Hi, I’m Tess Marlow, the person behind Kids Play Printables.
I taught preschool for nine years, and most of that time I was the teacher standing at the copier at seven in the morning printing a game I had drawn on the back of a register. Some of those games held a room of eighteen four-year-olds for half an hour. Some fell apart in ninety seconds. The difference was never how the printable looked — it was whether the rules could be explained in one sentence.
That is the whole idea here. I make the printable, then I play it with real children before it goes on the site, and I write down what actually happened: the age it worked for, how long it held, and the one thing I had to change on the spot.
What You’ll Find Here
Kids Play Printables covers printable games and activities for children: party games, scavenger hunts, classroom and preschool sheets, Christmas and Elf on the Shelf ideas, holiday printables, bingo cards and family game nights. Each one says which ages it suits, roughly how long it lasts, and what you need besides a printer and paper.
How I Decide What to Publish
Three rules. A printable goes up only after it has been played, not after it has been designed. Every guide names the age range it fails at, because a game that works at seven can be humiliating at four. And if an idea needs laminating, a craft store run and forty minutes of prep, it says so at the top instead of halfway down.
How This Site Pays for Itself
The printables here are free to download. Some pages carry ads, and a few links to design files and craft supplies are affiliate links, which means I earn a small commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you. Nothing is recommended because it pays better, and every guide says who a product is wrong for. The full wording is on the affiliate disclosure page.
My Mission
Nobody needs another folder of pretty PDFs. What a parent at 4pm on a rainy Tuesday needs is one page that prints on plain paper and buys forty minutes. That is what this site tries to be.
New printables go up on Pinterest first. If a game did not work the way I said it would with your kids, tell me — that is how the notes get corrected.