Yes, we’ve been extremely lucky with the weather over the past weeks- thank god! Nevertheless, with a strong recommendation to stay home and the odd rainy day here and there, we need to occupy our little ones. Here are a few things we’ve been up to;

Painting

A messy time filler that most young children thoroughly enjoy. We have been using brushes and sponges, you could also use household items like; kitchen utensils, plastic toys like lego or cars (wheels/tracks) or even have a go at doing the good old’ classic veg prints!

Books and Puzzles

Books and jigsaws are pretty self explanatory, they entertain Harry for short periods of time and are super quick and easy.

Cheerio Towers

Stick some spaghetti into some play dough/plasticine and encourage your little one to thread their cheerios onto the spaghetti to make a tower- although, if your little one is anything like mine, they’ll eat most of the cheerios!

Pattern Practice

Making patterns can be great fun, something we are still practising! Here we used plastic balls (from our ball pit) to make coloured patterns in a muffin tin for Harry to try and copy.

Posting practice

Posting cards has been one of Harry’s favourite ‘rainy day activities’. Simply cut slots with differing widths and lengths into boxes, and let your little one practise posting cards through the slots- Harry loved doing this, he posted a full deck of cards, twice!

Aquadoodle

Mess free ‘painting’- genius idea! Dead quick and easy to set up and drys quickly to be put away, win-win!

Messy Play

Since we have been on lockdown, especially the first few weeks with poorer weather, we have been doing lots of messy play activities. Recently we have used coloured rice, dry cereal and dry pasta- all great fun!

Playdough

We have used both homemade and store bought playdough, I personally don’t see a huge difference, only that the store bought stuff looks prettier as its more vibrant.

Moon sand

What I would describe as ‘indoor sand’, a lovely sensory activity for little ones and really quick and easy to make at home too!

Hide and Seek

What child doesn’t love hide and seek? Harry loves playing hide and seek, particularly if he’s the one finding as he loves the success of finding someone!

A Bowl of Bubbles

Water, children’s bubble bath or body wash and food colouring. Blow into the mixture using a straw and watch your little one’s hands shoot straight into the bowl! Another quick and easy sensory activity.

Salt dough

Again, a very quick and easy activity to do with a little one. We decided to make hand prints to put into Harry’s memory box.

Instruments

Is there anything a toddler likes more than making noise? Harry really enjoys playing with musical instruments and listening to music- he has done since he was very little, so this is something he does almost daily!

TOYS!

The most obvious of all, rotate your little ones toys to keep them interested and let them play freely and use their imaginations.