As some of you may know, I stay home with our son and feel very blessed to be able to do so. I love to watch all the advancements he makes everyday, and how those challenges he overcomes become second nature to him within a week. He is starting to walk really well and I'm finding it even more difficult to keep up some days :) He has always been a child who wants to be entertained. I remember even as a little infant we would have to walk him around for hours it seemed like because if you sat down with him he gets bored and started to cry. We would do things like take him to Bass Pro just to overwhelm him for a while and make him sleep!! As he has gotten older, he wants even more interaction. We have seemingly thousands of toys but once he has figured out all the buttons he's bored and hardly will touch it again. Yet, a simple pot and spoon may entertain him for 30 minutes! It can be exhausting trying to keep him entertained and happy so I am so thankful my mother-in-law gave me this new book. It is called "The Toddlers Busy Book" by Trish Kuffner, and I have found all of the ideas work so far!! Bub loves to figure things out. He will watch me flip a switch and then mimic me by doing the same thing. This morning he found his toenail clippers and went to my feet and tried to clip my nails for me :) So one of the ideas she had in the book was to clean a milk gallon out and find assorted things to put in the gallon. Always making sure they can't be swallowed but can be placed through the neck of the carton. She recommended close pins ( which I couldn't find anywhere at the store) so we had some craft sticks and they seemed to work fine for him. You could also use scraps of colored fabric, or small toys for older children. He loved it!! He would put all the sticks in the carton one by one and tip it over to pour them out again. So simple but so fun :)
There are all kinds of great ideas in this book! Most are for an older child but here are some other good ideas.
Take an egg carton and turn it upside down. Poke holes where the eggs set and put in close pins. The child can have fun taking them out and putting them back in.
Yummy finger paints: make up a batch of vanilla pudding and color portions with different colors. Let the child finger paint with it on a plate or highchair tray....this one would be a mess but fun!! You can do the same thing with different flavors of jello!
Take small toys like bugs or frogs and hide them around the yard for a fun scavenger hunt.
Take small toys and tie a string around them. Tape them to a highchair and let baby pull up the toy and throw it back down again...Im going to use this one while im fixing dinner tonight :)
He also loved a game where we would tie a string around a stuffed animal and I would hide it in a couch cushion or under the couch but leaving the string out. He would pull and pull until the toy came loose and would pop free!
Take a long length of rope and place it on the ground in a squiggly line and let your child balance along the rope without falling off.
Just some fun ideas to keep the day busy. If you stay home you know that from 6am-8pm is a REALLY long time to keep a toddler entertained. I would highly recommend this book just to make play fun for both of you again!
