Activity Ideas for Young Children

It's winter here and I've been hoarding fun activity ideas to keep us from getting cabin fever.

Under the Bed Storage Container



Cheap (13$ CDN) and easy water or indoor "sand" table. Substitutes for sand could be puffed wheat or oatmeal. Yes, you will have to sweep/vaccuum/wipe after this activity (and many of the others I'm about to post) but my personal theory is that if cleanup takes less time than how long the children are occupied for, it's worth it. My only caution is do not use the indoor sandbox if you have cats, they will think it's a litterbox. (Guess how I know).

I have friend who use their big narrow storage boxes for containing messes, for example having their children sit in it to play playdough in a carpeted room or to do a craft where you cover paper with glue then sprinkle glitter on. One friend said her son played for 2 hours straight in a similar box with rice and thomas trains- I'd vaccum for that! I will warn you that some children may try to dump out the box. Blackbird Jr never tried, but don't say I didn't warn you.

There are lots of fun things you can do with the water table, one of my favourite is to take an empty milk container and make an "iceberg" that Blackbird Jr can watch melt, have toys ride on, etc. You can freeze small toys in the iceberg as well to be rediscovered as it melts.

Flour Tray



I was trying to encourage Blackbird Jr to draw with his fingers but he was more interested in driving in the flour. Afterwards his cars all had a "washdown" (thomas-speak for carwash) in a big bowl of soapy water on a towel on the floor.

Other Activity Ideas:

- Use paint tape to make roads on the carpet for driving trucks on.

- Make coloured ice cubes and float them in a bowl of water or see what happens when two different colours melt together (e.g. red and blue will make purple water).

-Make a shoebox into a mailbox and give your child the junk mail to play with.

-Save empty food containers to play grocery store. We found a kids' play grocery cart at a garage sale for 50 cents and Blackbird Jr spent hours playing with it as a young toddler.

- toss balls into storage containers, the bathtub or a laundry basket.

-Make a paddle with a paintstick and a paper plate and hit balloons with it.

-Colour vanilla pudding with food colouring and then fingerpaint.

-Painting outside with a brush and a bucket of water. Painting with water on a chalkboard is fun too.

-Save your holiday cards that are made from sturdy paper. Punch holes around the edges and let children sew with shoelaces or other string.

A book I found really useful for activities when Blackbird Jr was younger was The Toddler's Busy Book by Trish Kuffner. We found lots of fun ideas in there to try and some have made it into regular play repetoire.