Fun with Toddlers!

[tiggerandpooh]

Mel - aricyn is teaching you how to play. Lovely isn't it? Nathan taught me how to play, and be a "kid". we could spend entire days being batman and robin, or bob and wendy. Enjoy these moments hun, they disappear all too quickly.

Aston and I played with the car mat and racing car track. He loves it. He is at day care today, but this week I'm going to build houses with the blocks around the car mat.

Have fun with your toddlers today everyone.

[nelly]

you can get cheap spray bottles and fill with coloured water or watery paint and we spray that on big sheets of butchers paper. Makes great wrapping paper.

DS love cooking and measuring out the flour, sifting and rolling. He also loves to help wash the dishes - he has the small sink with cool water in it and washes his own stuff - usually little bits of tupperware from his cupboard. Also loves helping to make the beds and folding - which is good bcos usually I hate doing that stuff and he makes it fun!

[Rach75]

great thread

hey quick question where can ya buy the big sheets of butchers paper ???

[lilias]

Ikea!

[smiles4u]

My 2.5year old DD loves Playdough, drawing on her chalkboard, colouring in colouring books, drawing with crayons or crayola textas (the ones that wash off clothes about $4 or $5 a pkt in Target), any size building blocks, reading books in her play tent where she has a pillow to sit on & she loves me to join her in there.

We have a little plastic table about $12 from the Spoils shop that she uses to prepare meals on in the kitchen ... like pizzas (putting on the tomato paste, grated cheese, ham, etc ...) and helping mix cake batters (i let her lick the spoon afterward as a treat of course).

She loves to go OP shopping with me & she has maybe $1 or $2 in her purse to choose a toy there.

Dress ups ... she is big into being a ghost with a thin blanket over her or a towel.

We sing songs & dance together. I buy $2 CD's from BigW that have about 25 old fashion songs on them.

She loves to play musical instruments at this age ... we purchased a i think its about 6 pieces of instruments in a box for $15 from Toys R Us just before Xmas.

We also go out into the garden & pick flowers which she arranges into her own little vase with supervision.

[Ginger]

just subscribing to this thread
i need help with activities, he's driving me crazy!

[Jus]

Playschool inspiration. We cut crepe paper streams today and waved them around.
Then took them outside - it's windy here. watched what the wind did to them.

Thanks for all the great ideas.

[Gigi]

routines

every time we come home, bilby's routine is to hop down from the carseat, push down the button (to lock the car door), then she gets out and just HAS to check the letter box for mail, then she HAS to pick two mariold flowers.

i'm coping better with "arsenic hour" (cooking tea) now. I put on a music cd for her and she dances around our very tiny lounge area, brings me dressups to put on her (e.g fairy wings or a raffia skirt). Instead of giving her snacks, she is now old enough (at 2yrs, 7 months) to cope with the "we'll have tea when dh gets home".

I used to have the tv on, her throwing tantrums, and me giving her snacks, losing my cool etc - it was not good. We are both much happier now, i think less tv is helping us.

i still haven't achieved my goal, of having a sandpit for bilby to play in, so far i have selected a spot, weeded it, laid down underfelt (coconut husk stuff that went under carpet in the old days). I need a clamshell now, and sand. Have toys to use in it and got her a wooden bulldozer last weekend.

the last two months, i've found it pretty stressful, any gardening i do with bilby (mainly me trying to get ontop of the weeding - we have no mulch right now). we have this tiny front patch of dirt. i've planted seeds and i walk AROUND them (the baby seedlings), taking care not to trample them. This is too much to ask of a 2 yr old, so i've decided to wait until the plants are BIGGER, before doing any more gardening with her. Doing it in the front patch is stressful enough, so close to the pavement and road (we get speeding hoons too). no fence.

in Autumn, the place we go once a week (community centre), has an outdoor pergola (we sit and eat our lunch there), i've made a point of playing with her using the Autumn leaves, so lovely to hear her chuckling.

the kmart bongo drums i gave a friend's child for his birthday, were so good, all the kids loved them (incl bilby), think i might get her a pair too. I really like to get musical instruments that actually work, do not rely on batteries. i notice bilby going into a kind of trance with the battery operated ones - she just zones out and gets more and more frantic, pushing buttons randomly, not even interested in what sound is produced. but with instruments that are real, she plays thoughtfully, enjoys herself, and looks around to other kids and me, to share the sounds.

i got my fussy eater, some knitted vegies/fruit from Covered in Cloth, and she is enjoying playing with those. Especially feeding banana to her plush monkeys (her ooh ahhs, she can't say the word "monkey").

