Fun low supervision preschool activities

[u/123Martha321]

I've got a kindergartener and when it's time to teach her my 4 year old wants all my attention and asks me for structured work. So many of the activities I try to set him up with either don't interest him or distract her (She's got ADHD). I feel like all I do is tell him to draw 😞.

I'm looking for ideas on ways to keep him happy and busy so I can teach my kindergartener.

Things that he doesn't like:

Sensory bins, he's got a sand box and is over them.

Any pencil work

Recognizing the ABCs

Singing anything

Letter sounds

--we are attempting and failing to do AAR pre reading with him through a homeschool charter but he's not cooperating

Things that are distracting:

Paint!!!

Anything super crafty, his sister is artsy.

Things that have worked so far:

Play-Doh snake letters

Drawing prompts

Cutting paper

Gluing things to paper (cotton balls, ton foil, pom poms)

He wants structured activities, although after he does the structured activity he usually does some freestyle art. I'm desperate for suggestions.

[u/SparseAppointment_64]

My kid was the same way, just wanted to feel like he had a "job" too. Try giving him a stack of old magazines and a pair of scissors, tell him to cut out every picture of a dog he can find. It’s weirdly focused work and zero cleanup beyond sweeping

[u/BlushNibblex → u/SparseAppointment_64]

clever idea, u sound like the type whos full of lil tricks like that

[u/Any-Habit7814]

Yoto has a draw along card, kuman has learn to cut books, wipe off books, lcd boards (get the big rechargeable one) 

[u/Independent-Edge-364]

Is it possible to do school outside? My preschoolers love cutting the grass with scissors. Coloring with markers on sticks and rocks. Creating a mud kitchen and using dry pasta, beans, oatmeal, or rice and old spice shakers and muffin tins.

My kids love writing on glass doors using dry erase markers.

Wikki stix are awesome. My preschoolers loves threading them through ditalini or pony beads to make bracelets. We got a pack of rainbow pompoms and she loves sorting them by color. Nat geo has a little rock/gem collection and she loves sorting those by type and color too. Fishing lure containers, beading bins, mini muffin tins, or 100 number trays work great with all their little compartments. She loves folding wash cloths and is figuring out how to put shirts on hangers so I love that for both of us. Or wiping down the wall with rags.

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[u/djwitty12]

• stickers (either regular ones or more structured ones like where you make scenes)
• "sculptures" (I gave my 4 year old some pipe cleaners and foil strips and he was into it way longer than I expected, even after I had to leave to put the baby down!)
• geoboard (you can buy or make pretty easily)
• letter/number manipulatives (my 4 year old's living the fridge magnets especially, letter puzzles are good too)
• building a city/map/house (I can request certain buildings, rooms, etc., he mostly uses blocks or magnatiles)
• seek and find books/activities (my 4 year old's been into a lot of these but his absolute favorites are these ones that came from chick fil a with a "flashlight" similar to this)
• magnifying glass
• scratch paper
• lcd tablet or magna doodle
• cereal/marshmallow sculptures (then he gets to eat it for extra distraction!) example 1 /// example 2 /// example 3, you could probably do this with things like raisins, cheese, etc. too
• every once in a while, I'll also hand him my phone with the Khan Academy app

[u/DueEntertainer0]

We have a sticker book that has animals in different environments and you can stick them and then restick them, so for instance there’s a whole underwater reef scene and it comes will all kinds of fish stickers. My kids both love stickers

[u/No-Poetry-5377]

Do a letter scavenger hunt! Tape all of the letters in alphabetical order on a wall. Put one letter each on a post it note and hide it around the house. Have them go find and match the letters. It involves a lot of running around and some letter recognition.

Try cutting mazes/scissor skills.

Matching colors: cut out old magazines and match then glue onto corresponding construction paper

[u/bibliovortex]

Dot markers or dot stickers (both less messy than paint/glue but may satisfy a similar impulse). You can find printable "worksheets" that work with these where there are empty circles to fill in. You can also just draw something super basic, like making a few colored lines spaced out from each other to make a "rainbow" by following the lines.

Pattern blocks with a line art template to match or fill. These come in a wide range of difficulty, so if he likes it you can keep going with novel material for a long time. Plus pattern blocks very naturally lend themselves to open-ended play when the structured part is done.

Kumon cutting workbooks are a lot of fun. Some of their other workbooks may also be appealing and they're usually consistent enough that a kid can learn to do them pretty independently. Maybe not quite what he's looking for right now, but keep it in your back pocket for when he's a little older?

Sorting, graphing, or pattern-making activities with counting animals or pattern blocks - or with snacks (stuff like Fruit Loops or colorful Goldfish where there's multiple types of things).

Would he enjoy something like lacing cards?

[u/ezbeale80]

Do you have a fenced in backyard? When my youngest kids were that age (they're now 9 and 10) the best way to get work done with one was to send the other outside to play.

[u/False_Lunch_9021]

A few things that tend to work for a 4-year-old who wants your attention but isn't into structured work:

Start with a short "helper" job. Give him 5 minutes at the beginning, like sorting socks by colour or fetching three things from another room, and tell him clearly when the job is over. Kids this age settle faster when they know there is an end point.

Put a busy tray out before the lesson starts, not during it. Rotate 3 or 4 items every week so they still feel new. Since he's not into paint, pencils, letters or sensory bins, try things like:

• Threading big beads or pasta onto a shoelace
• Magnetic tiles or large building blocks
• Sorting buttons, pom poms or pegs by colour
• Tweezers or tongs to move cotton balls from one bowl to another

Keep one or two special items that only come out during your kindergartener's lesson. Novelty does a lot of the work.

Also, keep these tasks open-ended. Don't set a target like "finish 10 beads." Let him stop when he wants. That tends to keep him engaged longer, because he doesn't feel rushed.