Weston gets bored so easily and when he is bored he whines and whines until I want to pull my hair out. So, I am looking for easy, cheap (free), activities that will keep him busy. Especially things that he can do on his own so I can get some housework done...

I will add one myself.
One thing West does love to do is play in the sink. I fill one side with saopy water and put some plastic lids, measuring cups, and rags. He will play like that for an hour if I let him. It makes a mess but its a clean mess :)

Oh, I like the sink idea, I haven't tried that. I desperately need 2yo ideas too.

We have a big container full of beans she can put in cups, spoons, etc.

Skylar likes to paint but his mom-mom got him the books that have the paint already on the paper so all he needs is a cup with some water.
He also likes playdoh. We give him a little bit at a time (read less then half a container) and give him stampers so he can make stuff in it.
We havea little fold and go wooden kitchen and I ask skylar to make me breakfast....that keeps him busy for like 45 minutes or so.
Hope that helps some.
much love
-Lindsey

I let Lauren play with a glue stick for the first time on Thursday:D I gave her some paper scraps and a big piece of construction paper and then showed her what to do. I was a hilarious 45 minutes of discovery. She also loves sink play. I often let her "wash" potatoes or other veggies for dinner so that I can get something done! Most of the time she helps with housework. If I'm cleaning the kitchen, I give her a rag and a bottle with water and she cleans her kitchen. She has a toddler sized broom and dustpan so she sweeps when I sweep. It's really cute to watch. Markers are an extra special treat around here, as are paints but both require supervision with her! I'd love some more ideas too!

j

I think most of these have been mentioned but here are regulars at our house.

Colors or markers
playdough
water play in the sink
Eli helps me with laundry (puts clothes in the washer as I hand them to him and also in the dryer)
washable paint in the tub
also both boys like to put on socks and "skate" in the kitchen


that is all I can think of for now.

Go to the Park!

Go outside, even in the cold, and play for a little while. Find a duck pond near you and get the day old bread from the store and feed the ducks.

Make PaperDolls together.

When I am cooking I give Skylar a mixing bowl and wooden spoons, flour, water and macaroni noodle and she makes her own creations. Sometimes she adds seasonings.

Also, we have a small fenced in back yard with many toys and she likes to take the kitchen things and play in the house out back. She has old spatulas, cups, old lemon squeeze bottles, etc.

Also, she loves to start rock collections or take rocks and throw them in water puddles and buckets to watch the water splash.

If you play outside a bit perhaps take something to use as a shovel and some plastic containers, fill one with water and let him put dirt in the other, Sky loves this. She also likes to take drinking cups and put mud and water in to feed us "Chop-it milk". :D

This is a good thread and I am going to ask for ideas about what you do with a two year old whilst folding laundry/putting it away...in hopes I'm not hijacking the thread. I seem to have a constant battle with my two year old wanting to "help," but making it very hard to get anyting done (i.e. she'll unfold folded clothes and pull clothes off hangers).

My two year old likes to...

play with cardboard bricks or blocks -- or anything she can stack (including cans from the cupboard)

draw with a paper and pen (prefers a pen to crayons)

shop w/ a purse or backpack and money (real coins or play money)

play with dressup clothes (a lady from my church has a trunk full of clothes she's picked up at garage sells ... a jacket with a fake police badge, dress up shoes, shirts, etc)

stickers

These are awesome ideas! This suggestion reminded me of something else West loves to do:
shop w/ a purse or backpack and money (real coins or play money)
Sometimes I give him a bowl of pennies and he can put them in his piggy bank. We just dump the pennies out and start all over. We bought the boys a bank for christmas but is you don't have one you could make one out of an empty oatmeal box. Just cut a slit in the lid.

Originally posted by TheBabysBum
Go to the Park!

Go outside, even in the cold, and play for a little while. Find a duck pond near you and get the day old bread from the store and feed the ducks.

Make PaperDolls together.

Just had to laugh at your comment since we live in MN and lately it's barely been above 0! So I think Florida "cold" is different than up here. :D If only I could find a pond that wasn't frozen.

That's definitely something I would love for the girls to be able to do when it's warmer (in a few months).

Here's a list of some of Kaya's favorite things to do!!

