A collection of ideas for infant/toddler play, recreation, and games
Play and games help keep children’s minds and bodies healthy and lively.
They nurture physical activity, thinking skills, imagination, and the ability to get along with friends.
Here, we’ve gathered activities and games that preschoolers can enjoy.
There are many kinds: group games, traditional play, pretend and make-believe activities, and sensory play.
You’ll find lots of favorites from nurseries and kindergartens, as well as easy games you can do at home.
Choose fun activities that match your child’s age and development, and enjoy them together!
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Ideas for Toddler Play, Recreation, and Games (131–140)
Tail tag game
It’s a game that lots of people can enjoy where you try to grab the tails attached to your friends.
Use towels or strings as “tails” and tuck them so they hang from the back of your pants.
Divide into teams, and at the signal, go after the other team’s tails.
Be careful not to let your own tail get taken.
If your tail is taken, you’re out and must leave the game.
The team that collects the most tails from the opponents wins.
Sticker application
Let’s try a sticker activity where you stick lots of stickers! You can freely play by putting your favorite stickers in a sticker book—made specifically for sticking stickers—or on paper.
Playing with stickers helps develop fine motor skills and dexterity, and it also boosts concentration.
It can even inspire a desire to improve, like thinking, “Next time I want to stick them like this!” Plenty of stickers and sticker books are sold not only at stationery stores but also at 100-yen shops, so they’re easy to buy.
Gesture Game
A classic recreation game: charades.
A person looks at a card with a prompt and expresses it using only gestures, while the others try to guess what it is.
You must not talk—gestures only.
It might work well for adults to do the gestures and the children to watch and guess.
Try using prompts that are easy for kids to understand, such as distinctive animals or vehicles.
Paper Sumo (Tonton Paper Sumo)
Paper sumo, where you tap the edge of a box ring to make the wrestlers fight.
First, prepare an empty box and make the ring.
Paste a sheet of paper on top of the box to serve as the ring, then draw a circle on it with a compass.
Apply glue along the drawn line, lay twine on top, and let it dry—that completes the ring.
To make the sumo wrestlers, simply fold a piece of paper in half and cut out their shapes.
It’s also fun for everyone to draw their own designs to create unique wrestlers.
The way you cut the paper affects how stable and strong the wrestlers are, so try different styles to see what works best.
sensory play
You know that squishy, jiggly texture that makes you want to poke or squish it? With food, things like tofu or jelly just make you want to touch them.
Since playing with food isn’t polite, this idea is to make food-like squishy stuff using gelatin and food coloring so you can squish and stir to your heart’s content! It takes a little time to set, but the method is very simple: just mix water with food coloring and powdered gelatin, then chill in the fridge until it firms up.
You can make something that looks like cool jelly, cut it out with cute molds, or just go wild mixing and squashing it—there are lots of ways to enjoy it.