21 Easy At Home Toddler Activities

How Do I Entertain My Toddler At Home?

You have a lot of options when it comes to entertainment but I know you want your little one to grow and learn while they play that is why these super easy at home toddler activities will keep your little one busy with little to no prep required.

When you are at home for long periods of time with your toddler, you have to find a way to entertain them without going crazy yourself. A toddler has a lot of energy-giving them something to do that will transfer that energy to playing is perfect for your little one.

Ready let’s dive right in.

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21 super easy toddler activities for indoors and at home. Find time for play and help your toddler develop and hit milestones along the way.

What Activities Are Good For Toddlers?

You want the best for your baby I know I do. That is why you want to have them doing productive things instead of just sitting them in front of the TV (and no shame – we’ve all had to do it).

Activities that are good for toddlers are ones that will help them with these things:

  • Increasing imagination
  • Self-play
  • Color recognition
  • Helps fine motor skills
  • Induces speech/vocal improvements
  • Introduces sensory play

These are just a few things to look for when you want to start a new play method with your toddler.

How Do I Engage My Child At Home?

If you haven’t found the time to do activities before with your child, or if you are a new stay at home mom; engaging your child may seem a little difficult. Don’t feel weird about it, playing is hard for adults we are used to schedules and work and it’s been some time since we played.

Here is how you can engage your child while playing at home:

  • Sit on the floor with them
  • Talk to them while they play
  • Read a book together
  • Read out loud while they play
  • Chase them around
  • Promote back and forth communication

The Ultimate At-Home Toddler Activities

1. Edible Paint Coloring

What a fun and great idea, grab an old sheet or a clear shower curtain (from the 99 cent store) and put down yogurt bowls with food coloring. Let your little one ‘pain’ all over the sheet or curtain.

This messy play will normally entertain your toddler for 10-30 minutes

Doing this helps a toddler with color recognition and sensory play.

2. Building Blocks

Depending on how your toddler does with their fine motor skills you can use big blocks or little lego type blocks. If they have never done this activities show them how to stack and put the blocks together.

This will usually entertain them anywhere from 5-30 minutes.

Doing this helps a toddler with: fine motor skills.

3. Relay Race

Teach your toddler a start and stop game with a relay race.

Set up different at home objects to start the race; you can have a chair for example be the middle point and a water bottle to pass to the next person.

This will usually entertain your toddler for: 5-15 minutes

4. Woodsy Sensory Bin

If you have a child who loves the outdoors but they can’t go outside on this day – try to grab a few of their favorite outside items and bring them in.

We like to have a bin with little rocks, sticks and even some pieces of grass. Doing this will allow your toddler to feel and throw, pick up and arrange different objects.

This will help your toddler with sensory play.

5. Bubble Play

Toddlers love bubbles, following their flowing bubble, popping them and spinning all around them.

You can grab a few bubble wands from the dollar section of your favorite store and play with your child.

6. Tea Party

Put the stuffed animals around the table, little plates and have your little one learn to serve and eat little mini-meals.

This can be very fun and such a great learning experience for your little one to sit at the table and eat with everyone.

7. Stuffed Animal Seeker

Hide a few stuffed animals around the house, let your toddler look for them. Put a toy box or tote bag where they can put the found animals (self-cleaning yes).

Develop your child’s cognitive skills with this form of hide and seek game.


You May Also Like: Halloween Activities For Toddlers


8. Emotions Poster

In this learning activity – you get a poster board and have a different colored paper with little faces. Have your little one match the colors with those on the poster board.

This will help them learn two things: color recognition and emotions. Have the red face look mad, blue face look sad, etc.. and then just have your toddler separate them where they need to go.

9. Messy Rice & Beans

Kids make messes, if you don’t want a messy home you can skip this activity but it is so much fun no matter what age group your toddler falls in.

You grab a bin and fill it with dry rice and beans. You place little plastic or wooden toys (whatever you have at home) and create a scavenger hunt.

Have your little one take the toys out with a spoon to improve their fine motor skills. They will throw the beans and rice around so you can try to put a towel underneath but if I’m being honest it will still be a fun mess.

10. Concert Show

If your toddler is into music and singing. Set them up a makeshift stage. Use their teddy bears as the audience and play some karaoke to get them to sing to the music. Have them copy you in dance moves, and sing duets. Putting on a concert is so much fun and can be done on rainy, snow days.

This will help your toddler’s cognitive development growth.

