The Preschooler’s Busy Book

The Preschooler’s Busy Book contains 365 activities (one for each day of the year) for three- to six-year-olds using things found around the home. It shows parents, baby-sitters, and daycare providers how to:

• Save money by making your own paints, play dough, craft clays, glue, paste and other supplies
• Prevent boredom during even the longest stretches of rainy or cold weather with ideas for indoor play like newspaper golf, magnet magic, the listening game, red light/green light, and hand puppets
• Help children learn to have fun in the kitchen making fruit kebabs, popsicles, homemade peanut butter, a happy-face sandwich, alphabet cookies, animal pancakes, finger Jell-O, popcorn ball creatures, and the best chocolate chip cookies in the whole world
• Teach your child practical skills like setting the table, putting away the silverware, sorting socks, sewing practice, and carpentry (hammering golf tees into Styrofoam, with a toy hammer)
• Introduce your child to numbers and counting with activities like “One-Two, Buckle My Shoe,” telling time, coin and stamp collecting, sorting a mixed-up deck of cards by numbers and learning how to find today’s date on a calendar
• Prepare your child for reading by working on an alphabet puzzle, making alphabet cookies, making an alphabet book, and connecting the dots in alphabetical order to make a picture
• Get your child started with music and rhythm by making a pie-plate tambourine, keeping the rhythm to a song on the radio with homemade rhythm blocks or shakers, or make music with musical glasses (filled with different amounts of water)
• Get your child moving with dances like “Hokey Pokey,” “Skip to My Lou,” “Ring Around the Rosie,” and “London Bridge”
• Encourage your child to enjoy quiet activities like reading wordless picture books, working on puzzles, and watching clouds — and then drawing them
• Introduce children to nature with a variety of outdoor adventures from nature walks and picnics to backyard camping, bird feeding, mud painting and making waxed leaves
• Start children growing things by planting apple seeds, avocado seeds or garlic cloves; or learning how to grow carrots, beets or sweet potatoes by putting cuttings into water
• Celebrate holidays and other occasions with special projects and activities for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Easter and Passover
• Keep children occupied on car trips by playing “I See A-B-C” or reciting “30 Days Hath September”