I am the mother of four busy children. I have two preschoolers and two toddlers (though one is only just a toddler). I have a bachelors in University studies with a minor in English and a cluster of child development. This means I was going for school as an English major but then decided that I really didn't want to be going to school until my oldest was two. My original plan was to go for a minor in child development.
My child development classes have helped tremendously with my family life. My oldest child has had some developmental delays, though they still have not diagnosed them.
My busy family life and busy life in general make it necessary that I take some time away to spend some time with my children doing something fun. I want to build a relationship with my kids, and this is done one activity at a time.
This is a simple game you can play with your child. It teaches patterns, which is part of early math.
To start you need something to create the pattern with. I used different colored cups. Place the cups, or what you are using to create the pattern, in a pattern on the table. Assign actions to the items. Let the child perform the actions. Then mix them up and see if they can perform the actions.
I can’t say my preschooler loved this game at first, but has asked to play it multiple times today.
I assigned actions like clapping for the blue cups, patting for the orange cups and stomping to the purple cup. What other actions can you think of for this activity?
Let me know in the comments.
I mean, unless you want your kitchen a sticky disaster…
Today we played Color Scavenger Hunt. To play you have your child search for different color toys. Once they find a toy of the color they are searching for they place the toy on a piece of colored paper.
The supplies you need are construction paper of different colors and toys.
My child loved this game, though it took her a little to understand what I was asking her to do.
This is a game that is meant for older toddlers since sorting is learned around 2 years old. If your child doesn’t understand the concept at first don’t be afraid to revisit this game at a later date.
As you can see we had more yellow toys than any other toys, but yellow was also the first color we searched for and my preschooler was helping more for that color.
The first time you play this game will be more of a scaffolding to play. In other words you are walking right along the child and point out the different toys and the colors they correspond with.
The subsequent times you play you can stand back a little more, but just enjoy the ride with your child while they learn math precursors. That’s right it is an early math game since part of math is sorting into numbers. Enjoy!
My kids love to play in boxes. I think all children love playing with boxes. Give a child an expensive toy and they tend to want to play in the box.
With all the diapers I have bought over the years there is always a box every couple of weeks. The fun thing about boxes is that it could be anything.
It could be a boat, a cradle for a baby, or even a robot’s head. The possibilities are only as limited as you and your child’s imaginations.
Another option is to give your child something to color with and let them loose on the box.
Be prepared for your boxes to be destroyed, whether by accident or on purpose. Don’t let your kids play with any boxes that you want to keep.
As I stated earlier, you can play with your kids and the boxes or let them play by themselves. This is a great activity they can do with self directed play.
Today I decided to work on bilateral coordination with my Preschoolers. Bilateral coordination is important for anything that your child does, whether it is walking or writing you use your bilateral coordination.
My oldest has always struggled with this so I tried to come up with an activity that we could do without too much hassle. A quick call to my sister and I was in business. (I seriously have the best sister for listening to my whims, and I am not just saying that because she is going to be reading this)
The idea behind the activity is simple. Have your child shred cotton balls into a bowl. Once you feel you have enough place glue on the ghost and let your child put the pieces of cotton ball on the ghost. Then let your child practice their cutting skills to cut out the eyes and mouth from a piece of construction paper. Finally glue the pieces on top of the cotton and you have your completed ghost.
Using the pincer grasp on the cotton balls to pull them apart is a great way to practice the bilateral coordination that I talked about earlier as is using scissors. These will be important skills for your kids to have their entire lives, so practice often. And if your child is struggling, keep practicing.
If you like this idea my sister made this great ghost printable that you can use for your child’s art project.
My kids love watching Ice melt. I think it would be rather boring, but they are constantly asking to have some ice to melt. Sure they don’t always stay in one place while it melts, but they love to play with the ice by setting it out on the hot pavement.
This activity is a sensory science experiment. Toddlers are called little scientists because they are constantly experimenting on their environment to learn how things work.
While simple, you can talk with them about how the ice goes from a solid to a liquid. This is something they can witness for themselves.
The great thing is that all you have to have is ice. Little to no preparation is involved, and it entertains them from anywhere between 5-20 min.
Today I tried to do slime with my preschoolers. I say tried, but the stuff I used didn’t work as well as I would have liked. I added more after a little while trying to see if I could get it to set a little firmer so the slime would be less sticky and it worked.
