Preschool Kid Games for Three Year Olds
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Keep It Up

Ball activities make excellent preschool kid games for three year olds. Many three year olds love playing with balls of all shapes and sizes, but heavy balls can be difficult for them to handle. Therefore, try a game of “Keep It Up” with a light balloon instead. Just throw a balloon up into the air, and challenge the kids to keep it up as long as possible by hitting it, bopping it with their heads, or using any other technique. (Most of them will find that hitting it with their hands is most effective.) Don’t worry if it bounces on the floor – getting it back up into the air is part of the fun! Once the preschool kids become competent at this game, try sending up more than one balloon and seeing how they do. See this article for more fun ball games for preschoolers.

Sorting By Color, Size, and Shape

Although this game requires some time-consuming preparation beforehand, you can reuse the materials over and over again. Buy thick tagboard in three different colors, and cut triangles, squares, and circles from the tagboard. Make some of the shapes small, some of them larger, and some of them very large. Then dump them all into a large box. You can use these shapes for several variations of the same game. First, spread the shapes out on the floor and have students sift out all of the shapes that are one color and hand them to you. Then mix them up again, put out three boxes, and have students work as a team to sort the shapes into the boxes by color. When they learn to do this well, you can repeat the activity with them sorting the pieces by shape, and eventually by size.

What Kind of Animal Am I?

Three-year-olds get excited when they are given a chance to guess correctly. Take advantage of this interest by playing the guessing game “What Kind of Animal Am I?” Give students three hints about what type of animal you are pretending to be, such as “I have stripes, I am orange and black, and I like to roar. What kind of animal am I?” When students guess correctly, have them walk in a circle around the room, making the sound of the animal that you were thinking of. (For example, after the above hint, the preschoolers would walk around the circle growling like a tiger.)

A Taste of Real Life

Kids love to imitate the people around them, and giving them a few props might be all they need to start a full-fledged game. On a hot day, you might take several riding toys outside with some buckets of soapy water and some rags so that the kids can have a mock car wash. In the classroom one day, you might bring in several empty boxes and pretend fruits, along with some used shopping bags and a toy cash register, so that the kids can set up their own grocery store. You can even line up some chairs and pretend to be riding a bus, a plane, or an airplane. These preschool kid games for three year olds are great ways to get kids’ creative juices flowing and to help everyone enjoy a single activity.

This post is part of the series: Fun Activities and Games for Preschool Kids

Looking for some fun games for preschool kids? This series has some interesting ideas for year-round fun.

  1. Preschool Games for the Three Year Old Set
  2. Preschool Vocabulary Activities and Age Appropriate Exercises