Children, especially young children, learn through play and many hands-on activities. Often, this involves being very active, but sometimes, you need your child to be able to work more quietly or contained. Timberdoodle recently sent me a set of Play Smart workbooks for preschool-age students to review.
The Play Smart workbooks are a great combination of both hands-on learning and quiet play. The books are colorful and engaging, containing lots of stickers and activities.
Play Smart Brain Boosters (3+)
This book contains over 60 pages of picture puzzles, drawing projects, and number games for children ages three and up. In addition, it includes over 100 stickers and a wipe-clean activity mat that allows children to draw different ears on two animal pictures, wipe it clean, and start again.
The activities range in type and style. There are activities with correct answers and others that are more creative. For example, in some activities, the child matches shapes to pictures. In another activity, the child begins with the basic shape drawn and creates a picture of whatever they wish to draw.
Play Smart Skill Builders Challenging (Ages 2-3)
The activities in this book are a bit simpler than those in the brain booster book. There are lots of mazes and different tracing activities. This book also contains over 90 stickers and a wipe-clean activity board maze. Each page is colorful and engaging, with pictures of various animals, flowers, and scenery. The child simply needs a crayon or pencil to complete each activity page.
These would work well as a quiet activity for a parent and child to work on together. The activities promote fine motor skills, pattern recognition, and knowledge of colors and animals.
Play Smart Animal Picture Puzzlers (2+)
In this full-color workbook, children will work on tracing, drawing, sorting, and matching. They will trace lines in different pictures, including straight lines, curved lines, spirals, and loops. They will also work on counting and recognizing the numbers 1, 2, and 3.
In addition to the over 60 pages of single-use activities, there is a wipe-clean page at the end of the book that assists the student in learning how to write the numbers 1, 2, and 3.
Overall, these Play Smart Workbooks are a great quiet-time activity for preschool students. They promote fine motor skills, matching, patterns, and number recognition. They are bright and engaging and would work well for younger children to do with an adult. Older preschool students could work on activities independently for a few minutes. These are also perfect for those preschoolers who want to ‘do school’ like their older brothers and sisters.
You can learn more about it or purchase your set from Timberdoodle. They are also included in the Timberdoodle Preschool kit.
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