Fun Pretend Play Ideas for Kids

Playing shop is definitely one of our favorite pretend activities. Set up a Cardboard Cafe, Ice Cream Shop, Coffee Shop or Lollipop Shop with all these lovely ideas!

If your kids like restaurants, try this Dramatic Play Restaurant.

Prepare a little one for a trip to the Airport, Doctors Office  or one to the Eye Doctor. This will ease the anxiety of experiencing something unknown, or play it afterwards to keep the memories alive.

A Perfume Factory outside will be enjoyed this Summer, I am sure!

A Pancake Making activity could be a good idea before attempting to bake real pancakes.

How fun does this Taco Stand with felt tacos and all look?

Outings to the Library, Car Wash, Ice Skating Rink, Farmers Market, Flower shop, Grocery Shop or Garden Center is always fun to play out, pretending to be the adults with dolls as children (or the youngest siblings)!

Everyday tasks like Laundry Day or Gift Wrapping becomes fun through play, and prepare children for the life of an adult.

On the note of careers, a Photography Studio is such a fun idea to play photographer for the day and mom can get a chance to be in a photo too!

During the upcoming holidays/breaks, these pretend activities could be set up easily to prevent boredom too!

Which one will your kids want to try out first?

You might want to see these ideas too:

100+ Things to Keep Kids Busy this Summer

The post 20+ Fun Pretend Play Ideas first appeared on True Aim.

Here are 20 super fun ideas on how to learn outside:

20 Fun Learning Activities for Outside

• Learn about time with an outside Sundial. Easy and fun!
• Use this Water the Alphabet idea to learn your letters and add a sensory element to the learning with water.
• Use side walk chalk for these fun Color Hop or Sight Words Hop games.
• While outside, use natural elements for learning. A Nature Color Hunt, Name Writing, Nature Shapes and Nature Weaving are great ideas to use nature hunt finds for learning.
• Work on fine motor skills with this pretty Leaf Threading activity.
• Found some sticks on your nature walk? Use it as a Counting Sticks activity.
• Experiment outdoors are a way of learning outside too. A simple Sink or Float Experiment will entertain even the younger ones.
• Discover what What melts in the sun? or make your own Solar Oven!
• Use stones for storytelling like these pretty Story Stones, a fun way to tell stories indeed!
• Rock Stacking are great in so many ways!
• Have an Alphabet Obstacle Course to practice alphabetical order and burn some energy too.
• Make a Rainbow Wind Sock or use paper plates for a Giant Memory Game.
• Craft outside with Mud Painting or use recyclables on your slide for a fabulous Color Mixing activity!

Great and super fun ideas on taking your learning activities outside and enjoy nature!

More outdoor learning activities fun ideas:

Study Flowers with your Kids
Make a Butterfly Feeder
Bug Search Experiment

The post  20 Fun Learning Activities for Outside first appeared on True Aim.

Learning Activities Perfect for Spring

Fractions will make much more sense using this Fraction Flowers method and maths more fun with these games: Spring Math Game and Number Line Game!

Pretend and count with this Flower Pots Counting Activity.

Work on fine motor skills by making a Fine Motor & Counting Busy Sheet or this sweet Feed the Robin idea.

Learn about the busy bees and enjoy this Pollen Transfer fine motor activity.

Arranging Flowers are fun and educational too!

Print these free printables: Fingerprint Counting and Spring Alphabet Puzzle for a quick, no prep activity.

Practice name recognition and spelling with an easy Tulip Name Puzzle.

Spell some word family words with a Word Family Garden activity or perhaps use these Spring Writing Prompts for your older kids.

Spring Science activities like these Colourful Flowers and Seed Germination are always a hit!

Learn about What plants need with this fun idea and printable.

Get out the house and have fun learning in nature with these Park Activities, perfect for Spring time!

Teach economics and entrepreneurship with this free Entrepreneurship for Kids: Create a Lemonade Stand packet.

Try this Rain Cloud Experiment, and learn about the different types of clouds; what they look like, and what they can predict.

Enjoy Spring and enjoy learning with these fun ideas and activities!

The post Learning Activities Perfect for Spring first appeared on True Aim.

Experiments like this Colour Mixing with clear plastic eggs, 3 Real Egg Experiments or Egg Drop Challenge are fun for learning about simple science.

Have a Name Egg Hunt or a ABC Egg Hunt for a different kid of egg hunt.
This Word Work activity and Hatching Letters activity use plastic eggs during literacy learning time.
Learn about Opposite Textures, Counting and Letter Matching using a large Easter Egg shape.

Babies and Toddlers can join in the fun too with this Egg Scoop activity, Posting Eggs and Montessori Inspired Sound Shakers.

Twist and turn plastic eggs and learn about Emotions or Math Facts!

Have some learning fun this Easter!

Find even more fun Easter Egg Activities here!

The post 15 Eggcellent Easter Learning Activities first appeared on True Aim.

I made up this simple game using (affiliate) letter beads and pipecleaners to work on letter recognition and spelling CVC words in remedial therapy lessons and the kids loved it!

Letter Beads Spelling Game

This activity is suitable for kindergartners and up. Adjust word difficulty according to the child’s age.

A plastic cutlery tray was used to keep the beads and our Letterland letter and word cards. Using material we already had made this activity a frugal learning tool.

First we used the letter cards: the cards were moved from the back to the front. The letter in front had to be searched for quickly and placed on your pipe cleaner. The person with the correct letter bead on the pipecleaner first, kept it. At the end, the person with the most letters, won! Simple as that, but the competition part of this simple activity made it more challenging!

