Fun, Fast & FREE Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers at Home!

Easy, fun, free. This is the theme for today's video where I am sharing 10 super easy and fun toddler activities that are not only great for keeping your toddler occupied but will also support different areas of their development. I'll show you how to tailor each activity for different ages and stages so these can work for both younger toddlers and older preschool-aged kids. All these activities use materials that you most likely already have in your home which means they won't cost you a thing. So if you're looking for something you can set up in less than five minutes to stop your toddler from driving you bunkers, then I've got you covered. Our first activity is DIY car tunnels. All you're going to need is some construction paper, scissors, tape, and something to write with. You're going to start by cutting out the construction paper into strips and then taping the strips down to the floor to create tunnels for toy cars. I spread these throughout my kitchen and my foyer so my boys were running around while playing which made this a great gross motor activity. For a younger toddler you can leave this game as is and it will serve as a great fine and gross motor activity or you can add a bit more of a challenge by giving a direction like asking what color each tunnel is or giving them a color tunnel to drive their car through. For an older toddler you can add an even greater challenge by writing letters or numbers on the top of the tunnels and then asking your child to tell you the letter or the sound of the tunnel that they drive their car through. You can also set this up in a scavenger hunt type of way and call out a letter or number and have them hunt for it before driving their car through that tunnel. Keep in mind the longer the tunnels are and the further from the tunnel your child is, the more challenging this activity will be. Our next activity is a puzzle hunt in a sensory bin. So this just adds a fun little sensory element to doing a puzzle. For materials you'll need a bin and just keep in mind the larger the bin the more challenging it will be to find the pieces but there is also the potential for a bigger mess. You'll need some kind of filler like rice or beans or anything else but I'd recommend sticking to something small so that whatever material you use can cover the puzzle pieces and you'll need a puzzle. You can also throw in some sort of fine motor tool like tweezers, tongs, or a spoon to find the pieces and add a little extra challenge but this is totally optional. Simply fill your bin with the filler of your choice and hide the puzzle pieces in the bin before having your child find them and complete their puzzle. When my boys were done with this they just continued playing in the sensory bins so this was like two activities with the setup of one which I'm always down for. Just a note to always closely supervise your child when they do any of these activities but especially the ones that involve small parts. Keeping with our puzzle theme our next activity is a puzzle scavenger hunt. My boys absolutely love this one. All you need for this is a puzzle and optionally a bag or container for collecting the pieces. So you just run around and hide the pieces of the puzzle around your home and have your child find them and then complete their puzzle. This is a great way to squeeze some gross motor work into your puzzle play. For my little guy I hid the pieces in very obvious places and then to make it more challenging for my three and a half year old I hid them in some harder places for him. You can do this in a few different ways. My younger son liked finding the pieces and then running back to his puzzle to put them in there. Then he'd go back and find more while my older son wanted to find all of them first and then he'd bring all of his pieces back and do his puzzle all at one time. To add a bit of a challenge to this I had my older son Luke count how many pieces he had to find before going to search for them and then I had him check to make sure he had them all when he got back. So we got a little bit of math and cognitive work in there too. I also modeled counting the pieces with my younger son before sending him hunting for his pieces also because he recently started counting on his own so it's good for him to hear that being modeled to him. Another gross motor activity was this tape ball toss game. This one is also great for strengthening hand-eye coordination. When it comes to materials you're going to need some tape and some really light balls. I recommend using plastic ball pit balls if you have them but if not you can use ping pong balls instead or jumbo pom-poms but it will add another challenge to this activity. You're going to put tape across a doorway. You may want to use painter's tape for this if you're packing tape. It happened to be fine on the molding of our doorway but just use caution with that. If you do use a different kind of tape it just may not stick as well. We taped the doorway in several spots and crisscrossed the tape a bit and then had the boys take turns throwing balls at the tape. They really love this and my husband and I even got in on it so it turned into a fun family activity. You can adjust the height of the tape, size of the balls, and the distance from where you throw to either increase or decrease the level of challenge in this activity. Next up we have pasta with a colander. Super simple you need some spaghetti and a colander. Have your child place the pasta in the holes of the colander. This activity is great for strengthening hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills which have to do with the smaller muscles in hands and fingers. You can also use pipe cleaners for this which I featured