Most parents of toddlers get to the point where they wonder what they can do to keep their toddler occupied. Toddlers tend to have short attention spans so you need a multitude of activities in your box of tricks to keep them happy. While entertaining your toddler why dont you also bring in a bit of teaching. Most activities can be done with things around the house and encourages creativity and builds their imagination.
One easy and creative activity is dance. Child love music and love to dance. While singing and dancing put in different moves such as stomping, jumping,clapping and swaying all help with listening, gross motor skills and imagination along with that its great exercise.
Why not try pretending to be animals. Children love to copy you. You can hop like a rabbit, crawl around like a lion etc. Depending on the age of your toddler you can ask them what noise different animals make, what do they like to eat.
There are also many things you can do with balls which all help with coordination and gross motor skills. You can have your toddler roll the ball between the two of you back and forth using a different hand each time. Trying to throw balls into laundry baskets, helps with their aim. Find something such as a fly swatter, or something similar and the child can tap a small ball (such as a tennis ball) around on the floor, this is perfect for hand eye coordination. If you have a larger ball the size of a soccer ball, you can have them sit and bounce on the ball, or you can have them lay with their tummy on the ball this all helps with balancing.
Another way to work on balance and other gross motor skills is to lay down a piece of ribbon or string and pretend to balance/walk along the item.
Even having your child help with cleaning. Toddlers can put their own clothes into wash baskets, can help with dusting, give them a cloth and away they will go wiping tables and such.
Toddlers also love to colour and paint. This is not a hard activity to set up, just make sure you have the table covered thick crayons and some paper. If painting remember the painting smock and something to wipe up the mess. The art of colouring and painting is to be prepared ahead of time, because once a toddler starts there is no leaving them along. Colouring/painting works on their fine motor skills.
And never forgot pots and pans and a wooden spoon are always a favourite that can never go wrong, well either than maybe hurting your eardrums (you may want to purchase some ear plugs before you start this one).
Remember it should all be done with fun in mind.
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