Suggested Activities
Toys to Encourage Eye-Hand Coordination and Perceptual Skills
Four and Five Year Olds
- Puzzles with 3 or more interlocking pieces
- Smaller beads with flimsier string, jewelry strining kits
- Preschool scissors and a snazzy variety of paper, stiffer paper is easier to cut
- More complex peg boards with thinner pegs, stacking pegs, pegs which are laced, size graduated, barrel pegs
- Toys to prepare for writing: Magnadoodle, art kits with variety of large thick crayons, markers, chalk, brushes with variety of paper and paint activities.
- Changeable markers
- Glitter Glue
- Stringing cards
- Pipe cleaner crafts
- Simple paper crafts
- Sticker books
- Color Forms
- Glow in dark drawing boards
- Stencils- coloring around borders or inside
- Activity books with large simple mazes, dots to connect, circle what is different pictures, finding hidden pictures, color in the named shapes, drawing lines to matching pairs.
- More complex, smaller legoes, Tinker toys, Lincoln Logs, Knex and other construction toys
- More complex books, tapes and videos with movement songs and sign language
- Play kitchen supplies, carpentry tools and household gadgets
- Copying design patterns with mosaics, blocks, pegs, beads (make jewelry), geoboards.
- Cut and glue books
- Crafts kits including: glue, pipe cleaners, large paper clips, clothes pins, cotton balls, scissors, paper.
- Wind up toys with smaller knobs
- Get-a-Grip Patterns
- Picture Perfect (find matching tiles to place on grid)
- Paper weaving or place mat weaving kits
- Ink stamps
- Snap Lock Beads
- Spinning Tops
- Marble Run
- Crayola Color Wonder- motivates to color using nonmessy materials
- SuperGears
- Clay/ Model Magic
- Creepy Crawlers- pour goop into mold, bake to make slimy creatures
- Squirt toys
Commercial Games
- Candy Land-requires matching
- Color Shape Bingo-teaches matching skills
- Hi Ho Cheerio-teaches counting skills
- Mr. Potato Head Memory Game
- Don't Wake Daddy- Uses a spinner and counting spaces while children try to avoid waking
- daddy.
- Don't Spill the Beans-requires children to try to and more beans to the pot without it spilling.
- Swat That Fly-This game encourages tracking as the child follows a fly and tries to swat it.
- Hands Down- requires speed and visual matching
- Squiggly Worms- requires color matching
- Elfin Game- trains keeping the eye on the target as your child nets butterflies flying out of
- the elephants trunk.
- Crazy Crab- a motorized game involving a large crab guarding pearls in the ocean. The
- player has to steal them by picking them up with large tongs which look like crab claws.
- Fishing Around Game-Child coordinates putting rod in fish mouth as they move
- Mr. Caterpillar Alphabet game- teaches letter recognition as children gather letter
- cards.
- Ants in the Pants-press down on ants to make them jump into pants.
- Hungry Hungry Hippos - press a lever to feed opening mouthes.
- Cootie- first player to finish building the strange creature wins
- Crocodile dentist game - players take turns counting teeth until the crocodile tires
- to give a friendly bite
- Whack a Mole- when the mole pops up, the player whacks it.
- Monster Mash- discriminate which monster is different bbefore mashing
- Toy Darts
- Chutes and Ladder-move pieces on board, no reading required
Five Year Olds and Older
- Rubber Band ball kit
- Complex puzzles
- Scratch Art
- Paper mache kit
- Hole punchers (hand squeezed and finger pushed punches)
- Etch and Sketch
- Color by Number Books
- Ed Emberley learn to draw step by step books
- Dolls with complex clothing fasteners, squeeze clothespins to hang out doll clothes
- Leather Lacing
- Gimp
- Hama beads
- Simple cook books with pictures and numbered steps
- Crafts kits- i.e. make a bird house, soap molding kit, etc.
- Lego and other construction toy kits with diagrams to follow
- Cut out dolls and other complex shapes
- Cut paper flakes
- Pot Holder Weaving
- Hair braiding and other braiding or knot tying craft kits
- Activity books- crossword puzzles, anagrams, decoding, Word Search, unscrambling words, Hang Man, Jotto)
- Balloon Sculpture books and supplies
- Origami
- Tissue Paper Flower crafts
- More complex weaving activities
- Yo Yo's
- Juggling
- More complex musical instruments
Commercial Games
- Booby Trap requires the player to gently remove a shape from the board without moving the other pieces
- Checkers
- Chess
- Cranium
- Pictionary
- Life
- Risk
- Taboo
- Othello
- Yahtzee- teaches math concepts
- Operation- Use tongs to remove body parts
- Perfection- quickly match shapes into board before all pop out.
- Don’t Break the Ice players use a mallet to tap plastic pieces of ice without the ice man falling through the openings
- Guess Who-players need to find out who the friend’s mystery person is by eliminating all other possibilities.
- Simon develops visual and auditory memory
- Slamwhiche -requires speed and matching
- Sorry
- Traffic Jam Junior and Traffic Jam-a player maneuvers vehicles on a grid to get an ice cream truck out of traffic.
- Clue Junior and Clue
- Monopoly Junior and Monopoly
- Parcheesi
- Boggle
- Plunk A Skunk - As each of the skunk heads on the playing field light up you have to whack them with the Plunk-A- skunk mallet to score points
- Blast Out- a motorized air power action game requires keeping eyes on a ball while it is
- catapulted into a large cup and air pushes the balls up into another level.
- S'getti Scatter -plastic spaghetti is in a bowl. Children remove pieces one by one without letting the plastic meatballs fall through to the bottom.
- Loopin Louie -, a motorized flip-flopping flier game requires visual tracking to follow Louie in his air plane as he flips around. The player tries to keep him from knocking over the tokens by
- hitting him with a paddle
- Mouse Trap- constructed project is used to send a ball cascading.
- Toss -Across- toss a bean bag into board attempting to create a tic tac toe pattern
- Bingo
- Kerplunk- players attempt to remove sticks from the marble filled tube without losing any marbles.
- Barrel of Monkeys- players need to hook the next monkey to bottom of strand
- Labyrinths –there’s a variety of games on the market which are like three dimensional mazes.
- Pick-Up-Sticks- require removing a stick without touching any others
- Jacks- gather the jacks before catching the small ball.
- Card games(i.e. Rummy, Spit, War, Crazy Eights)
- Dominoes
- String games (i.e. Klutz book which teaches Cat's Cradle)
- Snafu- players push buttons and turn dials to speed a ball over a maze course.
- Dice games
- Magic Tricks
- Air Hockey
- Toy Fooseball
- Trouble -move pegs on board amount on die.
- Connect Four
- Junior Scrabble/ Scrabble
- Jenga
- Bed bugs
- Battle Ship- teaches graphing concepts