Games for preschoolers aren’t just about having fun, although they can certainly provide lots of entertainment! It’s important to keep your kids playing because there are lots of other benefits to fun preschool games, including the skills they teach young kids. Here are just a few:
1. Play Helps Develop Social Skills
When kids engage in preschool games, e-sms they learn social skills like how to cooperate and communicate with each other, how to be patient and take turns, and how to resolve conflicts. These are great skills to have, especially for building friendships. Many games also help kids learn how to express themselves, with and without language, through play, storytelling, and art.
2. Play Develops Cognitive, Critical Thinking & Motor Skills
Almost all preschool classroom games challenge the way kids think or move. They help kids with critical thinking skills like attention, memory, control, and flexibility. And physical activity helps them work on both fine and gross motor skills like running and coloring, balance, and coordination. Even simple tasks can feel like games to kids, like playing with shapes or counting simple objects, but they’re learning and developing cognitive skills as they play.
3. Play Creates Confidence In Children
One of the best ways to build confidence is to take risks, and play gives young kids exactly that opportunity. As kids learn and experiment with new games, they realize that they have the ability to do things they never knew they could. They slowly build independence as they learn they can trust themselves, and not just adults, to make choices.
4. Play Inspires Creativity
Imaginative play helps kids develop their creativity. You can see this if they start using regular objects for pretend play or pretend to take on different roles, like a doctor or superhero or astronaut. When young kids use their imaginations, they’re revealing that they have the ability to create something new, which is a great step toward more sophisticated, innovative thinking.
5 Games for preschoolers
1. Duck, Duck, Goose
You might remember this preschool classroom game from your own childhood… but did you know that while you played, you were learning strategic thinking?
Kids sit in a circle and one kid walks around the outside, eventually picking another child to be “goose” and chase them around the circle. The strategy kids can pick up on is that if they choose a friend who isn’t paying attention, they have a better chance of making it safely around the circle without being caught.
2. Musical Chairs
This game might become frustrating for some kids, but that’s ok, because it teaches them how to cope with disappointment and communicate patiently with their friends.
Set up chairs in a circle, and make sure is one fewer chair than the number of kids playing. As you play music, kids will walk around the circle, and when the music stops, they all need to try to find a chair. Each round, one kid will be out, and this sometimes results in a little bit of natural conflict as kids learn to work out who sat on a chair first.
3. Red Light, Green Light
Need to help kids practice patience and resisting their impulses? This is the perfect fun preschool game!
One kid stands at the end of a large space and faces away from all the other kids lined up relatively far away from him. When he isn’t looking, the other kids can move toward him, as fast as they want to… but as soon as he turns around, they have to freeze or he’ll catch them and they’re out. Kids have to ask themselves questions like, “how fast can I run?” and “when can I start?” to prevent being caught.
4. Sleeping Lions
This game for preschoolers challenges them to ignore distractions and stay focused.
One kid walks around and tries to wake up all her friends, who are pretending to be sleeping lions. If they move, or laugh, or open their eyes, they’re out. The last one to ignore all the silly wake up attempts is the winner. It’s hard for young kids to focus this well, but it’s great practice for all the distractions they might face in different environments as they get older.
5. Memory/Concentration
Kids can play this game for Early Childhood Education by themselves or with a few others. It helps with attention and short-term memory.
The game can be played in a few different ways, but they all involve challenging kids to reveal hidden matches. Usually the game involves spreading out cards with matching pairs flipped over so they can’t be seen. Kids turn two cards over at a time until they find a pair. The goal is to match all the pairs, and kids need to pay attention and remember where previous cards were located to win.