Easy toddler activities to keep your little one busy and your sanity intact.
My child has transitioned from a peaceful baby who slept all the time into a tiny banshee who wrecks havoc all over the house.
If I don’t keep her busy and engaged in activities, she prefers to utilize her energy towards dragging the dining chairs to climb on the kitchen counter, emptying out every drawer in the house, constantly turning the light switches on and off, jumping on the couch and falling off and crying about it… You get the picture I’m sure.
So these are the activities I’ve been doing with my toddler and they’ve actually managed to buy me lots of extra time for bathroom trips, cooking meals, cleaning the house, eating in peace, blogging in peace…
Remember: toddler’s can get fascinated and occupied with the simplest of objects and activities. There’s no need to get fancy or spend tons of money on expensive toys.
13 Easy Toddler Activities to Keep your Toddler Out of Trouble
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These are all no prep, easy toddler activities that require zero energy or time to set up and utilize everyday items lying around your house.
1. Coloring cardboard boxes
Drawing on paper can get boring for little kids sometimes. To add some oomph, let them draw on a cardboard box.
Hand your toddler one of those amazon cardboard boxes you plan to chuck out and some washable markers, washable crayons or even some washable glitter glue. Then let them scribble away! This one keeps my toddler busy for at least 8 -15 minutes depending on her mood.
2. Rip it up
Toddlers love to rip, tear and shred. Hand them some old newspapers or magazines that you plan to throw out. Let them rip to their heart’s content.
3. Stacking
Stacking is an activity that is fun, engaging and versatile. You can use these super cute stacking cups or even plastic containers, empty cardboard boxes… anything really that can be safely stacked.
The part my toddler loves the most is when the tower comes tumbling down. She let’s out a little gleeful chuckle and gets right back to stacking them up again.
4. Cleaning up
Toddlers love to copy adults and do exactly what they are doing. Next time you want the floor cleaned and your kids busy, simply hand your little one her own cleaning set.
My girls looooove to use their cleaning set and have actually become little experts in cleaning the floor. Talk about a double win.
If you don’t have a kids cleaning set at home, no worries. You can hand them a (new) cleaning cloth and show them how you clean surfaces with it.
If they see YOU do it, they’ll totally think its a super important task and will want to copy you. Then sit back, relax and watch them as they stay engrossed in the task of trying to “clean” every surface of the house.
9 Ways to Deal with a Toddler Destroying the House
6 Fascinating Reasons Why Toddlers Draw on Walls (And How You Can Stop Them)
5. Emptying drawers
Toddlers are OBSESSED with dumping stuff out of drawers. It gets super annoying. Especially if you’re lazy like me and haven’t gotten drawer locks and then have to sit there crying about pasta pieces covering every inch of your kitchen floor.
Anyway you can use this annoying habit of toddlers to your advantage. Just set aside a drawer that has important looking and adult type stuff inside (do NOT put their toys inside the drawer because then they’ll know the drawer is meant for them and they won’t find it fun anymore).
This could be wooden spoons and spatulas and safe things you don’t mind them playing with.
6. Soup for dolls/stuffies
You’ll need: a plastic sheet, a bowl with water in it, some spoons and your child’s favorite doll/stuffy. You can even put a few drops of food color in the water to make it seem more soup like.
Then demonstrate to your child how you feed the soup to her doll. This activity kept my toddler busy for a whopping 18 minutes!!!
7. Dressing up
The past few weeks I’ve noticed my toddler has literally been obsessed with taking out items from my cupboard including lingerie and underwear and putting it on her head. We had guests over and she was about to come in front of them wearing that on her head. Omg I was so grateful I took it off in time!
So basically toddlers love to dress up and anything can work as a prop. Hats, scarves, simple to wear dress costumes, fake hair, kid’s sunglasses, gloves, socks…the beauty with open ended play is that kids can really get a chance to let out their creativity.
8. Ride away
If you have a toddler and an older child in the house like I do, then this can be a great activity to get them preoccupied while you take a quick shower.
Take a large cardboard box, the ones diapers come in usually and let your younger one sit in the box while your older one pushes the box and gives her a ride.
My kids came up with a twist to this one. Load up the box with your favorite dolls and stuffies and push them around. They also like to decorate the box, paint it, put sticker on it and pretend it’s a rocket ship, a boat and sometimes a magical flying unicorn.
9. Creating forts
We have this tri folding mattress lying around which I love. The kids can jump on it, it becomes into an extra bed when guests are over and because it folds, it’s easy to make into a fort. My toddler loves taking her toys into the fort and playing in there with her older sister.
10. Bowling
This is a real hit with my kids and its so nice seeing the joy on their face when they get a ‘strike’!
What you need: some paper cups and a medium sized ball (this one’s a really popular sensory ball for toddlers). Set up the cups as the bowling pins and demonstrate to them how how to bowl. As they get better at the game, have them move further back from the cups to make it more challenging.
11. Pokey pokey
Toddlers love poking things. Here’s a great activity you can set up for them to utilize this fascination. Simply hand them a plastic colander with big holes and some pipe cleaners.
Show them how you can take each pipe cleaner and poke it into the colander holes. Once my toddler understood what I was doing, she was ecstatic about giving it a go herself. It kept her highly entertained for a good 13 minutes!
Bonus: great for developing fine motor skills.
12. Reading
Reading NEVER gets old. And if you’ve set up a cute, warm and inviting toddler reading corner then your little one will love to cuddle up in it and “read” (ie hold a book and look at the pictures) away!
If you have a toddler like mine who loves to tear books then make sure that only board books are within their reach.
These are some of the best toddler books you can find on Amazon:
Dear Zoo: A Lift-the-Flap Book
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
13. Busy Book
A Busy Book (as the name suggests) is designed to keep your toddler busy. Not just that, but it contains activities that also teach your toddler fundamental skills (like matching, sorting, counting, tracing, phonics activities etc) that lay the foundation for future learning.
The Sweet n Sour Busy Book is an insanely cute Toddler Busy Book (if we do say so ourselves!). Featuring bright and unique illustrations, each page has been crafted to perfection.
Designed to keep toddlers busy, engaged, learning and out of trouble, this little printable bundle is a life saver for toddler parents. Take it along during travel, in the car, at the restaurant or anywhere you’d prefer to replace screen time with something that actually benefits your child.
Check out the Sweet n Sour Busy Book (we promise you won’t be disappointed!).
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And there you have it. 13 easy toddler activities you can do at home with zero prep involved. Give them a try and reap the benefits of those extra free minutes in your day!
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Here are some other posts you may like:
6 Fascinating Reasons Why Toddlers Draw on Walls (And How You Can Stop Them)
9 Ways to Deal with a Toddler Destroying the House
6 Ingenious Ways to Stop a Toddler from Jumping on the Couch
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