Awesome Activities To Do With Your Toddler
Almost a year into this pandemic, and we are still in a pretty tight lockdown here in Northern California. With COVID-19 cases still surging and us sitting in the purple tier (the highest tier for surging case counts in California), we have had to find some extracurricular activities that we can do indoors. While parks and outdoor recreational spots have been open in our area, they are usually jam packed with many families, and we just aren’t that comfortable sharing spaces with people outside of our immediate family just yet.
Art
One fun activity that we have turned to almost nightly is directed drawings. My husband’s parents live in Alabama and have been unable to visit us for over a year. They miss their grandchild terribly. So, almost every night, we FaceTime them on our iPad and set up a directed drawing. We L-O-V-E Art for Kids Hub.We have been able to find a new directed drawing to complete almost every single night for the last six months. They do an amazing job directing the whole family in some pretty outstanding works of art. Our four-year-old has blossomed into quite the little artist over the last year.
Cassie Stephens is an art teacher that we adore. She has a great YouTube channel that we really enjoy for directed drawings and some really fun art activities. She also has a really fun Instagram account that we follow.
Are your kiddos as fascinated with scissors as ours? Our daughter loves to cut paper! One activity we have been having some fun with is what we call the “Barber Shop” game. All you need is a piece of construction paper and white printer paper and some glue. First we draw a silly face and torso on a piece of white paper. Nothing extravagant, just a “U”-shaped face and a boxy set of shoulders. Your kiddo could even draw the face onto your character if they would like. Next we take a piece of construction paper, portrait style, and cut long one-inch sections all the way down the length of the paper. Make sure to leave about one inch at the bottom that you do not cut. This is so you can glue it onto the head of your character. Once you have all of your construction paper cut into one inch long sections, glue the base of the paper to the top of the character’s head. Once the glue is dry, have your kiddo cut away! They have fun creating outlandish hairstyles and cuts.
Another easy cutting activity is to take two pieces of construction paper and tape them together. Cut the construction paper in half length wise. Draw a curvy line, zig-zag line, or a straight line down the middle of the cut pages. Tape one end of the paper to a table and have your child cut the paper following the pattern you have drawn.
Building
Besides directed drawings and art, we have become some serious architectural engineers over in our household. We have purchased a few different building sets of the Picasso Tiles. We love spending hours building castles and communities with all of our tiles. Our kiddo makes homes for all of her stuffed animals and tiny toys. We also have now gotten into creating marble runs and race tracks with the new sets we got over Christmas.
Now that our kiddo is a bit older, we have even started looking into following along with videos to help us build some pretty sophisticated structures. We like the Picasso Tile Idea Book Series and also the How to Build an animal series by JC Ingenium. We have built a turtle, dinosaur, cat, and dog!
Science
Did you know if you put a bar of Ivory soap in the microwave it will expand and grow to epic proportions? For this fun experiment, we cut the bar of soap into pieces and then, before we throw our piece of soap in the microwave, we make predictions about how big the soap may expand.
We love all things rainbow in our house. We love this rainbow walking water science experiment. It is a really fun way to teach color theory. All you need is a paper towel, food coloring, water, and a few plastic cups or glasses. Your kiddos will think you are magic!
Color theory baths are all the rage in my household. On super hot days, or super cold wintery days, we take to the bath armed with food coloring, little glass jars, and paper so we can write down our predictions. I collect enough glass jars mix up the primary colors: yellow, blue, and red. I also bring four other glass jars to place our mixtures in. Once we have all the supplies we start to make predictions about what will happen when we blend one color with another and then we get to mixing. We like doing this in the bath because it can get a bit messy, and there is zero cleanup aside from collecting all the jars. Bonus, our kid gets clean and we don’t have to worry about a bath later in the day!
The last activity is a Mini Volcano Experiment. We have had a blast with this experiment that we got from the Busy Toddler website. We used an old egg carton for this experiment instead of a pie tin. It made the clean up so much easier for us. All you will need for this experiment is food coloring, baking soda, and white vinegar. A clean condiment style squirt bottle also comes in handy for this activity. I recommend making this an outdoor activity. It can get a bit messy…and stinky.
We hope these activities bring your family as much joy as they bring ours.
Until next time teacher friends!
Bottoms up!