10 Fun Games for three years olds – Ideas to make your life easier

Here are 10 fun games for three year olds. Some of these can be used for traditional learning like learning letters and some of them help us build hearing skills or gross motor skills in kids. Playing games is essential for kids health and development apart from having a good time. Hope you have as much fun playing them as we do.

Hello mommies!!

So, you are happy your kids are much older now and have celebrated their third birthday. The developmental milestone of a three year old kid, his ability to play with other children is quite visible at this time.

Playing together with other kids is also an example of their beginning sense of independence as they now have the confidence of being “away” from parents and in the company of friends and other children.

This is the age when you can visibly see your earlier efforts of taking them out for play, organizing play dates and visits and doing lots of activities paying off.  Now they love to go out and enjoy spending time with friends.

Once you have survived with the terrible twos, you can now expand the types of fun games you can play with your 3 year olds.  At this stage, they are mature enough (both physically and mentally) and thus ready to absorb and learn new things around them.

Here are some of the best games for three year old kids

Traffic Light

This is a classic indoor game you can play with your three year old kid and requires them to be active. This is also a perfect way to teach them about traffic light concept.

For this game you need at least three persons/kids with you. One person has to act like a traffic light. When he says green everyone has to race towards him. Everyone has to stop when he says Red or else they have to take two steps back.

The first person to touch the traffic light becomes the new traffic light.

This game contributes to healthy physical and socio-emotional development. Me and my kid love to play this game.

Learning Letters

Your kid may be familiar with alphabets or not. This game can be used to introduce kids to alphabets or may be used to develop prewriting skills to help kids start writing alphabets.

To start with  – draw big outlines of the alphabets letters on a piece of paper and ask your kid to colour them with crayons.  Or simply just put the dots in a shape of a letter and ask your kid to join the dots with the help of crayon. It’s better to start with line alphabets like A, L, T , V, H.

If your kid loves to do painting, then instead of crayons you can ask him to trace the alphabets with paint brush and colours. Simply draw big alphabets on a piece of paper and then ask your kid to colour on lines with the help of paint brush.

Afterwards, help your child cut them out and paste them on wall or fridge.

Let’s Build Something

My kid loves playing with building blocks. Every day we try to make something new with these blocks.

The key is to take turns building the structure and watching it grow together. It should be interesting and fun seeing what you two can create together.

Make Wall Art

Another wonderful activity to keep your kids occupied and to use their energy in a positive work is doing a wall art.

So help your kid in building a masterpiece. To do so, you can simply paste large pieces of paper or use poster board on the wall and let your kid use his drawing skills. Let him draw what he wants – it could be shapes, faces or inventive designs etc.

If you are not comfortable with this, give your kid a big piece of paper and crayons and let him draw whatever he wants to. Trust me, he will enjoy it and you will be surprised by his creativity and imagination. Provide him/her with the art supplies available at home – paint brushes, colours, rollers etc.

Rhyming

Try out rhyming games to support language development and vocabulary enhancement. You can play this game anywhere and anytime.

To start with, a basic rhyming game consists of you saying, I am thinking of a word that rhymes with Cat. Then your child can say something like Bat.

A slightly harder version is: I am thinking of a word that rhymes with Train and starts with the letter R. Your child can then say something like Rain. Then you can sing Rain Rain Go Away…

To make it more interesting: You can ask your kid to sing a rhyme that contains word “Star”. Your kid may sing a rhyme “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”.

Pretend Play

This is a wonderful way of learning about your kid’s imaginations skills and language development.

Kids have good imagination skills. Every time they cannot express themselves as we adults do, but when they get the opportunity they move forward and express themselves through pretend play.

Let your kids take the lead, let your kids use their imagination powers and let them teach you something new. This could be anything from building a castle to playing doctor, magician, teacher etc.

Be ready to see the world through your kid’s eyes. Trust me you are going to enjoy every moment and every bit of it.

Whatever they choose, you will observe the wheels turning in your child’s imagination.

Storytelling

Like rhyming games, for storytelling you do not need any stuff and can be played anywhere. Storytelling helps in the development of imagination and language skills.

Choose a setup that will interest your child, like adventure, fairy tales etc.

Other way to play this game is picture comprehension, show some series of pictures of a story and let him explain the story. Initially your kid may resist and may refuse to play the game but encourage him and help him in explaining the story in his own words and thoughts.

To make it more interesting and to encourage your child to ask questions along the way.

Outdoor Games

Kids of this age are very curious and want to know about everything around them. Because of their natural curiosity and interest to learn more of the world, they love to play outdoors a lot more. This means they love to play with sand, mud, stones, leaves, and even insects. They love to climb trees, running, and walking up and down the stairs. These games are essential for development as they are exploring and participating in active play.

Thus, it is very important that you should take your kids out for play and let them explore, understand the big and beautiful world around them. Let them play whatever they want. You can play football, Cricket, Catch the ball, Basket ball, Catch me if you can etc.

Some kids love to play with water. My own kid loves to play with his fishing rod and gets so happy and excited when he sees a Fountain, Pool, Sea and a Waterfall. Thus if your kid is comfortable with water you can start sending your kids for swimming training.

Treasure Hunting

An interesting game to play with three year old. You can play this game in or out (in garden) of your house. Hide some objects in and around your house and prepare some clues or maps for your little one. Explain the things to your little one and let him search the objects based on given clues and map.

This helps the little brain to interpret the given clues and maps and then kid’s brain takes decision and help him to find the hidden objects.

Riddles

Riddles are wonderful way to improve the critical thinking of kids. Play brain teasers or riddles with your kid, through this they form a picture of a thing based on given clues and tries to solve the riddle on their own.

Hope you liked the list of games for three year olds and will have fun playing them.

Happy Playing !!

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Don’t you find this post useful? Try it and let me know using comments below. Would love to hear from you.

Did you find this list of games for three year olds useful ? Do you want to add anything to the list, do let us know using comments below. We would love to hear from you.