Project Pinterest: Toddler Activities

With the colder weather coming and fewer warm and sunny days, I knew I needed to start thinking of things to occupy Little Miss indoors. She's at a challenging age in terms of toys--so many of them are made for young babies in the 6-12 month range while the rest seem more suited for 24 months and up. That, coupled with a very short attention span, can make it difficult to find things for her to play with for longer than 45 seconds. Books hold her attention the longest, but sometimes I need her to play for a little while by herself so I can get things done. Enter Pinterest.

Pinterest is loaded with ideas of things to entertain children and you can find dozens of pins with the same ideas that I based this Project Pinterest on. I just searched under the "Kids" category for toddler activities and hundreds of ideas popped up. Since there are so many versions of the same idea I'm not including any specific pin. Here are the two projects I started with:

Sensory Bin
If you search for "Sensory Bin" on Pinterest the results are overwhelming, but the basic idea is the same: fill a container with a bunch of different sized objects with different textures and let your kid play with it. Done.

I bought a shallow plastic box with an attached cover and filled it with a few bags of dry pinto beans, some acorns we collected, a few seashells, a small storage container and a measuring cup and spoon. Charlotte got a kick out of it (and not surprisingly, so did Howard. I learned today that Howard likes pinto beans.) It kept her occupied for a surprising amount of time and the whole project cost about $5. I might add some more things to it, like pinecones or large pebbles, to keep it interesting. Also, it doesn't make noise or play an irritating song over and over again so I consider it a win all around.

Just look at him licking his lips, itching to eat another bean:

Pom Pom Sorter
This is probably the simplest project Pinterest has to offer: buy a package of colored pom poms in various sizes and put them in a muffin tin. I can handle that!

The actual purpose of this activity is to learn how to sort according to shape or color. That's a little beyond Charlotte at this point, but she still has fun taking the pom poms out and putting them back in the little cups. She also likes to put them other places:

And there's also the matter of Howard not being able to control himself around these. If you look closely in the first picture, the section of red pom poms is noticeably smaller than the other colors. Howard has a fondness for the red ones and we've lost a few already.

And that's that. Happy November!

~Stacy