10 Activities To Do This Summer With Your Kids!
Play with your food? That’s right! Let’s use snack time to create fun learning opportunities! I like to use dry snacks like Cheerios, Veggie Stix or pretzels and Fruit Loops because they make less of a mess, but you can also do this with fruit like blueberries or even with candies like M&Ms. These activities focus on building those early math skills and take very little prep work and is a fun and special way for your little one to have an interactive snack! Plus this activity has very little clean up because the activity gets eaten at the end! ;)
VEGGIE STIX NUMBER RECOGNITION: Write down numbers on a piece of paper and have your child build the numbers using Veggie Stix to create each number. You can have your child break the Veggie Stix to fit the numbers. This also works for uppercase letters!
CHEERIO COUNTING: Make 10 circles on a piece of paper and write the numbers 1-10 above it. Have your child count and put the Cheerios in the circles.
FRUIT LOOP SORTING: Draw 6 boxes on a piece of paper using the 6 different colors of Fruit Loops (blue, orange, yellow, purple, pink, green) and then have your child sort the Fruit Loops. My kids LOVE this activity because we don’t eat Fruit Loops often, so this is an extra special activity for them to do!
COLOR PATTERNS: After the Fruit Loop Sorting activity, I love to work in patterns. I use the colored markers to create patterns for my kids to follow and also for them to continue the pattern after.
Here are some Sorting/Organizing idea: Most kids love order and have a lot of fun sorting and organizing items. This may seem like an easy task for us, but for our young children, this activity builds so many preschool skills like hand/eye coordination, motor skills, concentration, problem solving and colors and patterns.
SORT: With this activity, I usually like to have my kids pick a specific item (i.e. books, toys, magnetic tiles, blocks, crayons) and then we dump them out and sort them by either shape, color or size.
ORGANIZE: I often like to invite them to organize their bookshelf, toys, or clothing dressers. This is a great activity to do WITH our children! We especially love to organize their books by color. We love to play music in the background while we organize. This makes it feel less like work and more like a fun activity!
FOLD: Who knew that folding could be fun! We made a “folding helper” out of cardboard (See video here on how to make one) and BOOM, my kids LOVE to fold their own clothes!! (I highly recommend this one!)
OPEN A PRETEND SHOP!
Step 1: BRAINSTORM: First brainstorm with your kid and think of what kind of shop you’re going to have: pizza shop, cupcake shop, smoothie shop… The options are endless!
We love to make lots of shop accessories like pretend money, an open/closed sign, a shop sign… It’s a fun activity to make your own, but if it’s easier for you to just print them, we have a whole Chloe’s Cafe preschool printable set available! Here is the link to all of our Visual Perception printable worksheets and activities which include Chloe’s Cafe printable play money, a template to make a chef’s hat, restaurant receipts, a menu, a template to make paper plates and more!
Step 2: PRODUCT: Now it’s time to make the product! Bust out some play dough to make your food!
Step 3: CUSTOMERS: We love to gather some of our stuffed animals to be our customers.
(Another fun alternative is to make a toy shop!)
I love these summer months because we get to spend so much time outside! It can be as easy as just bringing a soccer ball outside to kick around or you can have a park scavenger hunt or make kindness rocks, take a walk and leave them around the neighborhood),
PARK SCAVENGER HUNT: You can create your own park scavenger hunt easily on a piece of paper or you can download and print our version here (just one of the printables included in a Class with Chloe membership).
KINDNESS ROCKS: Grab some rocks, paint and get inspired to share some kindness! If you’d like to get some fun kindness rock ideas, here is a fun video included in Chloe’s Kindness Club that follows Chloe throughout Brooklyn as she leaves her kindness rocks around the neighborhood.
I SPY WALK AROUND THE NEIGHBORHOOD
LET’S COOK! Cooking offers a ton of opportunities to bond and connect with your child! Make a snack, bake a sweet treat or make a smoothie together!
