Summer Learning Activities For Toddlers
Summer is here and that means it is time to fill our days with pineapple sensory bins, ice cream counting activities, and sand running through tiny fingers! During the summer, life can be so busy with vacations, holidays, and family activities, so it can be easy to let learning activities fall to the wayside. Today I am sharing a variety of summer activities for toddlers that can fit into the quiet moments of busy days! You can find all of the printable materials in my Toddler School Summer Unit!
If you want to learn more about how to get started planning activities for your little ones, download my FREE guide for everything you need to know about the skill areas we incorporate into toddler school:
Summer Sensory Bins
Nothing gets little ones more excited about summertime than running their tiny little fingers through an ocean themed sand sensory bin. This bin is a great way to work on number identification and ordering numbers while also feeling like you took a trip to a nearby ocean.
This pineapple sensory bin is great for exploring using the senses. The colorful and playful nature of this bin engages sight and captured my little one’s attention very quickly! This bin can be used in so many ways!
- Practice letter names
- Practice letter sounds
- Review specific letters that children are struggling with
- Place the letters of the alphabet in order
- For older kids, you can even use the letters to begin to form a few cvc words by including a variety of consonants and all vowels.
Another great way to practice the alphabet is by bringing the beach to your home. Fill up a bin with beach colored kinetic sand. Then, hide letter tiles or magnetic letters inside the bin. Give your child the alphabet matching printable and watch as they dig up letters and match to their matching mat. You can grab a FREE alphabet matching printable using the form at the end of this post!
Summer Fine Motor Activities
Dot markers are an excellent tool for building hand control. Children need to not only hold the dabber steady, but they need to press the dabber right inside the circle they want to color. Inside our Summer Toddler School Unit, I have included a few different dot marker printables so children can build hand control as they color in the circles. Plus, they can build some new vocabulary while they have fun with dot markers!
Here is another fine motor idea for building hand control. In this activity, children get to add “sprinkles” to an ice cream cone. Depending on the ability of your child, you could use plastic tweezers to pick up large hole beads. Or, your child can work on their pincer grasp by picking up and placing the beads on the ice cream using their fingers.
If you want to learn more about what fine motor skills actually are, then you can also read this blog post: What are fine motor skills?
Summer Art Activity
Nothing is more nostalgic than picturing little ones enjoying popsicles on a hot summer day! In this art activity, children will use a q-tip to dot liquid paint on a popsicle.
If your children are working on learning their color names, then this is a way to practice through a fun art project where children won’t even realize they are learning! Just place a variety of liquid paint colors on a paper plate with a q-tip set in each paint squirt. Then, allow your children to paint a variety of colors on their popsicle. As they pick up a q-tip, you can say something like “Yellow is a great choice! Can you think of anything you see during summer that is yellow?” Children may respond with the sun, pineapples, or lemons.
Summer Math Activities
These counting cards are the perfect introduction for toddlers who are learning to count a set of objects and identify numbers by name. First, point to the number and see if your child can identify the number. Then, have children place count and place objects on each picture on the card. After they finish placing an object on each picture, ask how many objects were on the card and have your child respond with the number.
We love building puzzles in our home, so I put together these math puzzles to work on ordering numbers.
Children find the numbers 1-4 and place in order to build the puzzle. It’s a great way to have children check their own work by seeing if the picture in the puzzle looks correct. After building, then have your child point to each number and say the name of the number.
I always find that learning math is so much more fun when the activity uses real life concepts. In this math activity, we counted the number of sprinkles on each ice cream cone and matched to the cone that had the same number on it. This activity tackled both learning number names as well as counting.
I hope you are feeling inspired to dive into summer learning activities for your preschoolers this week! Click here if you want to download this Summer Toddler School Unit to have 5 lesson plans and all the printable materials you will need to make teaching your toddler as easy as possible.
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I hope you enjoy playing and learning with your little ones this week!
This post may contain Amazon affiliate links. I earn a small commission each time someone makes a purchase through one of my affiliate links, which helps to support The Primary Brain blog. As always, I only recommend products that I love and all ideas shared are my own.
Written on June 23rd, 2023 by Laurin Brainard