What to do with stuffed animals? Kids love their stuffies! Host a Stuffed Animal Day at home or preschool!
Are you up to your eyeballs in stuffed animals at your house? Here are some simple activities your kids can do with their stuffed animals!
Are you a preschool teacher? Invite your students to bring a stuffed animal to school!
Host a Stuffed Animal Day at Home or Preschool!
Days can feel long with young kids. Having a theme day can help cheer up everyone, including the grown ups! Hosting a Stuffed Animal Day is one of my favorite things to do with preschoolers and toddlers.
Why host a Stuffed Animal Day?
Here are a few reasons why I like to host a Stuffed Animal Day!
- It helps the day fly by faster with a fun theme to guide the day!
- Encourages kids to build new vocabulary and language skills as they try new activities using their favorite friends (their stuffies).
- Builds kid’s play skills! Stuffed animal play is a great way to build creativity and imagination skills.
- Its a fun way to use a play tool you already have at the house or that can be easily brought into school from home!
Stuffed Animal Day Activities
Here are five simple activities I planned for our Stuffed Animal day!
- Make a stuffed animal slide
- Go on a stuffed animal hunt
- Build stuffed animal houses
- Do stuffed animal art
- Decorate stuffed animal beds
- Sing with our stuffies
Make a Stuffed Animal Slide
What you need:
- Stuffed animals
- Large cardboard box
- Small table or couch
- Duct tape (if needed)
How to set it up:
- Start by grabbing a large cardboard box and cutting it so that it opens flat.
- Place the box against a small table or couch at an angle to make a slide.
- (Optional) Use tape to secure the box in place.
- Grab stuffed animals and encourage kids to let their animals slide down the slide! They won’t be able to do it just once.
Making stuffed animal bobsleds is another fun idea!
Go on a Stuffed Animal Hunt
You can just hide your stuffed animals around your house and find them… or you can take it up a notch with our stuffed animal scavenger hunt cards!
What you need:
- Photos of a few stuffed animals printed out onto cardstock
- The actual stuffed animals that match the photos
- Stickers/crayon
Prep ahead:
- Have your kids gather 5-10 stuffed animals.
- Have a stuffed animal photo shoot and take pictures of each individual stuffed animal.
- Print out the photos (I used canva.com to put all the photos on one page for easy printing). You can see my Canva template here.
- Hide the stuffed animals around the house. Hide them in easy spots for younger kids and harder spots for older kids.
- Use the photos to go around the house and try to find the stuffed animals. Cross off or put a sticker on each stuffed animal photo as you find it.
- Once you’ve found all the stuffed animals, hide them and find them again!
PS: You can check out the full instructions and see even more stuffed animal hunt details here.
Build Stuffed Animal Houses
What you need:
- Magnatiles, Connetix Tiles, Wood blocks, or Cardboard blocks
- Stuffed animal
Instructions:
- Put out a variety of types of blocks and stuffed animals.
- Encourage kids to build a bed or house for their stuffed animal using the blocks.
Do Stuffed Animal Art
What you need:
- Thin canvas board
- Liquid watercolors
- Fat Paintbrushes
- Photo of your child’s stuffy printed in color or B&W onto white cardstock and cut out around it.
- Tacky Glue
- Sequins and gems
- Other embellishments (rick rack, etc)
- Cups
Instructions:
- Give kids a canvas board, paintbrush, and two colors of liquid watercolors in cups.
- Encourage kids to mix or layer the colors and paint their board completely so that there is no white space.
- Let their canvas dry.
- Once dry, have them glue their stuffed animal photos onto the canvases using tacky glue and a paintbrush.
- Next, have them decorate their stuffed animal with gems, rick rack, and other fun embellishments. Use tacky glue to stick the items onto the canvas.
- Let dry and display!
Why use tacky glue?
Tacky glue is thick and tacky, so it grabs items on contact. It works on fabrics and a variety of other materials, so I like it better than regular school glue for crafts.
Decorate Stuffed Animal Beds
Making stuffed animal beds was probably the highlight of Stuffed Animal Day! They kids were so excited to participate in every aspect of creating them- from decorating, to stuffing, to playing with them!
What you need:
- Small white or light colored pillowcase (Here’s how we made ours)- around 9×12 inches.
- Quilt batting
- Fabric Markers
- Hot glue gun and glue sticks
Instructions:
1. Give each child a pillowcase to decorate and some fabric markers.
2. Then let the markers dry. This is pretty quick!
3. Next, have kids rip up the quilt batting into small pieces to put inside the pillowcase. Fill the pillowcase with stuffing until the kids think it is full enough.
4. Seal the ends of the pillowcases with stitching (or hot glue them closed like I did!). Now you have a stuffed animal bed (or pillow)!
5. I loved all the different colors my students used to decorate their beds. Some tried writing the first letter of their stuffed animal’s name.
6. In addition to markers, you could also add tacky glue and other embellishments if you want!
My 9 year old loved this activity so much that she had to make her own stuffed animal bed while I was prepping them for my students.
7. Now kids are ready to play! Grab the stuffed animal and their bed for some bedtime play!
Play a Singing Game with Stuffies
What you need:
- One stuffed animal for each child
- Towels, dishcloth, or play scarf for each child
Instructions:
- Have your kids or students sit on the floor with their stuffed animal and a towel or scarf that can cover their stuffed animal.
- Go around and have each child show their stuffed animal to their friends in the class and say the stuffed animal names.
- Sing the song below for each child and take turns having each child put the blanket over their stuffie and then introduce their stuffie!
I’ve sang this with dozens of preschoolers in my classes and everyone loves it!
Stuffed Animal Song
When it’s their turn, the spotlighted child covers their stuffed animal with a blanket/towel.
Everyone sings:
Who’s hiding under the blanket?
Who’s hiding under the blanket?
Who’s hiding under the blanket?
Let us guess your name!
Then the kids try to guess which stuffed animal is under the blanket.
Repeat until every child has a turn with their stuffed animal. Play again if kids want more changes to get the names.
More Stuffed Animal Activity ideas?
Stuffed Animal Day at home or preschool is such a fun way to liven up a day! Do you have another other creative ways to play and create with stuffed animals?
Here are a few of our other favorite Stuffed Animal activities to do at home or at preschool:
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