Have ever tried to use kitchen utensils for creating activities? If not yet, you can start with a whisk for your baby/new toddler. You can tie pipe cleaners simply on a whisk and ask your kid to rescue them. It is great for developing many skills. It can help your baby to be able stay in sitting position longer time. Great for crawling times, too. You can put it a little bit far and ask your baby to catch it.
I know sometimes we need very simple and quick ideas to make our little ones happy. We love puppets and I usually use puppets for singing and reading funny stories to my kids. If you don’t have any puppet you can draw on your fingers funny faces to have fun with your little one. It might be tickly for younger kids.
While making this scissors activity, you can learn about colors, talk about emotions and facial expressions.
This is very simple cutting exercise to foster fine motor skills and great for developing tiny hand muscles.
MB loves spending time in the kitchen. He prepares pasta, muffins and smoothie himself. When I ask his dream job, he directly says “Cook”. And he wants to be a cook, because he wants to cook for all homeless kids. This answer is melting my heart. This activity is great for boosting self-confidence, too. We named the place “MB’s Food Corner”, we were customers and MB was the chef. We ordered and he cooked, served for us. When you look into the setup, I am sure that you will see many skills in it, even more than I wrote below.
I prepared this for my 2 years old son. If you are too busy but still want to prepare an activity for your toddler, then this activity is great for you. Just cut the paper in half in different shapes. All you need is paper. If you don’t have scissors you can try to cut it by hand. And even you can replace the paper with newspaper or magazine.
You can have fun while strengthening hand muscles with clothespins and matching patterns. For older kids you can add more patterns. You can use markers if you don’t have washi tapes.
Handmade gifts are very special, aren’t they? The best part I love is fostering creativity while crafting with the kids. They choose the colors, patterns for their own crafts. I should admit that I also enjoy crafting a lot, especially when the final product becomes a beautiful decoration in our home.
Small beads are very dangerous for under 2 year old kids, but these paper roll beads are not. If you want to prepare a fine motor activity for your 2 years old, this is great idea then. It is not only stringing but also sorting activity. Just cut the paper rolls into 3 pieces and use washi tapes to diversify them.
Garlic press, potato masher, whisk, ice-cream scoop, wavy shape potato slicer. I am sure that you can find more options in your own kitchen. But I can say that “Garlic Press” was my favorite one. MB loved wavy shape slicer.