i know i can't buy her a wooden dollhouse, and tonight i was imagining, how i might construct her a four room dollhouse, by taping four sturdy cardboard boxes together, painting the outside. putting carpet offcuts, or fabric on the pretend bedroom floors. It would be hard to do this without her seeing, (live in tiny unit) but at least i could give her a dollhouse then. i saw a lovely one for $300, which gave me the idea. it was very simple, only four rooms, really funky modern wooden furniture went in it, e.g a wooden "flatscreen telly" LOL. It was big and chunky, perfect for toddler hands.

all she gets to do, creatively, at home, is playdough and steiner crayons. i really must buy her paints. it's the doing it in a confined space thing that has put me off so far. i think of painting as very messy, and needing space to do it in. i'm also very mindful of living in rental accom, don't want to mess up the unit.

[Rach75]

gigi on better homes last night they made a four room dollhouse out of cardboard with cardboard furniture it should be in this months issue

[Gigi]

i was obviously watching the wrong channel last night, i didn't even realise Homes and Gardens was on, on teh weekend.

thanks so much Rachel, i will check out the mag - what a co-incidence, my first thought was to search google for ideas (re making a cardboard dollhouse) but now i'll hunt down the magazine - thanks so much for the tip! much appreciated hon.

[~Kim~]

was just trawling through some odler threads and saw this. Funnily enough in recent months i have been compiling a list of things for DH to look at if he runs out of ideas when he is in charge, so thought I'd add DH's list edited to remove all the stuff already suggested:


-Craft box
-Picnic on the grass.
-Cooking
-Tent
-water play
-Playing Shops
-Going to the library
-Photo hunt/walk
-Soap Paint (I came across this recipe for cream made from shampoo, it smells better and is so much cheaper then shaving cream. Mix 3 teaspoons Shampoo with a small amount of water in a mixing bowl. Whip with an electric mixer until it becomes like shaving cream. Add food coloring if desired. We made beautiful blue and purple cream and the strawberry smell was much nicer then shaving cream!)
-Rubbings of different textures
-Draw on paper with white crayons/candle and paint over
-Throw rolled up socks into washing basket 1-5m away
-Play simple card games like snap
-Look at a magazine and look for all the boys/girls/pets/letter "S"'s etc
-Mix bi-carb and vinegar together... we do it everyday but it amazes little people
-Do some papier-mache (newspaper and glue)
-Bathing dolls
-Storytelling without a book- your favourite fairy tales or true stories
-Cardboard tubes/toilet rolls make good trumpets/telescopes etc
-Pretend you are the child and your child is the parent
-Miniature gardens. The foil trays that pies and prepared foods arrive in make lovely containers for miniature gardens. The children can enjoy hunting around the park or garden for twigs to make trees, moss for a lawn, stones to arrange as a rockery or a waterfall. Keep twigs or stones where you want them with a little blue tack or plasticine. Add toy people or animals and maybe a little water if the container is watertight. This can be a very creative and enjoyable exercise if you have children of very different age groups to entertain. A variation is to use play sand (not builder's sand - it stains everything yellow) to make a beach scene, maybe adding shells, stones and a blue paper sea.
-Paper puppets. A picture of anything - colourful bird, clown's face, animal or cartoon character, carefully cut out by an adult and stuck to the top of a strip of card about five inches long and one and a half inches wide becomes a very easily made puppet. These give such pleasure and are so easy to make that you will probably end up with dozens of them. Magazine pictures can be stuck on to folded card to make theatre set background and wings.
-Potato prints. After cutting a potato in half, draw on a simple shape. A triangle, circle or star perhaps. Cut away the rest of the potato, leaving a shape to dip into paint and print on to paper.
-Skittles. Skittles can be improvised from large plastic cola or lemonade bottles. A little sand or water in the bottom makes them more stable. A good game for learning to count.
-Stilts. You need to do a little drilling for this one. Take two strong tins, coffee or clean paint tins are ideal, and drill a hole about one inch from the top on opposite sides of the tin. Insert a length of string and knot securely. Check that the handle is at a comfortable length for the child before knotting the other side. These are always very popular, but never leave young children alone with them especially near stairs or steps.
-Igloos with marshmallows, frosting and half an apple
-Obstacle course
-hopscotch
-making magnet pictures on her white board (we have a stack of those magnetic dolls that you can dress up and make pictures)
-trampoline in backyard

[Gracious_Goddess]

Wow Kim that' a really comprehensive list and a lot of great ideas!

[madamerogers]

hi there

i'd love some ideas too for my ds

he is 16 months old and im due in 4 weeks with number 2!!!!

there are some wonderful ideas here but maybe for slightly older kids??

thanks

x madame x