Activities for WREN Readers

Welcome to WY Quality Counts, WREN readers! Are you ready to learn, grow, and play with your kids? These activities will spark their curiosity, support their physical and emotional well-being, and engage your whole family with new ideas. And if you need more fun things to do, join us on Facebook and Instagram!

This month’s activity

Nature Art with DIY Watercolor-thumbnail

DIY Rainbow Corn

DIY Rainbow Corn

DIY natural, fun, bright materials for sensory and creative play.

Flower Soup

Flower Soup

Wilted flowers are great activity supplies!

Kindness Jar

Kindness Jar

Bottle up some kindness and share it with your kids!

Gratitude Dice

Gratitude Dice

Gratitude is a big concept for kids to grasp. Help your kids learn what it means to be thankful with this simple game!

Magic Nature Wand

Magic Nature Wand

Nature is magic. Imagination is magic. Your kids are magic. It’s all especially magic when there’s also a wand.

Balloon Boxing

Balloon Boxing

With just three materials your kids will be using their gross motor skills, practicing hand-eye coordination, and activating their brains by crossing their body’s midline!

Bubble Art

Bubble Art

Did you know that blowing bubbles is a calming activity? Taking deep breaths to blow bubbles can even help kids learn to regulate their emotions! Now take that mindful breathing and turn it into some art.

Water Games

Water Games

Playing outside is so fun. It’s also so important for development. But what if it’s hot out? The simple fix is this: just add water! Get outside, stay cool, and have fun with these baby, toddler, and kid-friendly activities.

Gone Fishin’

Gone Fishin’

Practice patience, hand-eye coordination, concentration, and even some early math concepts while casting – for cups!

Pompom Play

Pompom Play

Exercise your kids’ fine motor development with just some pompoms and a few household items!

Grow a Kindness Garden

Grow a Kindness Garden

Talking about kindness, modeling, and practicing together will help your kids recognize and act with kindness in the real world!

Fruit Cutting

Fruit Cutting

To help your kids get comfortable using kitchen tools, practice knife skills using fruit!

Constellation Creations

Constellation Creations

What patterns and shapes can your kids find in the stars? Help them learn about constellations by making your own!

STEM Snowcanos

STEM Snowcanos

Science, snow, and explosions. Your kids will love this activity! Bonus: with just a few household ingredients, they will learn about what happens when an acid reacts with a base.

Turkey Art

Turkey Art

Your kids will love this painting activity, and it’s so cute you might even add it to your box of Thanksgiving decorations. Bonus: it inspires creativity and exercises motor skills!

Easy Indoor Exercises

Easy Indoor Exercises

Get your body moving and warm up those muscles with this easy exercise routine you can do with your kids!

Sensory Leaf Painting

Sensory Leaf Painting

Leaves don’t always crunch, sometimes they squish and squelch! Try this no mess sensory activity with your kids to encourage their curiosity and help them tune into their senses.

Name Art

Name Art

What can you do with old cardboard boxes? Use them as a canvas to spark your kids’ imaginations and learn name recognition!

Art for Transition Times

Art for Transition Times

A low key activity, like a simple art project, can help kids transition from one thing to the next!

Super Sammies

Super Sammies

Help build healthy brains and bodies when you make these fun sandwiches together! They are part activity, part sensory play, and part exposure to new tastes and textures.

Very Hungry Caterpillar

Very Hungry Caterpillar

Motor skills enable the movements we make for everyday tasks. Gross motor skills involve large muscle groups and broad movements, while fine motor skills involve smaller muscle groups and dexterity. You can help your kids practice their motor skills by playing, doing crafts, and even by reading!

Glitter Jars for Practicing Mindfulness

Glitter Jars for Practicing Mindfulness

Practicing mindfulness gives kids an opportunity to pay attention to what’s going on in their bodies and in their environment, which helps them learn to control their reactions and manage their emotions. A glitter jar is a simple but useful mindfulness tool. Watching the glitter swirl and settle gives kids time to calm down and regain control when they’re upset, and it has a relaxing effect even when their emotions are already under control!

Why Do Leaves Change Color?

Why Do Leaves Change Color?

Have your kids ever been curious about why leaves change color in the fall? Have you? You can figure it out together with just a few materials you probably already have around the house (and leaves from outside the house)!

In this STEM activity, learn about chlorophyll and the hidden colors in every leaf.

Nature Badges & Bracelets

Nature Badges & Bracelets

Spending time outside gives kids a unique wonder about their world. Help your kids get outside and explore the world around them by discovering what’s growing there! On your next family walk, hike, or stroll around the backyard, collect flowers, leaves, grass, and other treasures, and wear them!

STEM Balloon Rocket

STEM Balloon Rocket

Spark your kids’ curious minds with easy STEM activities! Making a balloon rocket is a fun way to help your kids learn about thrust, force, action, and reaction. In this balloon experiment, thrust comes from the energy of the balloon forcing the air out – and making the balloon blast off! You can do this activity inside or outside, and experiment with different sizes of balloons.

DIY Sidewalk Chalk Paint

DIY Sidewalk Chalk Paint

This activity gets your kids outside, doing science, being creative, and practicing their fine motor skills! The art you create together is sure to bring a little joy to your neighbors, too.

7 Minute Morning Workout

7 Minute Morning Workout

Exercising in the morning with your kids is a great way to start the day. Try this simple, seven minute workout together to get you heart rates up, stimulate dopamine and endorphins, and have some fun!

