4th of July Activities for Toddlers & Preschoolers
4th of July has always been one of my favorite holidays! I think it’s just because I love summer time and a good cook out. :) We had so much fun celebrating all week long with some festive activities including sensory play, fine motor play, lots of festive books, journal activities, and even a festive snack.
I hope that these activities inspire some fun and meaningful play-based learning in your homes or wherever you choose to utilize them! Be sure to find and tag us on social media if you try any of them out, and/or do some pinning to your Pinterest to save ideas for next year!
Disclaimer: This post includes affiliate links which means I would earn a small commission if you were to purchase through those links. All opinions are my own, and I only link to products that I truly recommend.
Materials:
- colored craft sticks
- gems
- buttons
- play doh tools (just picked out the red & blue ones)
- star-shaped cookie cutter
- play doh
- tray
We love festive play doh trays! If you visit this post, you’ll find some of the other festive trays we’ve put together. My kids have both always loved squishing little things into a play doh pancake so we like to use things like buttons, gems, and mini erasers (not used this time) that are fun for little fingers to decorate their play doh with.
Any type of play with play doh is great for building fine motor skills! What are fine motor skills? They are the small movements we make with our fingers, hands, and wrists that are crucial for every-day skills like writing, using scissors, building/manipulating with blocks/legos, tying shoes, zipping, buttoning, and snapping clothing, using a fork and spoon, and brushing teeth and hair.
Playing with play doh is also a great form of sensory play- benefits of sensory play are endless! I talk a little more about these benefits in this post.
Materials:
- clear plastic storage bin
- ice cube trays or baby food storage containers
- food coloring
- sensory play tools/scoops/spoons
- cups
We have done colored ice before but for some reason this festive, patriotic ice kept my kids engaged for even longer than before. Colored ice is a GREAT activity to set up the night before you know it’s going to be a scorcher. Unless you have access to a pool… then just go swimming. ;) But really- what kids don’t want to play with ICE when it’s 90 degrees? Yes it will melt but then you just have cold, colored water to play with and that is still fun, too!
I added some scoops/spoons and some blue and red containers and cups for transferring and sorting. Kade even had the idea at one point to sort the rounded cubes and the rectangular cubes (I used two different types of ice cube trays for freezing so that we had more ice to play with). I prepped the activity the night before and just added red and blue food coloring to a few of the ice cube slots, keeping some plain to act as “white.”
I also pulled out a couple pieces of paper for them to paint/color with the colored ice. This is another great, summer, outdoor activity- just freeze popsicle sticks in with the colored ice to use as handles and paint away as it melts. They are like DIY water colors!
Materials:
- tray (similar)
- beads
- pipe cleaners
- plastic straws (cut up)
This magical little tray of festive colored cut-up straws, pipe cleaners, and beads entertained my two kiddos for a good 20-30 minutes straight! Definitely could have just caught them at the right time but I’m still calling it a win. Beading and threading like this is a great way to strengthen the little muscles in kids’ fingers and hands that they will eventually use to tie shoes, zip coats, and WRITE with. Remember those fine motor skills I mentioned earlier? These are them!
You could offer up a few ideas for your kiddos/students, depending on their ages, such as making patterns, sorting the beads or straws onto the pipe cleaners by color, etc. OR, you could choose to keep it open-ended and let the kiddos play however they want. There are benefits either way you do it and regardless of what they’re creating, the fine motor skills are working. Kade (4) chose to “build harmonicas” though I didn’t even know he knew what those were, and Tatum (2) played, too! She needed a little extra help from mom but was still very proud of her work. :)
Materials:
- plastic straws that bend at the top
- black cardstock
- washable, non-toxic paint
- paper plate
We did this art project a couple years ago too and I just always love the way it turns out! We like to use black cardstock because I like that the white paint shows up so nice and it reminds me of a night time sky. I have also seen people do red and blue paint on white paper which turns out to be equally as awesome. Just bundle a handful of bendy straws together and fan the bendy part outwards into a firework/star-like shape. Dip the straws in paint, and stamp them all over the paper.
Materials:
- clear storage container
- pom poms / white pom poms
- cups
- scoops/spoons
- sensory play tools
We are big pom pom fans over here! Both of my kids have always been super into them and we love playing with them in different ways any chance we get. For this activity, I picked out all the red, whites, and blues from our stash of pom poms, threw them in a tub with a bunch of cups, scoops, containers, etc. and filled it with water. We have done this activity indoors with a towel under the tub but water play is always great for outdoors in the summer time!
If it’s a really hot day, you could use your patriotic colored stash of poms and freeze them like we did here. Another great way to play- best part is as the ice melts and the poms free up, then you have this activity… poms in water! The fun never ends. ;)
Ingredients:
- graham crackers
- greek vanilla yogurt
- blueberries
- strawberries
What’s a holiday with kids without a festive snack?! For this sweet little *mostly healthy* treat, I took a full graham cracker for each kiddo, and spread greek vanilla yogurt across the top like frosting. I cut the blueberries in half but you could just leave them whole if you want, and then I sliced strawberries really thin. Blueberries went in the top left corner and strawberries went across the graham cracker like stripes all to imitate the American flag! The kids literally chowed. So fun!
I wanted to also include the books that we read to go along with all of these activities. A couple of them I ended up purchasing through Amazon, and then we found a handful of fun books at our local library! Here are the ones we read:
I shared a separate post about our 4th of July themed journal activities for preschoolers and I will link it here in case you missed it! The post shares 5 hands-on, engaging journal activities along with a description of each, what kiddos are learning, and links to materials used. Be sure to check that one out, too before you go!
