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Activities For 2 Year Olds Near Me – I had a request from a reader the other day asking for inexpensive activities she could do with two-year-olds at her home daycare. It got me thinking about the different activities I’ve done with toddlers over the years and how this age can be, at the same time, wonderful and challenging.
Two-year-olds can be easy to please and generally prefer simple activities. They have just entered ‘the world of me’ and therefore enjoy activities that center around their thoughts and their way of exploring materials and concepts. Since they often have their own agenda, these activities are great because I’ll get them started with an idea and they’ll take it to the next stage on their own.
Activities For 2 Year Olds Near Me
Here are ten frugal activities that are geared for the two-year-old developmental stage. These have all been winners with many two-year-olds over the years.
Learning Activities For 2 3 Year Olds
Grab some old potatoes from the back of your closet, some crab apples from the tree in the park or maybe the carrots that are a little too rubbery and cut them up to make food prints.
Most two-year olds enjoy getting their hands covered in paint but you can always stick a fork in the apple to act as a handle if they prefer it. I buy a jar of washable paint from the dollar store and put small puddles in trays to avoid waste paint. I re-use food containers as trays.
Put on some rocking Raffy tunes and give each child a light weight scarf (I went to our local thrift store when I opened my daycare and bought 5 tacky silk scarves from the 1980s for a few bucks). The children love to hold the scarves at the end and throw them in the air or twirl around with them.
You could use ribbon or streamers or even paper cut into long strips. Anything that floats in the air will catch their attention.
Montessori Inspired Practical Life Activities For Infants And Toddlers
Balloons are very cheap and you get a lot of fun with a simple balloon. We throw them up, roll them, kick them, rub them on our heads, make them squeak, and try to move them from one end of the room to the other.
I often tie a skipping rope between our two toy shelves and then drape a bed sheet over top of it to make a toddler size waist high volleyball net. This game lasts a long time
I have a water table that I set up in the backyard with soapy water in nice weather. We will also use the kitchen sink for water fun but I only let one or two kids in the sink at a time to contain the mess.
Another old favorite is to put the toddlers in their high chairs and give them a bit of shaving cream on a plastic plate. They love squishing it with their fingers and the cleaning is very, very quick and easy.
Year Old Development Activities
This picture shows the children using flexible circles for a stepping stones game. We also use paper plates, construction paper, hula hoops, pillows, skipping ropes arranged in triangle shapes, towels and chalk circles drawn on the sidewalk.
The game has endless variations but the basic idea is that the kids jump from one rock to the next. They love it when I create new and interesting pathways and I’ll add special spots where they can dance a little jig and then move on. We also practice our color words, shapes or numbers during the games.
I pick up wicker baskets of all sizes and shapes at garage sales or craft sales to hold different types of toys in our playroom. Toddlers love to have a little basket to carry their treasures home when we go for our nature walks. A simple bag would also work.
They will intently collect pine cones, rocks, sticks, leaves and wild flowers. We save their treasures and put them to good use in craft projects or use them as pretend objects in our outdoor sandbox area.
Alphabet Activities For 2 Year Olds
Most two-year-olds enjoy playing with vehicles of some kind and most home daycares have a set of cars or trains. When I get a big box I like to lay it flat and show the children how to draw roads or train tracks on the box.
The two-year-olds will eagerly draw their own roads and decorate the scene with their own lines and circles. I’ll add a few stop lights, a building or two and a bunch of trees to bring the road scene to life. This is a good way to reuse a box and extend the length of vehicle play for young children.
Two year olds also love to watch cars roll down ramps. The activity is mesmerizing for them! We make our own ramps with large pieces of cardboard, boards or this section of our green train table top. We propped it up with a toy bin under it so it wouldn’t slip on any little toes. The pieces of paper happen to be a homeschool math activity in skip counting and predicting how far different objects would roll.
The next time your Kleenex box is empty, consider turning it into an inexpensive activity for your two-year-old. You can flip it over and cut out a few shaped holes in the bottom. Pick up some objects you have around the house (for example, cut a toilet paper tube into thick slices to make circles, or use some jar lids) and make your own shape sorter or size sorter or color sorter.
Important Things To Teach Your 2 Year Old
I have a homemade sorter that involves matching the correct color of pipe cleaner (cut into short lengths) to the correct colored hole in the box. The holes just have rings of color around them. Pipe cleaners can be a choking hazard to a two-year-old, so choose the correct type of object for your group. You can make your sorter complex or very simple. The bottom line is that two-year-olds really like to poke objects into holes (think noses and pee), so use that to your advantage and make them an amazing Kleenex box sorter.
The world is a big place and two-year-olds are small. I haven’t met a two-year-old yet who didn’t like to climb into a little blanket fort. Most of the time, toddlers don’t know what to do once they get into the fort so they crawl back. Crawling in and out and in and out is one great activity. If you want to extend the fun a little more you can give them a pile of books to bring in the fort and read (look at the pictures) yourself.
I have noticed that children who would normally only spend a few minutes looking at books alone will sit and look through an entire book or even several when they are in a fortress. Eventually, my two-year-olds choose to stay in their fort for 20 minutes quietly through a huge stack of board books!
Toddlers love to make music and musical instruments are easy enough to make if you don’t have any. A simple cup (with a lid) filled with dried beans makes a great shaker and a pot or yogurt container makes a good drum. I find that two-year-olds like to bang on a drum for a few minutes, but they lose interest after 5 minutes if they are left on their own. But, get those little feet marching and they’ll go and go and go.
Toys For 2 Years Old Toddlers That Encourages More Independent Play
My group will make a loop from our playroom into our kitchen, through the front entrance and back into the playroom again. It’s a wonderful circle to keep everyone going in the same direction (a table would work too). The children are so happy to march along in line shaking their bean cup or tamping their yogurt drum (you can tie on a ribbon to allow it to hang around their neck). Of course, monitor the event closely, but I find it a pleasure to sit and watch them go around and around with big smiles on their faces. They always perk up and beam when they pass me so I clap my hands enthusiastically to their beeevotuifval music.
Filed under: crafts, for parents, general, general, ideas and tips for providers, learning activities, running a home daycare Have a 2 or 3 year old? – You need the toddler activities! Having a toddler is a lot like having the cutest companion turn up at a moment’s notice.
Try and help them brush their teeth? No. Sucking on the bristles is much more effective. Maybe they don’t take naps anymore?! GASP! Like you, I have had joyous and challenging times with my toddlers.
These 40 fun and easy toddler activities for 2-year-olds helped bring more joy to our days. They even allowed me to unload the dishwasher while they played. In this article, I’ll give you a bunch of ideas for your toddler to explore textures, motor skills, problem solving, and communication—all through play!
Activities For Kids: Ideas For 101 Free Games, Crafts, And More
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