Keeping Little Hands Busy, Part Two

Here are ideas 6-10 of keeping your little ones busy.

6. Building Toys. You can have the kids do this at the table or on the floor. Provide building toys and challenge the kids to create a house, a car, or even a city.

7. Drawing Game. You will need blank paper, pencils, die, and a cube template. There are a few ways to play. For my girls, I draw princess items on the cube such as a dress, tiara, shoes, hair, etc. The girls draw a girl and roll the cube. They add whatever item the cube shows to their princess. For a gingerbread man, your cube can have a body, eyes, buttons, mouth, nose, arms and legs. Whatever is rolled is what the child draws. Now, you can add in the die by rolling the die and cube. So if you roll a six and eyes, your child makes six eyes. This gets a bit crazy but they always have fun with it. You can do monsters or creatures as well. For the princesses, they roll to add the number of diamonds on the tiara or items on the dress such as flowers, sparkles, or ruffles. The original idea came from a monster math game where the children rolled two dice and added the numbers together to come up with the number of eyes, arms, noses, etc. to add.

8. Water Coloring. Give your children a real treat by bringing out watercolors. To cut down on a mess you can supply watercolor pencils or watercolor books that only require water and a paint brush.

9. Magnets. Magnets are fun and easy to clean up. Provide magnets of different sizes and magnetic items such as paper clips, book rings, brads, and other magnets. This activity is NOT for children under the age of three or too young to understand that these items do not belong in her mouth. There are plenty of science magnet kits you can purchase for this activity.