in my fine motor activity video for toddlers. Both boys really really like this activity. I threw in a little bit of addition work with Luke to add an extra chowder. You had two and then you added three more. Very good! Two and three equals five. So this is exposing them to that math language and more advanced math concepts casually while they're doing an activity. You can also just have them count how many pieces of pasta they're putting in the colander or tell them how many to put in at a time for more of a challenge. Then we have create your own puzzles. This one is so simple and fun and kids love when you use their toys for this one. You'll need some paper, a marker, and some smaller random objects from around the house or some of your kids toys. You'll want to try and use some distinctively shaped objects for this and then you're going to outline them on a piece of paper and have your child match the objects. This is a great cognitive exercise and it helps to strengthen the skill of visual discrimination which is being able to notice and understand the differences between the things that we see. If you want to make this activity a little more difficult you could either hide the objects or put them back in their place and have your child go find them but we kept the objects in a pile right next to our outline so our toddlers could just grab and match but the choice is yours. Adding pom-poms to water is so much fun. This pom-pom scooping activity is a super easy and fun way to strengthen fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination in your little one. You can do this in plastic bins or a large plastic baby pool if you have one. This is what we chose and it did not disappoint. Place pom-poms in a container with water and give your child a spoon to scoop them up. I had my boys place them in bowls and plastic containers and they totally loved it and played with this for well over a half hour. To add more of a fine motor challenge to this activity have your child use a smaller spoon or scoop or add in a fine motor sensory tool like the one you see here or even some large tweezers. You can change the container that they put the pom-poms into something more challenging like a plastic water bottle which has a smaller opening and requires more precise fine motor and hand-eye coordination. Younger toddlers can just use their fingers to grab the balls or a bigger spoon or colander. You can also throw in different sized pom-poms just remember the smaller the pom-pom the bigger the challenge. If you'd like to extend this activity a bit more you can talk about the size or color of the pom-poms with your child. Have them count the pom-poms do some addition or subtraction with them. You get the idea. Just keep in mind that even if all they do is play with the pom-poms in the water and the activity looks nothing like what you thought it would that's awesome and they are still learning and exploring. If you have some disposable paper or plastic cups then try this cup building activity. I gave my toddlers some red solo cups and had them build towers. This activity was pretty free from guidelines because I wanted to see what my boys created and it was really cool. This is a great STEM activity to spark creativity and cognitive development. My younger son enjoyed just stacking and nesting the cups too so that is another option for this one. And then of course they naturally loved knocking down their towers which they had so much fun doing and then running around and cleaning up afterwards. Don't throw out your paper towel rolls. You can do so many fun activities and crafts with them if you haven't already. Including making these DIY cardboard tube blocks. We painted these and cut them into various sizes before cutting slits in the sides of them and having the boys build with them. Full transparency these are not the most durable and a little difficult to put together but that actually makes it a great fine motor activity for strengthening those hands and finger muscles. My younger toddler did have a bit of a hard time connecting them but he was still trying to build and explore with them so definitely worth trying in my opinion. And you can totally skip the painting step or have your kids decorate them with paint or markers beforehand which could add another element of fun to this activity. And then we have alphabet fishing. Again so fun and simple. Now for this I did use magnetic alphabet letters which I know not everyone may have but if you don't no problem at all. Instead of magnetic letters you can use recycled lids from plastic water bottles and just write letters on them with permanent marker. So you'll need whatever you're using for your letters, a small bin with water, some optional blue food coloring, and a small strainer. Have your child scoop the letters out and tell you the letter name or sound. If you have magnetic letters you can also use a magnetic wand to fish them out of the water which my boys really enjoyed. Luke knows all of his letters and most of his sounds but Nolan is just starting to show interest in letters and thinks every letter is so I was just modeling for him by saying the letter name as he pulled each letter out of the water. Don't get discouraged if your child doesn't show any interest in these activities. I purposely chose easy low-pref activities so you don't have to put much time and effort into setting them up. My goal is to help parents love their life with little so if you have a toddler or preschooler then make sure you're subscribed to my channel for more of that. I love helping parents out so I'd really appreciate it if you like this video share it with another parent who would find it helpful and comment which activity was your favorite. Thank you so much for watching I'll see you in the next video.