I feel like the slime mix I used was a little disappointing, and took forever to get right. I finally got it right, but in the process I also got slime everywhere because I wasn’t able to watch my kids as closely as I would have liked when they were playing with it.
I do want to try a better recipe next time, and not try the fast shortcut method offered by the one solution I bought at Walmart. The girls did have fun with it though, despite it being so sticky.
I suggest you either submit to the fact that there is going to be a mess if you make slime, or make it beforehand. The kids will pester you to help, which I ignored at first, but then let them play with the slime I thought I had finished (it needed more solution so it stuck to them way too much.).
In all it was a good sensory activity, and maybe when they are older I will make it again and let them help me make it. Next time though I will not use the cheap glue and the “quick” solution.
Have you ever heard the song “One of these things is not like the other’s, One of these things just doesn’t belong.”? That is what inspired this game. The great thing is that your kids will love it and you are able to sneak in some learning with it.
Being able to sort out the things that match and don’t match is a beginning math concept. I was surprised how well my preschooler was able to grasp this concept.
She could see that something was different between most of the options that I gave her, until I started venturing into the not so obvious differences. She could see that the cars were different than the little people angel, but struggled to grasp that the soft toys were different than the hard toys (this may have been my fault for using a stuffed horse and a plastic horse with the teddy bears).
My preschooler loved this game, and I got bored of it way before she did. She kept coming up to me through out the day asking to play again.
There are a lot of paper worksheets that have this activity for a child to do, but I figured, why not use what I have around the house? There are so many more options than the pictures give you. You could do colors, shapes, textures, taste.
In the end, I did enjoy doing it. I just suggest you have a lot of options gathered so you can just sit and play with your child. If you don’t you may end up running back in forth because they figured out all your choices in the first 5 seconds.
One of my kids favorite things to do is to play with the cans in my cupboard. They are constantly taking them out and stacking them. The great thing about this is that I don’t have to watch too closely while they play with them.
This is a game that even the youngest toddler can play. At a young age they may only be able to stack one on top of another reaching 2 cans high, but it is great practice.
My 11 month old was having a blast playing with the cans. I was surprised at how well he was doing.
All you need is cans and your kids will do the rest. Just be aware that your cans may end up dented, or missing labels. The younger ones won’t be able to stack very high, so you don’t need to worry about it falling on their heads.
This kept them busy for at least 20 min. So if you need to keep them busy while you get something done this is a great option.
As I have stated before, my kids love water. They will play in it any form that it comes in.
As toddlers one of their simplest joys is the bath. They also love bubbles. Adding bubbles to a bath is a great sensory play activity. Obviously since this is a bath this is one of the more involved activities we do, but my kids could play there for quite a while. The biggest perk I have to this is that if they are playing in the tub they aren’t making messes everywhere else.
Expect to get wet. Kids love to splash, especially when they are in the tub it seems. Sometimes this is not a bad thing, but if you want your floor to stay dry, this probably isn’t the right activity.
That being said, my kids could play in this for quite a while, long past the bubbles. If you need to sit down this is the perfect activity because the bathroom comes with the perfect seat to sit on while you are watching them!
Okay, so to sum up: You get to keep the mess in one area, you get to sit down, and the kids love it! Plus you get a little sensory play in as well. Have fun!
Depends on the child.
It goes without saying that you need to watch your kids in water, but just to say it “WATCH YOUR KIDS IN WATER!” As they get older you can step away a little more, but young children need more supervision.
***Update: Since this article, we have created quite a few block activities and decided to make a printable dice game pack for you! Get that free download here.***
Dear Reader,
Today we played with dice. You can make your own, use what you have, or improvise with this one. To be simple all you have to have is a 6 sided die or two. You could make a list of six activities for your child to do, Or use an activity dice.
I made mine, but the girls had fun anyways.
The activity is pretty simple. First you start with rolling the dice (one for the activity and one for how many times you do the activity). Second you do the activity on the activity die the number of times it shows on the number die.
The activities can be simple, stomp your feet. Clap your hands. The possibilities can be endless, or as endless as your imagination ( I had to wrack my brains to figure out some and came up with some like do the cha cha.)
This gets your kids moving and you can even practice counting with them. A big bonus is that they usually like tossing the dice too.
My kids loved this for a while, then little sister wanted in and she didn’t know how to share. Cue crying. Oh well, definitely worth trying again.
This is more of a parent guided activity, you could also join in if you wanted.
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