Cheap, Quick & Easy: Ideas For Playtime With A Toddler
Sep 06 '07 (Updated Sep 19 '07)
The Bottom Line Take some time to think out side of the box, so your toddler can have fun all day long...
As any mother may notice if you take a walk through your toddlers room, that over the last year or more you have purchased, purchased and purchased more and more toys. This is one phenomenon that our household as not escaped. Unfortunately, even with the large cluster of toys laying all over my sons room and our living room, he is beginning to get bored.
How do you switch things up and make things exciting again? It is hard to say sometimes, we have tried to keep our son entertained, but sometimes we find ourselves at a loss. Its at these times that the most convenient thing to do, would be to simply go buy a new toy, but that doesn’t really help the situation out much in the long run.
Below I have cultivated a few ideas to keep playtime fun with some cheap and/or free ideas. Sometimes your child doesn’t need a new toy to play with, just something new to do.
IN THE KITCHEN
One place my son doesn’t go often is in the kitchen. Well, that’s if you don’t count the amount of time he spends in their eating. Since my son has been one however he has learned that mimicking can be a fun process. Let your toddler cook. No, not literally cook, but play cook. My son can entertain himself for up to a half hour with a decent sized bowl, a large spoon and a few measuring cups. Bang, bang, stir, stir…
Of course since many kitchen items are not made for toddlers you will want to be aware of what is going on. My son ‘cooks’ in his highchair, which he thankfully still fits in very well. Since he can’t get up and run around all I need to watch for is that he doesn’t stick the handle of the spoon down his throat. You will also want to be careful of what items you five them. No sharp points and don’t give them anything that is going to shatter if it hit’s the floor. We use a stainless steel bowl and plastic utensils.
The added bonus of highchair play is the fact that your toddler is confined! So while your child is cooking you can also. My son always gets a kick when we are both stirring our meals up. He also likes it when I ask him what he is cooking and then ask for a taste.
Other highchair activities you may want to consider could be drawing with crayons (watch out for crayon eating) or playing in the highchair with any small toys your toddler already has blocks, animals, etc. Sometimes your child only needs things changed a little bit to make something more interesting.
HERE COMES THE MAIL
Come close… Did you know not everything your toddler plays with has to be toy, which also means it could be something you already have. No toddler could not help to get excited about getting mail! Or at least mine loves the idea of it. When you get those annoying junk letter, flyers, etc. let your toddler play with the paper. We open the envelopes and let my son have at it. Of course we don’t always get junk mail, so he doesn’t get to do it everyday, so the once-in-awhile event of mail has not gotten old yet. He will often place pieces of paper back in the envelopes, take them back out, shred and continue. As he plays I slowly pick up the smaller pieces and then what crumples up and leaves behind. Mail time can last up to a half an hour for us on good days…
CHECK THE TRASH
Don’t literally pull things out of the trash to let your toddler play with them, but consider what they may find interesting and hold it back. Old magazines and small catalogs work just as good as the mail does for us. Other items you may want to keep an eye out for are card board rolls from toilet paper or paper towels.
No I’m not crazy! You can use the paper towel rolls as a telescope, a bat, or just as a simple play thing. My son will carry around anything that is new to him and find something to do with it. Let their imagination go.
So what else can you find? Cardboard boxes anyone? If you have very many large boxes sitting around you can make a disposable play yard. Make cut-outs on the sides and place boxes together, so your toddler can climb in and out and all around inside of the boxes. If your toddler is leery of the idea place toys inside or if the boxes are large enough jump in yourself.
RAKE THE LEAVES
So fall only comes around once a year and heck we don’t even have large enough trees to produce a large enough pile to jump in anyway… We have abated this problem with a blanket pile. My son has amassed a large collection of blankets. After cleaning up hard toys off of the floor place tons of blankets in the center of the floor. You can also add padding with pillows. When you have a good pile, jump in, waller around, flip over a few times and just have fun.
This little idea was born on our recent vacation when we decided to peel the large comforters off of our beds in the hotel room. Not thinking much about it we placed them in the corner. Then my son came running and just jumped in and laughed. He continued to play in the blankets on and off for the rest of the night.
In my sons room he has easy access to his blankets, because I store them on his diaper changing table that is merely a set of shelves now. You can often find all of his blankets piled on the floor, unfolded and in a mess. Hmm, wonder what he has been up to.
