Enjoy watching your sidewalk bubble as you spray it off with vinegar.
Have fun “cooking” in an outdoor-mud-kitchen. Pepperpaints had fun making muffins with her girls.
Oobleck is a mixture of cornstarch and water. It has a consistency that is both solid and liquid, and can make great prints (via The Imagination Tree)
Goop. We have a favorite recipe, and Mossy does too! We love slimy goop!
Home Adventurer had fun emptying out expired items from her fridge and with some food dye had fun creating potions with her kids.
.
Get physical. Our boys just love using bands to help contain them and provide resistance as they run. Great activity for developing team skills.
Hopscotch is a long-time favorite activity. Here are easy to follow instructions on how to make your own hopscotch rug.
Stretchies are also great for independent exercise and stretches. The girls at Making Stuff had fun with these homemade stretchy bands.
This is on our to-do list. Make a giant bubble for your kids to play in – it looks like so much fun! (via Play at Home Mom)
Have leftover chewed on pool noodles? Give them new life this fall/winter and use them as bats in a game of balloon batting.
.
Like this post but are looking for activities for other age groups of kids? Check out our other age sets:
About Rachel
Great collection of activities….The balloon batting looks like a blast, and I’m really intrigued with the bubble!
YAY! super list with great activities to explore and do. Thanks for putting it together and serve the playcommunity!
Lovely greetings, Angelique
A lovely round up! Thanks for including our marbled oobleck!
What a great list! As a mom of a 3 year old I can’t wait to try many of these!
I need to try these with my playgroup!
Love the ideas! My last child still at home this year is a 3 year old. I’ve been looking for some fun activities to do just with him.
What a great collection of ideas!
thanks so much for showing my math with tongs post! such an honor to be featured at your great site!
Love this list. Very helpful as we entertain our little ones.
Thanks for linking up and sharing last week on our mommy solution meme. This post was the most clicked idea from last week.
Check out your feature here:
http://www.crystalandcomp.com/2011/10/the-mommy-club-share-your-resources-and-solutions-12/
Great list of ideas! I especially love the home made roller stamp thing!
Loved this list… I shared it along with your blog on my Sunday Blog Share today. Thanks for all of the great ideas you always share! I am so impressed with all that you are involved with and how actively you help other bloggers too. Thank you!
What a creative list of ideas! I think the balloon batting with pool noodles idea will be a huge hit at my home!
Can’t wait to do this with my daughter and her friends…
Hey, couple of links are broken – the link to Tinkerlab’s play with paint and the page on hopscotch rug. Just thought I’d let you know so you can fix them.
Rashmie – Thanks bunches for the heads up! I fixed the broken links (except for the one post which had been taken down, but it’s now linking to similar content on her site). I really appreciate your help – bringing this to our attention! You rock!
There are lots of activities for 3 year kids. In this stage the kids mind has been clean so you can teach and develop their blooming language abilities through books, games, songs, science, and art activities and also teach your kids Love, trust and respect for family members or others.
Fun With Kids Activities
Hi there, these are sure fun activities. I am a working Mom and my kids stay at her grandmother’s place after school. I have a 3 year old daughter and 10 month old boy. I would like to know of some activities which are mess free and my 3 year old can do without my presence. After all its Granny’s place, they can’t be messy and v much noisy. Please help. Thanks.
MA
Howdy would you mind letting me know which hosting company you’re utilizing? I’ve loaded your blog in 3 different internet browsers and
I must say this blog loads a lot quicker then most.
Can you suggest a good internet hosting provider at a honest
price? Thanks, I appreciate it!