SMOOTHIES: My kids love to cut fruit! It keeps their attention for quite some time and they are so focused with it! I love to have them help me make smoothies! I give them each a banana and other fruit to cut, we throw it in the blender to make a smoothie and then make popsicles with any extra smoothie. It’s healthy, tastes delicious and the kids find it so rewarding because they helped make it!
PIZZA: We make our own pizzas at least once a month! It’s a fun way to include the kids in our dinner prep! Let them cut the toppings and make their own pizzas!
CUTE FOOD: We have a lot of fun making food that looks cute! A piece of toast that looks like a cat, pancakes that look like Mickey Mouse…
LET’S DRAW! Grab paper and crayons or pencils and draw together! Here are some drawing activities we love:
DRAWING TUTORIAL: Watch a drawing tutorial together online or for Class with Chloe members, here is a Preschool Drawing Tutorials led by 7-year-old artist, Chloe on How to Draw Animal Faces and How To Draw A Ladybug. (We offer more art tutorials in our Arts & Crafts videos section.)
OUTDOOR SKETCHING: Bring a notepad to the park and draw a tree or a flower.
CARDS: We love to make cards! We make our own birthday and thank you cards! And when there isn’t a special occasion, we often make cards for kids that are in hospitals to cheer them up and mail them out to Cards for Hospitalized Kids, an organization in Chicago.
TIME TO BUILD! Let’s build a house for your favorite stuffed animal! Use an old cardboard box or magnetic tiles or legos! This can get as detailed as you’d like!! Sometimes we really get into it and even make furniture! All it takes is a simple idea like this and it can turn into a fun and engaging all-day activity!
LET’S MOVE!
DANCE PARTY: Ask Alexa or Siri to play some music and have a little dance party to get some energy out!
FREEZE DANCE: We also love to play freeze dance! I just play some music from my phone and pause it - it’s amazing how much fun they have!
MOVEMENT VIDEOS: We have fun Class with Chloe movement videos included in our Class with Chloe membership and there are also lots of fun movement videos on Youtube that you can use as well! We love Cosmic Kids Yoga.
Let your child teach you!! Let your little one be the teacher! Have them pick a topic
TIME TO RELAX.
CALM MUSIC: Putting on some calm music and having a chill session really goes a long way, and you will be surprised how they will follow your lead! You can put on meditation music or classical music and set the tone by speaking quietly.
MEDITATE: Sometimes we all just need a 5 minute meditation. There are some kids meditations that we listen to on Youtube and we cozy up together, listen and breathe.
YOGA/STRETCHING: Although I am great at yoga, it doesn’t mean you can’t do it! I put on calm music and we all stretch together on the living room floor.
QUIET TIME FOR THE KIDS/TIME TO GET THINGS DONE FOR THE GROWN UPS: Sometimes as a parent you need a moment to yourself! If you are an overworked/tired parent (who isn’t, right?) and you need am moment to your self and you want to keep your little one occupied/engaged/interested, our Class with Chloe membership is only $100 for 1 year of endless preschool educational content: interactive videos, digital activities and printable games. You can check out some of our fun videos on Youtube!
We are a brand new company that just launched and we are offering a special price of $100/year or $10/month for our entire preschool enrichment platform (for kids ages 2-8). We have hours of printable and digital activities for your child to do as well as over a hundred short interactive and educational videos and games that are super engaging, but not overly stimulating. The video lessons feature 7-year-old Chloe, who teaches all of the educational content and she is also the artist who drew all of the images and characters used in the educational materials.
We are offering a special launch price of only $75 for a one year Class with Chloe membership using the special coupon code on our sign up page below.
ADDITIONAL TIPS: Kids love to do things WITH you!!! There are so many bonding and learning opportunities when you do these types of activities with your child! If you don’t have a ton of time to spend with your little ones, I like to get them started on an activity and then let their creativity take over. If often helps if I do the activity with them at the start - then usually they get so invested in the activity their creativity runs wild and voila, they are now playing independently leaving you some time to finish that cup of coffee or email!