Things to watch for, when you sit up a place to do this you will one want to ensure that no one is going to land on a hard toy at the bottom of the pile. Since rolling of the pile occurs also you want to make sure that the area surrounding your blanket pile is also free of obstacles and sharp cornered furniture.
BOARD BOOKS
At this point in time if you don’t have a collection of board books, it is high time you go get a few at least. One item I have never took the time to review is our collection of board books, we have a about twenty just off the top of my head. Why are board books so great? First off, they are inexpensive. You don’t have to buy the brand name $20.00 book. The majority of our books we’re purchased for a dollar. We have found a few at Kmart and many at our local Dollar Tree. I have purchased a few larger board books at Waldenbooks for about $4.00 in the bargain books section also. The other benefit to board books is the educational value. I cannot tell you how many toys we have bought that bolstered their educational value, but right now my son is learning from his board books and his experiences. How do I know this? Son where is the guitar on this page? ‘There’ (and he points to it)… While at fifteen months he can’t identify everything on the page he does go through sessions where we will sit with the book and he will point at things, say ‘that’ and then I tell him what it is. What better toy could you offer your child? Cheap and educational!
BATH TIME
One thing we haven’t purchased a lot of is bath toys. I’m not exactly sure why we lack in bath toys, we just do. Along with the one bath toy my son actually has it is only joined by a small grouping of rubber duckies and rubber frogs. So obviously my son is now bored of those few toys. So when bath time comes around, sometimes selections are made out of the regular toy box, for toys to take into the bath.
Here you will want to look for toys that one won’t get damaged by the water and two won’t hold water in them. Many of the items that we take into the bathroom have been ignored for awhile and are usually easily found at the bottom of my sons toy box. Like teething rings and keys. We have also taken the shapes from our shape sorter into the bathtub.
Of course your toddler can also find fun in empty shampoo bottles, cups and bowls in the bath. My son loves to do nothing more than pour water all over himself.
THINK OUTSIDE OF THE BOX
So my pre-fall agenda including setting my son up a ball-pit inside of our house. I started shopping for this ball-pit only to find that our local store sold ‘blow-up’ ball pits and they were recommended for children 3 and up…
I walked away saddened, but not to sad because I didn’t want a little blow-up Diego thing sitting in my living room all winter either. During a shopping trip we were looking through Dick’s Sporting Goods when I seen a small tent. That’s perfect! I could buy my son a very small tent and put balls in it. Dick’s was a bit high priced so we continued on with our shopping and I had the idea firmly planted in my head.
None the less later that day we were in Target - And No I didn’t buy my son a tent… What I did buy was a small three foot by three foot sand-box, that just happened to look like a tent. It was made of tent-like material and featured two rods that held up a 42 inch high ceiling. Knowing that I didn’t want use it for a sandbox, it was destined to become our ball pit.
That night I quietly put the tent together so I could surprise my son in the morning. Needless to say he was elated, even though it still wasn’t a ball pit. We ended up filling it with the blankets and he eagerly jumped in, climbed out, played in it, and so on. It has quickly become his favorite place.
We just recently started buying the balls for his ball-pit, but this sandbox/tent/ball-pit hybrid has been a major success.
QUICK IDEAS
-*-Go for a ride and find a new park to play in.
-*-Go for a walk, make your toddler walk too, you may only make it a hundred feet, but it is a break from the toy room.
-*-Go for a quick visit to friends or a relative.
-*-Let your toddler explore a room in the house they aren’t intimately familiar with, but closely supervise them.
-*-Have your toddler help you clean, even if you really aren‘t cleaning. Brooms, Mops and Rags can be a blast.
OVERALL
In short many household items can be turned into a short-term toy and many other things can be used for alternative uses. With that said safety should be the most important thing in mind. Check to make sure anything you give your toddler is safe. Are there chemicals on the product, paint, staples, sharp edges, etc. inspect everything first.
Give all of your odds and ends a try and maybe your child will have some fun with the new ‘not-a-toy’ item more than you thought they would. Since they are taking a break from their real toys, they may be just as excited to get back to them also.
------------------------------------------------------------
Ok, so how did I do?
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
susieq112
|
 in Kids & Family |
 in Kids & Family |
 - Top 1000 |
|
Location: Somewhere In The USA
Reviews written: 542
Trusted by: 117 members
About Me:
Procrastination ~ At this rate, I'll never finish my mini-doumentary...
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.