Toddler Activities

At such a young age basically anything you do with your toddler is fun and also educational. Sitting back and letting them explore the world around them is the best way for little ones to learn. Buuuut sometimes they need some guidance or more likely you may need some peace and quiet! I’ve put together some ideas that work for our family, that will hopefully give you some ideas.

books

Read as many books to your little ones as possible. Kids are like little sponges, soaking up a crazy amount of knowledge every day. Row has created a routine for herself that once she is finished breakfast she goes and reads in the living room until I’m done cleaning the kitchen, then we read together. It is something they can enjoy individually and together.

Toilet Paper Castle

I brought out all our TP and PT, Row and I made her a “castle” for her to snuggle up inside and read books. She then proceeded to make castles for her stuffed animals. This killed an entire morning!

baking

I’ve found a “small batch” cookie recipe (makes 8 cookies) that we’ve made a couple of times. It makes great cookies but you’re not stuck with too many to temp you for the week -or in my case they’re gone in 2 days. I’ve added the recipe here to my food blog.

i spy walks

We’ll go on walks and search for different things, ie. I spy a red car, a blue house, pink bike etc.

Letters

We’ve been writing letters to our grandparents which makes for a fun craft activity plus a trip to the mailbox!

Stickers!

Stickers have been a saving grace this past week. I had quite the teacher collection in the basement that I brought out, the 45 minutes of quiet was totally worth finding stickers on the walls, floors, tub, dryer and in her diaper, somehow? But we got the hang of putting them onto paper and made some Easter cards for our grandparents we won’t be able to see this year.

beading

I found some big beads at the dollar store and Rowyn had fun stringing them together, or putting them into containers to make maracas and her personal favorite -throwing them everywhere!

decorating cookies

Rowyn received a cookie decorating kit from Nana and Papa for Easter and loved getting to “color tookies”. If you want to shop local the Creative Cookie Co here in Saskatoon are selling DIY cookie sets for very reasonable prices.

When you have the time, sanity and patience, follow their lead. If they want to explore/destroy the tupperware drawer -let em! Allow them to guide their own play. Afterwards, we always make sure that she cleans it up on her own (even if we have to redo it later). Giving her independence but also making sure she knows our expectations.

Some days we crush quarantine -get lots of stuff done, have great behaviour, learn lots and have a super productive day. Other days the house looks like a disaster, we have a terrible toddler (and sometimes adult) attitude, and watch Frozen on repeat. It’s a balancing act and no matter how good or bad the day we have to cut ourselves some slack and be thankful to be home safe and healthy.

Xo,

Surviving Mama

Online Resources

With all the craziness going on in the world, home is the safest place to be right now.  But how do you keep your kids engaged and entertained for an extended period of time? As a teacher I brainstormed some ideas to keep your (elementary) kids busy and their brains challenged. 

Monkey see monkey do

First off, there is currently a lot of stress and anxiety in our world and our kids feel that.  Don’t feel like you must rush into keeping up with curriculum. It’s okay to spend some days watching movies and just take some time to create a settled, calm environment in your household.  However, kids (and ourselves) do need some routine and structure in our lives to keep a sense of normalcy. 

I Need More Structure!

If you are looking to implement more structure in your home, I’ll link a video here. This is Jordan Page, she has some really helpful ideas on how to keep sane and organized during this (temporary) new normal. Go check her out, if you end up down her YouTube rabbit hole she has amazing hacks on basically everything in life.

Below I’ve put together a few different examples and links for some resources, videos and ideas to keep your monkeys busy!

Fun Educational Apps

• Epic! -This app you can try for 30 days free and it has 40,000 books right at your fingertips. My students love this app because it give you different options to read, listen to audio books, comics, quizzes and you can even create your own quiz that other people can take. My kids would’ve spent hours on this app if I let them!

• Mathletics -Many students would be able to access this at home for free if they already have a school account. They would just need to type in their username and password. However, if they do not already have an account you can access a free trial to see if it is a good fit for your family.

• Coding - This is the language of the future and is already apart of our everyday life whether we realize it or not. Code.org is a fantastic site that is filled with problem solving disguised as games. This was another favorite site my students loved.

• Bridge Designer -This website is a little more specific to structure and design but I used this with my grade 2/3 class and they loved it! It could be used all the way up to middle years as well.

• Teachers Pay Teachers -This isn’t an app but a great resource for virtually anything you could possibly need. The great part of this website is it is all created by teachers and contains a lot of free content. Word searches, coloring pages, full units, etc.

Physical Activity Ideas

• Cosmic Kids Yoga -There are so many different videos and themes for all ages and genders. I will link their YouTube page here.

• Just Dance -If you do not have the game, my students love when I YouTube different just dances and they follow along.

• GoNoodle -This is a website of fun videos, games and body breaks.

• We Move - This is a local business offering online classes for both kids and adults!

Outdoor Activities for Kids

Stuck inside with the kiddos during this quarantine can make anyone go a little stir crazy. I’ve found some fun ideas to get outside but still abide by the social distancing standards. It’s so important to get outside and move during a time like this both for your mind and body’s sake.

Toddler adaptations

Rowyn is a little young to understand what a scavenger hunt is, so we will go for a walk and play “I Spy”.

OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES

• Winter outdoor scavenger hunt. Click here for some ideas/templates.

• Bury small toy dinosaurs (or any toy) in the backyard and have your child be an archeologist and dig for “fossils”.

• Get your child(ren) to shovel the walk of an elderly neighbour -teaching them the importance of community and the warm feeling of knowing they did something good for another person during this crazy time.

• Tell your child to make an obstacle course in the snow that you and your family will attempt once completed -this gets their creativity juices flowing!

• Pile snow on your back steps and make a mini sledding ramp.

• Leave a carrot trail up to your door/window and wait for wildlife to wander up!

• Dig through your summer stuff and bring out the sand toys and build snow castles

• Build a snow fort/snowman/ice castle

Outdoor (Educational) Activities

• Put water and food coloring in squeeze bottles and create snow art! These bottles from Amazon work great! Or to be frugal use water bottles you already own. Have them mix colors in the snow. If they don’t already know, have them predict what color will appear when two colors are mixed.

• Snow volcano. This doubles as a science experiment! All you need is baking soda, vinegar and food coloring. -I suggest some rain gear for this one just in case!

• Supply sight words and have them write them with a stick in the snow! - Toddler adaptation would would be to write the alphabet with whatever assistance necessary.

If you have other fun things you have been doing with your kiddos, send me a message and I will add them to the list! Sharing fun, easy activities with each other is what will get us through this quarantine with our sanity intact!

I will be adding more teaching related content over the next few weeks. I will share my resources, favorite apps and activities that I use in my classroom. Everyone has a different teaching style, while worksheets and tests do have a place, I have always loved doing hands on activities and inquiry based learning with my students. The experience will stick with them much longer than any attempt at memorization. Your kids will remember this time of quarantine, let’s make sure there are some happy memories that come from this.