Keeping your baby or toddler entertained can seem hard sometimes. Here, we will guide you through our top ten easy activities for babies and toddlers.
When it comes to your child, you want them to be happy and healthy. A great way to do that is to make sure that they have activities to do throughout the day that keep them active, help them to learn and that are fun.
There comes a worry that in order to keep your child active, learning and having fun, it will either cost you a fortune or, in our modern day, involve a lot of time sitting in front of a screen. We are here to help you see that there are some very simple, easy ways to keep your child happy and healthy.
Within this article, we will guide you through our top ten easy activities for baby and toddler.
Baby
Depending on the age of your child, there will be different activities that they can do so we are going to break our easy activities for baby and toddler into age groups. Within this section, we will focus on babies.
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Sensory Play With Everyday Objects
Sensory play is exactly what it sounds like – an activity that stimulates one or more of your babies senses. There are many benefits to sensory play. It is through their senses that your child makes links between what we see, feel and hear. This helps your child to “make sense of the world” around them.
Through sensory play, your child will be able to discover which senses are calming for them and which cause overstimulation. The knowledge of this will help all children but will be hugely beneficial to neurodivergent children who can have some hypersensitive senses which can lead to distress if they are overstimulated.
And sensory play is not only extremely beneficial for your child but it is also very easy to achieve. Sensory play can be done with everyday items such as corrugated cardboard that you get within a parcel, an empty kitchen roll tube or shiny Christmas decorations. If your child is still very young, make sure that it is something that is safe and, if they are in the habit of putting everything in their mouth, keep a close eye on them.
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Painting With Edible Paint
Painting with edible paint is a type of sensory play in itself. It is also a great deal of fun and the edible paint is easy to make.
All you need is something to protect your floor or table. This could be an old sheet or a piece of cardboard. For the actual painting, all you need is some paper, some natural yoghurt and some type of food colouring. This could be actually food colouring or it could come from fruit, like raspberries or blueberries.
Show your baby what to do by using your finger to paint with the “paint”. From a young age, children will imitate the adults around them so they will begin painting too. As it is yoghurt with some food colouring/fruit, you do not need to worry about them putting it in their mouths. They may get a little messy though so a painting smock will be a good idea.
It goes without saying but make sure to check the ingredients if your child has any allergies.
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Playing With Water
Another easy activity to do with your baby, which is also a type of sensory play, is playing with water. This is really an activity that can be done with a baby or toddler as children really love playing with water. Whether it is in the bath, in the sink or using a plastic water bowl, your child will have a great deal of fun.
Use plastic bottles for pouring and squirting each other, plastic tubing, a sponge, a colander, straws, a funnel, spoons and anything else that’s unbreakable.
If you are playing with water in the bath, never leave your child alone in the bath, no matter their age. A young child can drown in less than 5 centimeters (2 inches) of water.
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Reading To Your Baby
Reading to your baby is a really great way to engage and entertain them but it will also help them with their future learning.
Even before babies learn to speak, they will enjoy hearing you read to them. Listening to you will give them a feel for the sounds, rhythms and rhymes of language. Even small babies like looking at picture books.
Reading to your baby will also help you to develop an emotional bond with them which will be great for their emotional wellbeing.
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Button Bag
A really easy activity for your baby is the button bag which can be done as soon as your baby can hold up their head while doing tummy time.
All you need is some fun, colourful buttons and a large sandwich bag. Fill the sandwich bag with the buttons and some water, just enough for the buttons to be covered. Zip up your sandwich bag and it is a good idea to reinforce it with some clear packing tape.
It can be a good idea to tape it to a baking tray so your baby can play with it whilst doing tummy time or whilst sitting up.
Toddler
Now let us move on to the easy activities for toddlers.
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Drawing And Painting
As your child gets older, they can move on from playing with edible paints to using crayons, felt tips and child-safe paints to create their masterpieces.
Just like with the edible paint, it is a good idea for you to draw or paint with your child, showing them how to hold the crayon or paintbrush.
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Colour Matching Activities
For this easy activity for your toddler, all you need is some items that are the same colour as each other and then help your child to match them all together.
For example, you could have a green ball, a green toy, a green book and then a red ball, a red toy and a red book. The aim of the activity is to help your toddler to sort them by colour. As you help them, make sure to talk to your toddler about the colours.
You could do the same sort of activity with some coloured balls and a cardboard box. All you need to do is cut some holes in the box and then draw around the hole with a specific colour e.g. one hole will have red around it, another will have blue around it and so on. The aim of the activity is to help your child put the right colour ball in the right colour hole.
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Sock Puppets
Sock puppets are a really fun activity for your toddler. And all you need are some old socks. Have fun together drawing faces on them or sticking things to them to create characters. And then get the puppets to talk to each other or to you or your child.
This will help your toddler with their language development and will help them learn more about having conversations with others.
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Walking
Once your child is able to walk it is a great idea to encourage them to walk with you. This could be a walk to the shops or a nice walk around the park.
As you are walking, talk to them about what you can see and what you can hear. Walking will be an activity that gets them active but also encourages them to engage their senses. And if you are in a park or natural environment, you can teach them about the different things they will find there, such as the birds, the trees and the insects.
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Joining A Sports Club
Toddlers need to be active for at least 180 minutes (3 hours) every, single day. No matter how many activities you have planned, this can be a hard thing to do alone. Taking your toddler to a sports club will help as you know that on the days they attend it, they will be active for 30 to 45 minutes.
There are many sports clubs that are excellent for toddlers. Gymnastics, swimming, dance and, of course, football will all be a great way to get your child active, they will learn and accomplish things and they will have a lot of fun.
10 Easy Activities For Baby And Toddler
When it comes to finding activities that keep your child entertained and happy but will also keep them active and help them to learn, it can feel overwhelming. Or, at the very least, like it will cost you a great deal of money.
This does not have to be the case as there are many easy, fun activities that can be done at home, using household items, which will help your child’s development and help them to stay active.
We all need some help from time to time and, thankfully, there are many sports clubs out there that will help your child to be active and to have fun.
We hope you have found this guide helpful. If you would like to know more about our football classes, please click here to find your local class.