Looking for ideas for fun things to keep my 2 year old busy while ds and dd do their school work. Obviously I'm not planning on doing school with her but she likes to come and sit at the table with us for brief periods so I was thinking of some things to keep her busy. My ideas so far are Color Wonder, paint with water books, paint, magna doodle, play doe if I can get her not to eat it , building blocks, etc. Also if you have good suggestions for the 4 year old. She will be doing the CLE A-D workbooks but I'm sure she will want some other things to do also.
Coloring, AquaDoodle, chalk on a little chalkboard, magnet letters/numbers/animals/whatever on a baking tray, and my mind is a blank. I use rotating toyboxes with my little one. When she starts getting bored we get out a new toxbox. I have about 10 different larger toy bins and several smaller containers that she goes and gets herself.
large beads and string, even include some color pattern cards if she wants to copy the patterns. Stickers and paper, shape matching cards, color matching cards, paper and pencils, safety scissors and cereal box pieces, wikki stix, an old deck of playing cards and different sized envelopes, coloring books and crayons, board books. These are all things that my 2 year old loves.
Lacing cards-just hole punch old greeting cards or junk mail and tie a piece of yarn in one of the holes to get it started.
This isn't technically for the table but... One of my favorites was to fill a large tote with a ton of something- flour, rice, what have you. Give the kids some plastic cooking utensils, measuring cups, etc. My kids would play in these for hours. My ds used to use flour with his Thomas the train set. It was incredibly messy, but my son used to have a great time pretending it was snow on the tracks. At least it cleans up quickly! Salt dough is also easy to make and has the bonus of being able to cook it in the stove. Then your little ones can paint it.
Thanks everyone! I have several of the things mentioned and had just not thought of pulling them out. Love that your ideas are all so budget friendly!
ditto on what Meghan. Just put a plastic table cloth on floor and give them flour and rice and cups and mine had fun for hours.
Oh, you're in luck! Tina has returned, and SHE is the expert when it comes to putting neat things into zip-lock bags for little ones to play with during school time! Ask her!
