My 34 month old is not quite ready for official preschool, so I decided to make an activity can so we could do preschool at home. This way I don’t have to go through all the work of having a complete lesson plan everyday, but he still gets educational and developmental activities worked in to his schedule. I color coded little sticks and put them in a can so we could pull out activities in a variety of areas each week including: Art/Music, Science, Physical, and Language development.
Preschool at Home Can
Supplies needed:
- Big popsicle sticks aka tongue depressors
- Colorful paper
- Paper cutter
- Scissors
- Pen
- White Glue
- Fine tip Sharpie
- Can (mine was an Ovaltine can with a lid from La Choy noodles because I wanted blue not brown)
I was going to glue the paper to the sticks and then exacto knife the edges clean, but then I remembered a 4th grade incident where they handed me a 2 liter bottle and a box cutter and wanted me to make a bird feeder resulting in this scar. I’m pretty sure box cutters are banned from Elementary schools now.

Anyway, I quickly realized that cutting the paper to size first would be way easier and safer.

3. Using a squiggle of glue secure a paper strip to the stick. Trim the excess corners with your scissors.

Edit: I got many of my preschool at home activity ideas from Family Fun magazine, Utah Family Magazine, and lots from my kid friendly and preschool collections of bookmarks from blogs.
6. I figured 4 days a week for preschool at home was plenty so we will draw a different colored stick each day so we get activities in each area.


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What a great idea! come on over to http://jadaroo.blogspot.com to see some activities I do with my toddler 🙂
Very cute…I love it!
Great idea! My daughter is the same age and I need to be more organized about her education.
Love the idea! I would love to see what activities you put in there. I need more ideas to do with my toddlers! 😉
I love it! I would also love to see what activities you put in there or where I could find some.
I just let my kids play Elmo’s Preschool… your idea is better.
Very cute idea!
Kelli
xoxo
loveoursimplelife.blogspot.com
Great idea!
“34-month old!” hahahaha – you crack me up!
And look at you go! I am totally impressed.
I got many of my activity ideas from Family Fun magazine, Utah Family Magazine (http://www.utahdiscovery.com/uf/calendar.php), and lots from my collection of bookmarks from blogs (http://www.delicious.com/Telsee/KidFriendly or http://www.delicious.com/Telsee/preschool).
Super cute ideas! Thanks for sharing.
I love this idea! Thanks for sharing! Cute!! You should link up to my Craftify It Thursday post!
http://lebedafamily.blogspot.com/2010/10/craftify-it-thursday.html
Jennifer @ Life with the Lebedas
fun! I bet your son loves it! Thanks for linking up to Topsy Turvy Tuesday’s!
Thanks for the resource list ideas – but do you have a list of the actual activities that you chose to put in the can? I love the idea by the way. Thanks for sharing. Kendra
Love the decortation on the can!
That is a great idea. I’ve been trying to think of something to do like this. This helps so much!
I love it! My son’s a tiny bit young for it right now {18 months} but I can never think of what to do with him so maybe I’ll have to start one for ME to get ideas! 🙂
found you over at tip junky, wonderful idea! I’m homeschooling so this is great : )
What a great motivation! He/She will love getting to pick out a popsicle stick…especially when he/she discovers it has fun things to do!!!
preschool scares me! lol my little guy is a few months younger than yours and so not ready either. {but mom isn’t either haha}
thumbs up!
Linda
Stop working so hard, you know you can buy the jumbo craft sticks with the fabric already on them. A company called Roylco sells them in a package of 50, I purchases some for my preschool class here at the rec center. We ordered them from S&S worldwide, they were pretty cheap too! I did not know what I was going to do with them, now i know.