Activities for toddlers – a round up of what we love

I don’t know about you, but to me, Pinterest is an absolute gold mine for picking the brains of creative people. A pretty place for all manner of clever things just sitting there, waiting for you to notice them.

I notice you, Pinterest people. I notice your jalapeno popper dip, and your snickers popcorn, and your endless activities for kids. You have expanded my (ok I’ll admit, somewhat limited) ideas of keeping small children entertained, and for that I am grateful.

Little toddlers, as parents of them know, don’t sit still for long. They tend to eat paint instead of putting it on the paper, and they care very little whether you’ve bought the expensive crayons or the cheap ones – they’ll all get snapped no matter what. I feel as though every parent of toddlers attempting craft should “prepare for the best, expect the worst” or whatever that saying is.

Anyway, here are a few things that I’ve done with the kids over the last few months that didn’t seem to end in disaster.

This picture and the one at the start of the post were printables from 1+1+1=1 blog. I chose the Thanksgiving ones because we did them in November, and they were cute. But there’s tons of things to choose from (My favourite is the Q-Tip painting letters, although Biggie ended up just writing the letters over the top rather than dotting each circle. Smart kid), and I get asked a lot about the Frozen-themed ones we were doing a while back.

 

Cinnamon-scented play dough was quite cute, although I only made it once. I still make the original recipe (but halved) and change it up with scents. Lavender was good! And I made the play dough purple.

This fun alphabet-matching game was a favourite for a while there, until Smalls took all the little pieces and distributed them throughout the house, never to be seen again. So, good for older toddlers who can recognise letters and find a matching pair.

I also bought the full set of Animal ABC Printables from here, and put them into a binder with plastic sheets. The kids use a whiteboard marker to do the activities, then I wipe them clean again. Hours of fun!

And the last thing I’ve bought is the Robot Turtles Storybook (which we haven’t tried yet), which is an interactive book that teaches kids from age three and up the basics of coding and programming. I’d like to get the boardgame too, but will have to find somewhere that ships to Australia. The downloadable storybook also comes with 16 colouring pages to do. We haven’t tried it yet, but will report back when we do!

Speaking of colouring pages, we have used the ones from CBeebies (the Cloudbabies one), Peppa Pig from ABC4Kids, and a couple from vintage colouring books that I photocopy.

What have you found on Pinterest or elsewhere that you’ve loved?