Here are 20 fun and simple activities for toddlers that will keep them engaged and busy with sensory, fine motor, problem solving and curiosity!
If you, like me, have a busy 2 year old in your home or work setting, you’ll already know how much they like to get their hands into everything, investigating how things work, what you can do with them, what something feels like and how much mess and noise they can create! This is the absolute bursting point of discovery and their development is so rapid at this stage of their busy little lives. They need to find out about the world as much as possible by doing, moving and handling, and they need to do that by trying it for themselves.
Aside from the usual (and very necessary) trips to the park, supermarket, play ground and other day to day activities in the home and out and about in the neighbourhood, this collection of 20 activities have all been tried and tested with my 3 children and proven to be easy to set up, engaging for them to test out and great for those busy little hands and brains!
Enjoy now or pin your favourites for later (by clicking through to the individual post then pressing Pin It):
Threading with giant cardboard beads
Play a hide and seek game to find the matching pairs
Construct towers with hair rollers
Make and play with these simple DIY fine motor toys from recycled materials
Drop coloured pom poms down the rainbow coloured tubes
Make a nursery rhyme themed sensory or water play tub. Sing along together!
Make them a little digging and sensory garden patch to play in
Go on a colour hunt and sing this song together
Sort coloured pom poms into rainbow egg cartons
Make pictures and patterns on the window with foam and water
Create a giant rainbow collage together
Make a colour themed sensory tub to play in
Paint and explore with toddler-safe DIY finger-paints
Try painting with Jello finger-paints. (They smell amazing!)
Mix potions and natural materials in the water table
Drop pom poms through a tube and shoot them out again. Guaranteed to produce heaps of giggles!
Squish hands into a giant tub of rainbow spaghetti!
Set toys into sparkly jelly and get up to your elbows to find them again!
Print shapes using cardboard tubes
Drive trains or cars on a DIY chalkboard table
Watch things swirl and make noises with toddler safe discovery bottles
Make our best ever no-cook play dough recipe and use it to make birthday cake, roll out snakes, push in twigs and buttons etc and explore!
Want some more ideas? Here are 20 fun ways to introduce colours to preschoolers:
And here is our full Toddler Play archive for more browsing when you have some time! There are literally dozens and dozens of ideas, so I was only able to select a few for this collection.
Are you looking for Baby Play Ideas? We have those too! See a collection in this post:
I hope these are helpful! Let me know which are your favourites if you try any.
Thankyou for all of your hard work on all of your amazing posts. Your children are so lucky to have so many wonderful activities set up for them.
Awww thanks so much Jessica!
Absolutely loved looking through the 20 activities & will try them out on my almost 3 year old grandson ASAP.
There is one activity I don’t understand – the one involving pom poms (drop & shoot) – the “drop” part is obvious, but I can’t work out the “shoot.”
When you have time, would you mind explaining it please?
Thank you
Ros
Hi, My name is Tiffany, I am currently in school to become an Early Educator. I have an assignment that I need a little assistance with. I am to name/describe a creative art activity for toddlers(18-36mos) and then modify that same activity for children 6-8y/o. I am having a time coming up with an activity that I can morph for a young child.
Thank you for any help,
Tiffany Faulk