Easy activities to do at home with a toddler and a preschool aged child.

Keeping two kids entertained all day whilst in lockdown is hard work. We do try to have a good routine which does help a lot . Most nights though I’m tapping away on Pinterest trying to find something that will keep them both entertained. With them being 2 and 4 they are at different stages of their development . Ava will happily sit and concentrate on an activity for a good amount of time . Where as Alby looses attention pretty quickly if it’s not activity he likes.

With Ava starting school in September I’m trying really hard to make sure she is school ready. Majority of the important things like self-care and confidence she is fine with . So I’m trying to make sure that academically she is ready also . I would definitely say having knowledge of the eyfs does help as I know the sorts of things she needs to be able to do. If you want to take a look at the eyfs for yourself you can find it here.

Here are a few activities we have done recently that both children have really enjoyed and both got so much out of them.

All you need is some masking tape

There are so many more uses for masking tape then for painting. Below you can see how I easily set up a variety of different activities just using some masking tape and some coloured pencils.

Colour hunt

For children who are leaning colour names this is a really easy way to learn them. All you need to do is put some masking tape on the floor ( we did shapes as it was going to lead into another activity) . Colour the masking tape in and then ask them to go find items around your house that are the same colours.

If you don’t have much space for them to run around in trying to find different items . You could place different colour items in a bag. Then ask them to pick out of the bag and then match them to the colour on the floor.Making sure to use the colour names when they are matching the colours.

If you don’t have wooden flooring like us . You could do this by placing different coloured paper on the floor for them to colour match too.

Shape shout

Leaving my different masking tape shapes on the floor we played a game called shape shout . I would ask them to stand on one side of the room . I would then shout a shape and they would have to find it and sit on it . They thought this was so funny . If you wanted to you could turn it into a game of musical bumps . But when the music went off they had to find and sit on the shape you shouted when the music stopped.

Numbers

Making sure I got the most out of the tape we had used on the activities above . I made them into numbers . As Ava is 4 and Alby is 2 I only did numbers 1-10 . Older children would be able to do this game with higher numbers.

I tasked the children the job of finding items and placing them by the numbers . They had to have the same amount of objects as the number . So if they were next to the number 3 there needed to be 3 items and so on.

An easy way to extend this activity for older children is to do it for their times tables . Pick a times table they need to learn and then tape those numbers to the floor . Then shout out for instance 2×3 and they would have to go and find 6.

Colourful car run

Now originally this activity was set up for Alby as he loves cars but some of the language Ava was using to describe what she was doing was amazing.

Using a bucket and some wallpaper and tape I was able to make a ramp for them to send their cars down. Adding some paint to the car wheels made this so much more fun as they could see the different marks their cars had made.

Now Ava noticed that one of the cars wasn’t going as fast . She said to me it’s too big and heavy and ran off and got a smaller car . Which went down faster and went right down to the end of the paper . This activity wasn’t meant to be some kind of science experiment about weight but that’s the way it went . She then got different items to send down the ramp to see which ones went the furthest. It was lovely to watch her extending her own play. Using her own ideas.

All these activities were set up due to wanting to stop the arguing between my kids . I find when they have something to focus on they fight with each other less . Keeping them busy gives them something to focus on. I have found when Borden hits .They get silly and then start winding each other up . All these activities are easy to do at home and don’t need lots of things to make them up. Also with the masking tape activities you can leave them on the floor so they can do them another day.

Maybe your children aren’t there yet with their development take a look at these great activity ideas for 2 year olds from Emma.