I get the same comment from the nurse at my pediatricians office each time we go for our well visit. She always seems a little astounded by Jude’s activity level. “If I haven’t told you before, you certainly have a busy child.”
Oh yes. Believe me. I know. I sleep well at night.
Can you believe that this sweet face could ever cause me trouble?
Turns out, he is quite a bit of trouble if he isn’t sufficiently occupied. Because he’s BUSY. All the time. Even if the busy is climbing all over me.
So I set about trying to occupy him with some fun, new, creative activities. A friend of mine recommended The Toddler Busy Book as a source for a lot of creative activities. I added to that First Art and decided if those two books don’t have enough ideas to occupy my little man, I would need to invest in a toddler size hamster wheel.
Now this isn’t really an activity, but to begin this shift in thinking of occupying a toddler, we took all of his toys and sorted them into five different boxes and put them in our coat closet. Instead of leaving all of the toys out all of the time, we rotate through – a different box each day. He is now playing with toys that he never used to when all of his toys were out! Success!
The first real activity is a fairly simple one, but it was a good learning experience. We have a silver piggybank in Jude’s room and we sometimes throw change in it from time to time. Turns out Jude likes to put change in it too! (And yes, those are monkey pjs – how great are those?) Once he figured it out, he always wants to put money in the bank!
Our second activity involved edible playdough. Peanut butter playdough to be specific. Although Jude may be the only child that doesn’t like peanut butter (very odd), so although edible, he didn’t eat it. One of the things I’ve decided is that I’m going to stick with activities that I already have all of the materials for. No special purchases until I’ve exhausted everything that I can do without spending money. Now, what is peanut butter playdough? Peanut butter mixed with one or a combination of powdered sugar, non-fat dry milk or cocoa powder until a cookie dough consistency is reached. The peanut butter I had was honey peanut butter, so I added cocoa powder and non-fat dry milk. It was sweet enough. That + mini cookie cutters = Jude occupied for 30 minutes.
Next cheap as free toddler activity? Hardly any prep work needed. Pencils and a clean milk jug. Insert into milk jug, shake, admire the fun sound, dump out and repeat. I am pretty sure this occupied him for over an hour. He would put the pencils in the jug and then walk over to another part of the room and do it all over again.
It’s been a fun experiment in what occupies a toddler and for how long. I’ll keep sharing success stories here for those of you in need of more ideas!
What activities keep your little people busy?
I love it! So glad that you are finding activities that you like. I love all of the fine motor skills building! I’m so proud of him!
how cute! not having all the toys out is genius.
How fun! We have been doing the same thing in our house. I didn’t find them in those books but on various other blogs. If you look at my blog you can find some of the links if you want more activities, but sounds like you already have quite a few. The one I really like is the one-to-one correspondence where you take some smallish objects and the child puts one object in each ‘cup’ of the muffin tin. If you want another natural playdoh recipe (flour and cream of tartar) where you can use food coloring for different colors I have one somewhere, but peanut butter sounds great. Happy playing!
Great ideas! I have a 6 month old who can crawl already, so I’ll have to test out your ideas in a few months, as well as check out the book. Thanks for sharing!
Personally, I like the child-size hamster wheel idea.
Oh we do the money thing too! Claire LOVES it! Another thing that keeps her busy is stickers. I put her in her high chair, take them off the paper and stick them to the edge of her tray and let her take them from there to put on the paper.
She’s also big into chalk on the patio
We’ve done similar to the milk jug – I put buttons, macaroni, or other small items into different tupperware and let her shake/move.
Productiveparenting.com is awesome for ideas too!
Beth, he is so dadgum adorable! Those ideas for different kinds of play sound awesome. It amazes me that such simple things can keep little ones so occupied. And leaning to save money at an early age…that’s genius! Haha!
Thankfully we don’t have a lot of toys right now, but this kind of thing was on my to-do list this month — well, by her first birthday anyway. I want to have daily boxes of little activities to do with J every day so she can learn and play at the same time.
Great ideas! Another hand/eye idea is a coin bank and Popsicle sticks or small tongue depressors. They have to get them lined up to go in. The kids are sooo funny when they try to line them up. I love how they move themselves instead of the bank or stick.