Wednesday’s are one of my most free days of the week. Saya and I go to school until noon, and then we are free for the rest of the day. We often meet friends on Wednesdays, but today we had no plans, and I was having a hard time thinking of things that Saya and I could do together.
Playing with a one-year-old can be difficult. She loves to explore around the house and she can entertain herself amazingly well with her toys, but I want to get better at playing with her. My husband is so much better at that than I am. He always gets her laughing. (I excel more at cuddling, bathing, feeding, comforting, and those kinds of things…)
I was looking on the internet tonight for play ideas. This may still be a bit advanced for Saya, but my favorite idea that I found was shake and paint from toddlertoddler.com.
If anyone has any good toddler play ideas, please share–and I will let you know what else I come up with! (I added a category, “toddler play ideas”, and there are a few things there that I hope might be helpful to someone.)
Here are some photos from today–a very average day in the life of our family.
We went for a walk. She is a really good walker now, so we can go quite far even without a stroller. She stops a lot though–for every stone that she notices on the ground.
We played with water. I filled up the bucket and gave her a few cups to play with.
Junji came home during his break, and read books with Saya.
She knows that her books are on the bottom shelf. She’s going for the elmo book!
The elmo puppet book is definitely a favorite.
I have the same problem, and it’s especially hard planning what to do (an doing it of course) on days I am very tired or have a headache…
Once I saw on TV something about making toys from milk cartons - I made my daughter a crocodile and she loved it. It’s nice the toys are recyclable as well. Here’s a link I just found now when looking for new ideas http://www.mc-club.com/make/craft.html . (I was actually looking for info on how to make milk carton furniture for kids and I might try to make a small chair for my girl. Could look cute covered in some beautiful fabric.)
Another activity I would love to do is playing with flour playdough - lots of recipes for that on the net. If you can it’s probably nice to do that outside in the yard to make cleanup easier. Talking of playing outside, as a kid I used to do a lot of chalk drawing on the pavement, it would be lovely to do that with my daughter but I cannot think of a good place to do it now.
Oh and one more idea - my daughter loves it when we play something like hide-and-seek. I hide and come up from unexpected places and she laughs harder than anyone I’ve ever heard.
I’d also love to try puppet plays with simple faces drawn (or felt appliqueed)on hardware shop white glove fingers. That takes some preparation though.
BTW your idea with the laundry-play sounds great, I must try that on the balcony sometime. I love your blog and I am looking forward to finding more inspiration in your posts!
Thank you so much stef. That website is awesome! I can’t believe how many things you can make out of milk cartons. I can’t wait to try some of those. I have seen milk carton furniture at some of the schools that I have visited, and they seem perfect for kids. I think we have been collecting milk cartons at the kindergarten where I work, so I will pick some up on monday. I am inspired to make some toys for Saya! I like the glove/puppet idea too. I think Saya will love that.