As a preschool teacher, part of my job is to play with 3 year olds! A lot of these are really basic, but some of these kids are in preschool over 40 hours a week and they're never bored!
Here are some of the things that are golden:
- Prop boxes! We have those plastic storage containers for dress up, but they're themed. For example, we have over-sized straw hats, overalls, big red hankies, etc in the farmer box; we have giant sunglasses, boas, purses, and big belts in the movie star box. They're super easy and it helps the kids "try on" different roles. Everything for these was purchased at thrift stores or the dollar store.
- Puppets! They're at an age where they're really starting to develop their ability to pretend. We make puppets out of paper bags (there are tons of books and websites online to this effect) and we have some "real" puppets on hand. Make a puppet stage out of a cardboard box.
- Blocks or legos. My favorites are the wooden kind of blocks with letters on them. We have them in a box and we only take them out at "special" times. It gets them excited enough to endure all of the "find me the red R"s. You can also teach them to spell simple words this way.
- Wooden wagons. There's an endless amount of things you can pull around with you. You can even get an unfinished one and paint it yourselves, like we did
