Encourage your preschooler's observation skills by helping her to make a map of the local neighborhood. Include items of interest on the map, such as the park, your house, the doctor's office and the post office. Take the map as you walk around the neighborhood, and have your child mark the places she visited and the interesting things she saw. Teach your child directions using familiar places in her home. Show her that the front door faces east and the kitchen sink is in the north. Once your preschooler has mastered basic directions, hide an object around the house. Guide your child towards the hidden object by directing her to take three steps east, then one step south, for example.
Introduce the concept of telling time to your preschooler with a simple index card game. Draw a clock on 12 index cards and draw the hands on each card so they represent each hour. On 12 additional index cards, write each hour in numbers as it would appear on a digital clock. Shuffle the cards and spread them out face down. Tell your child to turn them over two at a time. If the number matches the time on the clock face, he keeps them and scores a point. If not, he flips them over and continues to play. Challenge your child with kitchen geometry. Call out a shape (circle, for example) and ask him to identify as many circular items as he can see in the kitchen such as plates, pots, pans and oranges.
Provide an assortment of props and let your child's imagination run wild. Set up themed selections such as a princess castle with a tiara, wand and dress, or a fire station with boots, hat and hose. Make a castle or a fire truck from a large cardboard box to encourage make-believe play. Help your child build her own city for her toy cars and trucks. Draw roads and traffic lights on a large flat sheet of cardboard, then stick on "buildings" made from small boxes.
Preschoolers will enjoy making a functional place-mat craft. Let your child decorate both sides of a sheet of paper with crayons or markers. Once he has finished, laminate the paper or cover it with clear contact paper to make a table place-mat that is durable and can be wiped clean. Your child can take pride in his independence by making a meal from scratch. Provide shredded cheese and chopped raw vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, carrots and green onions. Have your preschooler mix the vegetables with ranch dressing and a little chili powder. Next, he can layer the mixture and cheese on a tortilla and top it with some torn lettuce pieces before rolling the tortilla into a burrito to eat.
Make scented scratch-and-sniff letters. Help your child to paint the letters "B" (with yellow paint) "S" (with red paint) and "O" (with orange paint). Once the paint has dried, spread a thin layer of craft glue over the top of the paint, and sprinkle powdered jello on the wet glue -- banana jello on the "B," strawberry jello for the "S" and orange flavor jello on the "O." Once dry, your child will have a fruit-scented picture that also reinforces the connection between letters and objects. Teach your preschooler to spell her name. Write each letter on a separate index card. Then set out the index cards so that the cards spell her name. Shuffle the cards and challenge your child to put them in the correct order.