For the past few days, I’ve been having a lot of fun exploring activity ideas for my days with the boys.
Once you start looking around for ideas to teach or entertain your toddler and preschooler, it is an endless rabbit hole. There are so many amazing parent bloggers out there, with great ideas for activities. It’s incredibly helpful. I am a fun and silly parent, but ideas for crafts or sensory activities don’t come to me automatically. And I definitely benefit from the pro tips these bloggers provide. Many of them are current or former teachers, and have pro tips about how to set up these activities so that your kids are engaged and your house doesn’t get destroyed – both good things.
These are some of the activities we’ve tried out so far:
- Oobleck.
- Bubble foam.
- Number Match – car parking lot.
- Salt dough.
- Free the toys from the Jell-O.
- Frozen paint.
- Cloud dough.
- Freeze pom poms in an ice cube tray. (Again, I know I didn’t come up with this! But it’s pretty much exactly what it says.)
- Lava lamps.
- Erase the ABCs.
- Easy alphabet post-it match.
- Easy Shapes Fire Truck.
- Frozen toys. (I can’t remember where I got this from, but I basically just froze some of their toys in a block of ice. They had fun trying to break them out – for a short while. I think this activity will be more fun and science-y when they’re older.)
- Mixing play-dough with ANYTHING else. Play-dough and trucks. Play-dough and spaghetti. Play-dough and cups. Anything to mix it up and inspire creative play.
- Making slime.
- Hidden colors science experiment.
- Animal tape rescue.
- Easter egg suncatchers.
My favorite website so far has been Busy Toddler – such a great resource with so many fun ideas, and really easy to read and follow.
It’s been challenging, not being able to go out and about with the kids. They are pretty easy-going and have been fairly content, but I can tell there are times when they’re bored or feeling uninspired by the same old toys and activities. For them and for me, it’s been fun to break out a new and unexpected activity; they try out new things, they experiment, they figure out new and creative ways to play. It’s been really fun to find creative ideas for experiments and sensory play. Hoping to add to this list throughout the spring and summer.
