Young children learn through play and love to play games, especially with their parents. Parent child activities do an excellent job at teaching preschoolers because young children learn best through a trusting close relationship. Parents can help preschoolers learn thinking skills and practice identifying numbers, letters and shapes by playing one or more of these simple learning games with magazine pictures and photographs.
Color Count Hunt Game for Preschoolers
Parents tell preschoolers how many objects of a certain color to hunt for in the magazine.
Example: “Look through the magazine. Find and show me five red things.”
Shape Hunt Learning Game for Preschoolers
Parents name a shape. Preschoolers look through the magazine to find pictures that show the same.
Example: “Find all of the triangles in the magazine.”
The child looks through the magazine and shows his parent a slice of cherry pie, a piece of pizza and a sail on a boat.
Number Recognition Learning Game
In this parent child activity, parents ask preschoolers to name a number they know. Preschoolers look through the magazine pictures and photographs to find the number. Preschoolers show the number to parents each time it is found.
Take a Turn Letter Recognition Learning Game
Parents ask preschoolers to name a letter of the alphabet. Parent and child take turns finding the letter printed in the magazine. As preschoolers get better at this game, parent and child can also count the number of times they find the letter.
Body Part Learning Game for Preschoolers
Find a picture or photograph of a person or a person’s face.
- Option 1: Parents tell preschoolers to point to a body part as you say it. Example: “Put your finger on the girl’s knee.”
- Option 2: Parents point and ask preschoolers to name a body part. Example: “What’s this?” or “Tell me the name of this part.”
Preschoolers will learn and expand vocabulary skills by answering questions and identifying objects.
Alphabet Hunt Learning Game
The goal of alphabet hunt is to find the letters of the alphabet in order. Parent and child can work together at first. Play this game over and over to reinforce the order of the alphabet gradually giving over more of the task from the parent to the preschooler.
Questions Preschool Learning Game
Either parent or child can find a picture of photograph that is interesting.
The parent asks questions to the child about the picture. Questions can be about anything that a preschooler might notice in the picture.
Examples
- “What sound do you think this dog would make?”
- “What name would you choose for this animal?”
- “Why do you think that child is holding an umbrella?”
- ”What foods do you see in the picture?”
Story Telling Game
In this vocabulary building game, a parent asks a preschooler to find a picture or photograph in the magazine and tell a simple story about what he thinks is happening in the picture.
Great Times and Places to Play Magazine Games with Preschoolers
- Rainy Day Activity – When parents must keep preschoolers busy indoors on a rainy or very cold day, parents can alternate playing magazine learning games with indoor physical activity with young children.
- Waiting Room – The waiting rooms of doctor’s offices are filled with magazines. Parents can turn boring waiting time into an opportunity for an educational parent child activity.
- Travel Activity - Travel often means keeping preschoolers seated for long periods of time. Bringing along a few magazines is simple and means that parents will be prepared to initiate learning games along the travel route.
Magazines provide plenty of colorful photographs and pictures that can be used for parent child activities and learning games. Teach preschoolers shapes, colors, numbers, letters, vocabulary, thinking skills and more with interactive magazine learning games.
Kelly Pfeiffer - Kelly Pfeiffer teaches Positive Discipline workshops to parents and trains child care providers on various child development topics.
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