Keeping the Preschooler busy during school time

Note: I am planning to continue my hospitality series, but I keep thinking of so much stuff I want to say and ideas I want to pass along, so I am going to start blogging about hospitality every Tuesday until I run out of stuff to say!

You may remember me talking about doing a preschool activity swap recently. . . Well, we ended up with three ladies participating, and we did about 3 activities each for each other. I am going to share some of them with you, along with a few other things I have for my 2 year old (3 in July) to do during school time.

The first picture shows the goodies from the swap and the bucket I keep them corralled in.

This picture shows a wipe off alphabet practice activity. I downloaded the free font and put a clipart train on it, used a business card template, printed on cardstock and laminated. I put a wet erase marker with it, and a wet paper towel will wipe it right off. I made a set for my older daughter also.

The second activity in this picture is a counting game. One set of cards has numbers and you match each one to the card with the correct number of stickers.

Next up is a beading activity. She simply puts the beads on the pipe cleaners to make bracelets. She loves it! (My older daughter got in on this one too!)

This picture shows a fishing game. FUN! There are 26 paper fish, each with a letter of the alphabet on it. There are paper clips on each tail. The fishing pole is a dowel with a magnet on a string. The magnet makes it possible to catch the fish. I will let her play like this for a while, then we may add some flash cards for her to look at the flash card and catch the fish that matches the letter.

This bag has two sets of beads and two sets of medicine cups. Each cup has a bead glued in the bottom of it, and she sorts the loose beads into the appropriate cup. My daughter loved this one! As her skill progresses, I will add more beads so that she eventually is doing all 10 colors at one time.

Here are the girls during school time. Mary Helen is sorting her pictures by sound and anna is sorting her beads by color!

This is a patterning activity - she is to copy the pattern from a yellow pipe cleaner onto a blue pipe cleaner.

This is another one we've already been able to use ~ sandpaper and yarn. Anna enjoyed doing this one - she made designs and such on the sandpaper, and it stuck right to it!

The other activity in this picture is a playdouh letter and number activity. I have to work with her on this one, but she will roll the playdoh into "snakes" and then use short and long pieces to form the letters and numbers. This will be a great learning activity for her!

I have been adding some other things to our school area to entertain Anna and to help Mary Helen and me be more organized with all of our things. I will give a tour of our homeschool area next week!

I am linking this post up to Kid Friendly Friday at I Blame My Mother. Head on over for more great ideas to keep the kids entertained and busy!