11. Cooking Help

Get your toddler ready for big boy/girl work by having them help you in the kitchen. Here are a few activity ideas that you can do with your toddler to promote kitchen and food learning. If you have a picky eater toddler you can use this activity to get them interested in food.

  • Layering lasagna pieces
  • Spreading peanut butter (with a spoon)
  • Pouring ingredients in a bowl
  • Mixing chocolate chips into recipes
  • Wiping down counters
  • Putting toast in the toaster

By doing these simple little tasks your toddler is learning household chores and physical play.

12. Water Transfer Bin

What you will need:

  • 2 bins
  • water
  • spoon
  • measuring cups
  • *food coloring

What you will need to do:

  • Fill bins with water and layout spoons
  • If you add food coloring do little dots in random spots
  • Have your toddler transfer the water from the bin to the dry bin

Will help promote: fine motor and gross developments

13. Ice Excavation

You will want to do this ahead of time ( a few hours before or the night before).

Go ahead and grab plastic toy animals and put them in freezable trays, Ziplock bags, or Tupperware. You will want to fill these with water and let them freeze.

Once they are frozen you will give them to your toddler along with ‘tools’ to help them excavate their toys out.

Tools to use:

  • Spoons
  • Sponge
  • Plastic forks
  • Warm water
  • Wash clothes

You want them to use their imagination and see if they can remove the toy from the ice using the tools you give them.

14. Tent Building

Building an in-home tent will be so much fun for your toddler. You can do this as easy as putting up a blanket between two chairs and making it a fort/tent. Add a few pillows, and a few toys and they will be in there for a while playing and hiding.

You can also make this a majestic tent if you have a camping tent and it fits in your living room or child’s room you can put it up and have a whole ‘campfire’ indoor day.

Things like: making s’mores, telling stories, and sleeping on the ground of the tent.

15. Dance Party

Toddlers are amazing little kids. Put on some Disney tunes, your favorite music, random songs from Pandora or YouTube and dance it out with your toddler. Want them to entertain themselves. Play the music and show them a few moves. Then let them rock out while they dance and sing around the house.

It’s okay if you let the noise roar. It’s a dance party after all.

16. Water Paint

Give your child a brush and a cup of water. Give them a paper and let them soak the paper in water as they ‘paint’. It will dry and they can do it over and over again.

You can also try purchasing a water pad from Amazon that works in the same way.

17. Plastic Stack

Take out the cups, containers, and measuring cups. Let your toddler stack them from biggest to smallest and vise versa. They can also use them as toys and drum with them.

Quick game: 5-10 minutes of playtime.

18. Play-Doh Mess

If your toddler hasn’t played with play-doh before this first time may be super messy as they explore and adjust to the squishy, salty, dough.

You can also give your toddler things like spoons, ribbons, sticks to help them play with the play-doh.

19. Rock Painting

Let them use those fine motor and gross skills as they paint little rocks, big rocks with their fingers. If your toddler is great in the art of holding a brush – they can also use it to paint the rocks.

You can expect this fine motor skills game to entertain your toddler at home for about 15-25 minutes.

20. Play House

Give them a stuffed animal and tell them they are the parent to this baby. Have them feed, cloth, and keep the baby happy. You can also use this to have your toddler help out around the house.

This imagination and cognitive game can be expected to be played 20-45 minutes.

21. Straws And Pasta

Like the name suggests you will need a few straws (they can be the noddle straws for arts and crafts or the plastic ones for drinks). And you will need rigatoni pasta.

This will help develop those fine motor skills.

All you have to do is put the straws standing up. You can create a board to put them in or lay some play-doh down and stick them in the doh. Once they are standing show your toddler how to add one pasta at a time to stack them on the straws.

This will entertain them for 15-30 minutes.


That’s it you guys 21 activities that will entertain your toddler at home that require little to no setup. Remember the more you play and let them play the better they develop fine motor skills, gross motor, cognitive and physical abilities.

What was your favorite toddler activity, that you want to try? Let me know in the comments below.

Want To Remember These Activities? Pin The Image Below To Your Favorite Pinterest Board.

These toddler activities will entertain your toddler at home, indoors, on rainy days or sunny ones. Get the ultimate list of toddler activities by clicking through.

21 Toddler Activities To Do At Home


 

I’m Rosie! I am a wife, mom, and pregnancy & postpartum advocate! & I am here to help YOU. I started Crafty Mother Father as a way to help other moms understand that they are not alone. The weird things we google – have answers for a reason. Because other’s have gone through it too!

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