Four year old’s are so much fun!  The new-found maturity of age four is so nice, especially after the challenges of ages 2 and 3.  Owen is 4 1/2 and is starting to really enjoy drawing and writing.  He loves learning new things and building things with his hands.  It’s a challenge to keep him busy while we’re doing our homeschool work – he is definitely not content to go to another room and just play.  If you’re in the same boat, here is a BIG collection of learning activities for four year old’s to inspire your time with your preschooler!

Learning Activities for Four Year Olds

 The post contains Amazon Affiliate links.

Alphabet Activities

  • Alphabet scavenger hunt.  Owen is learning letters and sounds with the Explode the Code series.  He just finished Get Ready for the Code and is now working in Get Set for the Code.  I made flashcards with the letters he knows so far and asked him to find items from around the house that started with those letters.  Aidan helped him a little on this.  He thought it was really fun!

Learning Activities for Four Year Olds

  • Write letters in a salt tray.  Owen used the same flashcards to practice writing his letters with his finger in a cake pan filled with salt.  He LOVES tactile stuff like this.

Learning Activities for Four Year Olds

  • Put alphabet magnets in alphabetical order.  We have this set of magnets from Melissa and Doug.  We bought an oil change pan from Walmart for magnet play, and it has been totally worth it.  We’ve used it for so many things!

Learning Activities for Four Year Olds

Learning Activities for Four Year Olds

Patterns and Numbers

Learning Activities for Four Year Old's

Learning Activities for Four Year Olds

  • Uno Game Card Sorting – Have your child sort Uno cards by color or by number.  Then, have them line the cards up in ascending order by number.

Fine Motor Skills

  • Make picture collages by cutting pictures out of magazines.  We have done this for a specific season, i.e. collages of Christmas items.  Or, you can make one with things that start with a particular letter.  Or just cut up junk mail for the fun of cutting!

Learning Activities for Four Year Olds

  • Sticky table pattern blocks.  The other day, I put some contact paper down on the school table sticky side up and attached it to the table with masking tape. (Test your table first to make sure it won’t take the finish off!)  Pattern blocks are so fun, but since they don’t hook together in any way, it’s very hard to preschoolers to not bump their design and ruin it. Owen has used pattern blocks before, but the contact paper made all the difference!  He literally spent HOURS over the course of several days playing with the pattern blocks.

Learning Activities for Four Year Olds

He came up with this design totally independently!  Great practice with shapes, colors, patterns, spatial relationships, and fine motor skills!

Learning Activities for Four Year Olds

Learning Activities for Four Year Olds

  • Puzzles.  Four year old’s are usually ready to move up to 48 piece puzzles.  We own several Melissa and Doug floor puzzles and love them all!  I would recommend this firetruck puzzle or this construction puzzle.

Learning Activities for Four Year Olds

If you have a preschooler, you might want to follow my Activities for Preschoolers board on Pinterest.  Or follow me on Facebook – I share new ideas daily from my blog and other great sites.

Also, if you’re new to preschool at home you might want to check out this post – How to Get Started with Preschool at Home

4 Comments

Post a Comment
  1. sarahelisabeth Jan 16, 2014

    Thank you-some really useful ideas. I've pinned this for future reference.

    This was a bit bitter sweet as my four year old is almost five and looks set to stay the youngest. It is a lovely age-enjoy!

    Reply
  2. amanda Jan 20, 2014

    GENIUS! Thank you.

    Reply
  3. Carly @ Africa to America Jan 24, 2014

    What a FANTASTIC collection of activities!

    Reply
  4. Lisa @ This Pilgrim Life Aug 5, 2014

    Thanks for sharing such a thorough list of ideas! I want to start doing some more structured learning activities with my four-year-old soon. He's my oldest so this is all new territory. I'm pinning this for frequent future reference!

    Reply

Post a Comment