Germ Games

Germ Games

Teaching your kids about germs will help keep them healthy. These quick and simple activities are a fun way to help your kids visualize how germs spread and how washing hands with soap can make the germs go away!

A Sea of Emotions

A Sea of Emotions

Physical movement and emotional reactions go together like sunscreen and sandy toes. Our new sea-life themed emotional regulation cards can be used as a fun, any-day activity. But as your kids learn the actions on each card, their experience with this deck can turn into an easy way to call attention to and regulate emotions.

Emotions Catcher

Emotions Catcher

Talking with your kids about their feelings will help them understand that emotions are important. Putting together an Emotions Catcher while you talk about feelings helps make them a little more tangible and easier to comprehend!

DIY Word Kit

DIY Word Kit

Help encourage your child’s reading and language skills by playing simple word games together! This word building activity kit is a fun way for early readers to build their vocabulary and practice spelling. And it’s great for at home or on the go!

Alphabet Soup

Alphabet Soup

Receptive and expressive language are both important components of your child’s development of communication and language skills. You can encourage their development with simple games, like Alphabet Soup! All you’ll need are your ABCs and an imaginative appetite.

You’re a Thunderstorm

You’re a Thunderstorm

Kids learn how to listen as they grow. It’s an important skill that will lead your kids’ comprehension and communication capabilities and, like any skill, good listening takes practice. Encourage your kids to develop their skills with activities that have simple directions and fun actions, like pretending to be a thunderstorm!

Dressing Up

Dressing Up

Learning to take the initiative leads to independence and is an important part of development. An easy thing your kids can do to learn independence is get dressed by themselves! You can help them master getting dressed on their own by making it a game.

Color Wheel

Color Wheel

Fresh air and free play improve sensory skills, positively affect physical health and promote cognitive development. Let your kids get creative in the ways they play by encouraging them to use their imaginations while they explore outdoors. This color wheel activity will get them observing and making connections!

Float Your Boat

Float Your Boat

Children are naturally curious – that’s why they ask so many questions! Encourage their curiosity with engaging activities like this one: create your own boats, add weights to them and see if they sink or float! This activity will help you explain the science of why things float (or don’t)!

Motor Skills Dice

Motor Skills Dice

Gross motor skills are involved in coordinated movements by large muscle groups, like the arms and legs. Fine motor skills are involved in smaller movements, like in the hands and fingers, feet and toes. Engaging your kids in simple activities, like the ones on these DIY Activity Dice, will help them develop the skills they need for everyday actions!

Learning Through Movement

Learning Through Movement

Movement, dance, and active play can support your child’s growing physical awareness and excitement about the world, as well as stimulate their overall development! Through movement, children develop their thinking and communication skills as they explore and interact with their world. Movement also builds self-confidence. Try these simple activities with your kids, and get moving!

Let’s Make Breakfast!

Let’s Make Breakfast!

Mealtime routines help build strong family relationships and healthy relationships with food. You can make the most of your time together and get your kids into healthy eating habits from the start by cooking together! Try this easy breakfast recipe, giving your kids different steps to help with.

This is Me Treasure Chest

This is Me Treasure Chest

Appreciating the special qualities in ourselves and in others fosters self-awareness, self-confidence, and acceptance of differences. Learn about what makes your kids unique and let them learn about you by sharing your favorite treasures with each other! This activity will foster your kids’ confidence and social-emotional development.

Living Room Camping

Living Room Camping

Children learn form watching and imitating the important people in their lives – that’s you!

When you let your kids help with activities you are engaged in, you’re giving them the self-confidence to take on new things. For a fun activity they can help with every step of the way, go camping together – indoors! We created this check list of supplies and tasks to help get you started.

Winter Reading Guide

Winter Reading Guide

Reading with your kids starts to benefit their long-term language development when they are infants, which means it’s never too early to start reading aloud!

Books are adventures waiting to happen. And when it’s cold outside, they are perfect adventures to have inside! Look for these titles at your local library for winter fun to have with your kids.

Rhyme Time

Rhyme Time

Music is a great tool to help kids learn how to communicate.

Sounds, rhythms and words that rhyme help with receptive language, deciphering meaning, and phonemic awareness. To help support their learning – and have some fun together! – download our free Rhyme Time Scavenger Hunt game!

Let’s Talk About Communication

Let’s Talk About Communication

Early stages of reading and writing often appear as play, but they provide the foundation for conventional literacy skills to mature.

You can do fun activities with your kids to help support their development, like coloring the ABC’s of WYQC together!

Friends Forever

Friends Forever

The elements of Social and Emotional Health include emotional and behavior skills. Children learn about themselves as unique individuals through interactions with the world around them. You can support their development with fun activities! Try this: make and decorate a card together for someone you love, and talk about what you admire about them. We created this downloadable card to get you started!

Let’s Explore Fall!

Let’s Explore Fall!

Are your kids curious about all the fall colors they see, and the way the seasons change? Great! Now is a perfect time to explore Wyoming and learn about this colorful season. You can help make learning fun with our downloadable Bingo sheet (available in color or black and white)! Simply mark each square as you and your child discover fall things, and talk about what you find. And remember, the most important part is that you explore together!

Find More Activities

Want even more ideas for engaging activities?
Check out these other fun activity printables for you to share with your family.