new creative activities
I have three daughters and i would love to them started on easy on hand activities. But my creativeness has been blocked. What fun activities can i get them started on thats also a learning one as well. I would appeciate all suggestions and advices.
I have a lot of trouble too, thinking up these early childhood activities that actually work.
One thing we once did was look through newspaper ads and cut things out of different colors, and glue them in a "color book", a book I made with the name of each color on top.
Sometimes we play "school" with all the stuffed animals in a circle, and do alphabet and weather etc. with the animals.
I would love some other ideas too, I find it really hard to figure out educational activities that will keep my kids interest.
Depending on the age of your children scavenger hunts are fun! Sometimes I send my daughter on a color scavenger hunt. I assign my daughter a color and provide her with a bag or pillowcase. We search all over the house for toys or items that are her assigned color. After we collect the items we count them, sort them into big or large, stack them, and more!
I guess it's dependent on age - today I just made home-made finger paint for my one year old. Found the recipe online and it literally couldn't be easier - half a cup of flour, half a cup of water, half a cup of salt. Divide it up and add food coloring of your choice and lay out some paper and the paints...my little one had fun!
My hubby is away for work this week, so it'll be cute for him to see the little paintings our daughter made when he returns! Something to put on his office desk perhaps!
I am really enjoying this thread. I have a busy 2 year old and I am always looking for new activities to try with her. I am looking forward to trying the home made finger paint recipe. My daughter loves to paint and would love this activity! I can't wait to see more activities added to this thread.
I will try some of these. Its hard for me to prepare activities since I am the only one doing everything manually. My hands are full and tied. I love the idea of the scavenger hunting of certain colors of objects. I think they would love that, I let them write and color. Just gets tiring after same activity everyday for them.
Some great activities to do with toddlers that also promote learning.
1. Play dough - you can make your own using this recipe.
2 cups flour
2 cups warm water
1 cup salt
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 Tbsp cream of tartar
You can add food colouring to the dough or even oils like lavender, peppermint to give the dough a nice scent.
Add all the ingredients to a pot and stir on low heat until the dough starts to form and pull away from the sides. Let the dough cool and then knead it for a few minutes.
Use old cookie cutters or old plastic forks and knives and have some fun with the play dough. YOu can make the alphabet this way. Then they you spell out their name.This develops great fine motor skills, letter recognition.
2. Cutting/Gluing activities.
I get old magazines and construction paper and my son would love to cut up the paper with child safety scissors. Sometimes I would draw a line wavy line or zigzag line and have him try and cut out my line. Great for developing fine motor skills as well as hand eye coordination.
3. Stringing beads on a shoe lace or pipe cleaner. Lots of fun and again, builds fine motor skills. Then they can wear their creation. If you want to get real fancy, make the beads from the homemade play dough and bake it. Then string the beads.
4. Finger paints you can eat. You can use pudding to finger paint on wax paper. Then to get cleaned up all you kids have to do is lick their fingers.
5. Make a shaker, take beans or rice and add to a tin can with a lid. Cut up magazines or paper and decorate the tin with markers or bingo dabbers. Then have a parade and make some music.
6. Paint rigatoni. To add an educational element only use blue, red and yellow paints and have your kids mix the colours to make the secondary colours. Once dry, thread the pasta onto a shoe string or yarn to make a necklace.
7. Sorting activities are always fun. You can bring in a lot of math concepts. You can sort beads, socks, pastas, beans, rocks, shells, whatever you have a bunch of. Use old egg cartons as sorting cups.
8. Scape crayons into fine dust - you can use a scissor or an old cheese grater. Then have the kids put them on wax paper. Fold the paper over and use a light iron to melt the way. Now they have a beautiful stained glass window. They can cut it out into neat shapes.
9. Take old playing card and put sticky labels on them with numbers or coloured dots or shapes. Make two of every card. Then play concentration game with them.
10. Collect things around the house like - toilet paper rolls, paper plates, string, egg cartons, yogurt containers, tissue paper, etc and just let them create and use their imagination. You never know they'll make. Have them tell you about their creation. They can make up a story to go along with it.
My kids loved to play school with all of their stuffed animals. They would also play restaurant when they got a little bit older. Sometimes, they still play restaurant or even store. They came up with playing library because we had a ton of books. @purplepen great list of activities. We used to cut pictures out of magazines and making collages out of them. Pintrest is a great place to get more ideas from also.
Kinetic sand is great! I love it!
You can try all sorts of (more or less) messy activities or some that are non messy at all. For older kids you can try some simple paper crafts - like origami. Or for younger kids you can try some Montessori type sensory activities with some coloured rice or try making some slime (you need some good ingredients for this though).