After searching for bead letters, we moved onto the word cards. Here we only used CVC cards, but for older kids one can use longer words.

We played in the same way, but now one has to find all the letters AND place them in the correct order onto the pipecleaner, making it a little more challenging. Now the child needs to find all the correct letters (letter recognition), use segmenting skills for breaking up the word to know which letters to look for, find all the letters and use blending skills to put the word together on the pipe cleaner again. Segmenting and blending skills are crucial skills needed for reading, writing and spelling.

Both of these activities work on letter recognition, fine motor skills and hand eye coordination too. The competition aspect just makes it more fun when playing more than two people, but one can play individully.

Use this setup for practicing sight words and alphabetical ordering too!

More fun letter learning activities you have to see:

15+ Preschool Letter Activities
Learning Word Families using Magnetic ABC’s
Fun with Words

Check out our Learn to Read Curriculum!

The post Letter Beads: Recognition and Spelling Game first appeared on True Aim.

Gross Motor Activities

Put together this Snowman Ball Toss Game using ping pong balls and a bucket.

What about a giant Tic Tac Toss Game or a fun Dinosaur Movement Game?

Print out these free games:Bingo on the Go and Jumping Jacks Dice to keep for a day inside.

Combine learning with gross motor games like this Indoor Ice Skating for Letters, Shape Scavenger Hunt, Snowflake Math & Balance Game and Apple Letter Recognition Game.

Impromptu Gross Motor Activities are great for when you don’t have time to plan something to entertain the kiddos.

Use string to create a Jungle Vines Activity within your living room!

Have a sporting competition and play Pompom Hockey, Balloon Shot Put and Balloon Tennis!

Another super fun activity is Indoor Sledding (if you have stairs in your home).

And lastly, yoga is good for kids, and fun too, especially if it is Circus Yoga!

No more bored kids! Get active indoors and have fun!

The post Fun Indoor Gross Motor Activities first appeared on True Aim.

• A tray of some sort
• Pipecleaners (I used green)
• Three(or more) colours of beads. Keep in mind the age of the child: the younger the child, the bigger the beads must be.

For teaching symmetry

Add beads on the one side of the tree and ask your child to match it on the other side. You can use a small mirror to show your child how it should look when done.

For teaching patterning

Start a pattern on the one side of the tree and let your child continue the pattern on the other side:

Let your child choose her own colour beads and decorate the tree to her liking. She will develop her fine motor skills while having fun decorating:

PS: Always supervise an activity with small parts like beads.

A fun fine motor Christmas activity with lots of learning opportunity for your child!

Here are more Christmas themed activities you might want to see:

Christmas Tree Activities
Christmas Ornaments for Kids
Kid-made Christmas Cards

The post Christmas Tree Beading first appeared on True Aim.

For this activity you will need:

• Brown, green and orange felt
• Orange pompoms of different sizes
• A glue gun or fabric glue
• Tweezers

How to make it: 

Cut orange felt “pumpkins’ that match the size of the pompoms. Glue it down randomly onto the felt ‘pumpkin patch’. Add stems.

Cut a strip of green grass and glue down too. Easy!

How to play

Let your child use tweezers(or pegs) to place the pompom ‘pumpkins’ on the right spot, thus matching the size of the pompom to the size of the cut pumpkin.

Extend this activity to counting the pumpkins, and even do simple math equations! For example, add 2 pumpkins, ask your child how many pumpkins are left. Or add all the pumpkins and take some away, asking how many pumpkins are left etc.

Place this activity in a small container or bag and use it as a busy bag activity while traveling!

You might like to see these fun fine motor activities too:

40 Fine Motor Activities
Rainbow Words
Fine Motor Play with Recyclables

The post Pumpkin Patch Size Match first appeared on True Aim.

You will need a white board, markers, leaves and a dice. Use both of these to alternate, which makes it more fun, or if your child is not yet familiar with the numbers itself. Draw a tree on the board and let the fun begin!

 
 We did a matching activity first, just to get the brain going. I added the numbers and the dots on the tree. Lella(5 years), rolled the dices and matched it with the leaves.

Then, she rolled a dice, and I added the number(2) below the tree. She counted out the leaves and placed it on the tree. Another roll, adding the number(3), and leaves. She counted all the leaves on the tree to get to the answer(5), which I wrote down for her at first. Later she wanted to do the writing herself, I only helped with the +, = etc.

If your child is not yet familiar with written numbers and mathematical signs and you would rather use this activity as a playful counting activity, leave out the sum writing below the tree and “play” it like a story. For instance: “One day there was a tree, and each day the tree woke up his leaves changed. The first day(add leaves), he had 3 green leaves, the next day he had 2 red leaves….” Carry on like that,mother for the subtracting side: “The wind started blowing one night and when the tree woke up, 4 leaves had fallen on the ground (remove leaves), now there were only 1 leaf left on the tree…”

After doing a whole bunch of these easy sums, I introduced the minus concept. This is something we will work more on in the feature, but perhaps you will want to use this as an extension activity. Turn the game around now, and start with a larger number (whatever your child is familiar with), roll the dice to see how many leaves will fall off (be subtracted).

This activity is fun and hands on which is the best way for children to learn, right?
You might like to see these fall learning activities:

15+ Fall Learning Activities
Counting Acorns
6 Fall Arts & Crafts Ideas
15 Apple Activities

The post Fall Leaves Math Activity for PreK and Kindergarten first appeared on True Aim.