~Lacing beads and lacing cards. I also give her fleece squares with little holes punched in it and she "sews" with those.

~Drawing with crayons, colored pencils, markers or chalks. She loves to paint, using the "wet on wet" technique.

~She loves to do puzzles, her favorite this week is the United States one!

~I give her water and flour and let her mix them in a big bowl.

~She loves to fold the napkins, wipes and washclothes when I fold the other laundry. She also loves to help put her own clothes in her drawers. And she matches the socks up.

~She's just starting to use safety scissors, so she likes to cut up bits of paper and glue them to another sheet of paper.

~We make matching cards out of index cards to learn numbers and letters. I give them to her face up, and she sorts them into pairs.

~She loves to dance to classical music in front of a big mirror we have set up in the living room.

~She plays with our kitchen set, making tea and soup with acorns and tumbled gemstones.

~She also spends a lot of time taking care of her dollies, putting them to bed, feeding them...

~She helps me dust and water the plants.

~We do sorting games and patterns with these little plastic, multi-colored squares. If I start a simple pattern, she loves to try to pick out the next piece. Or if I ask her to find six yellow pieces, or 3 red pieces, she loves doing that.

~She loves to play a simple board game that uses just one die instead of two. A very basic game, but it's helping reinforce counting skills.

~She's had hours of fun with a simple cardboard box with a pull string.

I have lots more suggestions, but I have to help J out for a minute!

Originally posted by )O(Meeshi)O(


~Lacing beads and lacing cards. I also give her fleece squares with little holes punched in it and she "sews" with those.



Great idea! I have some scraps of felted wool I could make these out of. I was planning to buy the Lauri crepe rubber ones, but *free* is so much better! LOL!

I tied a string to a big rectangular basket, Lydia pulls her baby around in that. It's a sled. ;)

We line up chairs and make a train, and pretend we are going to various places.

She loves it when I have a really big sinkful of bubbles and I get a big bowl and scoop them out and let her play in them on the family room floor.

we have a couple of baskets with polished rocks and those big glass rocks to put in vases, she pretends these are all sorts of things.

a small-ish chalkboard. Though I'd love to paint a section of wall with that chalkboard paint, I don't seem to have a good spot.

we have a big basket of dress-up and let's-pretend type stuff that gets used on a daily basis.

today we made a "teepee" out of a big sheet and some chairs.

Made valentine hearts out of construction paper and let her put red and silver glitter on, then hung them in our big family room window.

lots of other stuff we do has already been mentioned.
Great thread, I love these kinds of ideas! :thumbsup:

Originally posted by RebeckaK
These are awesome ideas! This suggestion reminded me of something else West loves to do:

Sometimes I give him a bowl of pennies and he can put them in his piggy bank. We just dump the pennies out and start all over. We bought the boys a bank for christmas but is you don't have one you could make one out of an empty oatmeal box. Just cut a slit in the lid.

Yep, Sophie LOVES to do this. We count along with this, so it helps learn numbers. A jar of buttons also works well.

Fabric measuring tape. She loves to go around the house and "measure" things.

Stickers, crayons, etc are always a big hit. The other day when I was making out bills, she wanted to write out checks. I just happened to be at the end of a book, so I gave her the deposit slips. She was tickled! :)

She has a kitchen set with all the fixings, so that's always big. She'd love to play with it with water, but I won't let her. When she wants to play with water, I plop her in the tub! LOL

She loves to stack the wipes when I'm doing diaper laundry. But since she's almost potty trained, these days are few and far between. LOL

She also likes to clean, which is ironic in itself, because I hate it! LOL But, give her a wet cloth and she'll wipe everything down for me. :D

My 2 year old loves bubbles. If it's really, really cold outside it's neat because they'll freeze. We also let them blow them into the tub so there's no mess. We also do finger painting and foam in the bathtub.

We put on some upbeat music and dance away. We pick up new CD's at the library so we have lots of variation. I try to pick out silly kids music as well as stuff I thinks neat.

Speaking of the library we go there ALOT. We get lots of books and spend lots of time reading. We also get lots of books on tapes - she doesn't really look at the books when we listen to them very often. She loves to listen to the stories while she does other things though.

We take lots of blankets, couch cushions, and pillows and make forts.

She loves to draw on her chalk board or the small white board/dry erase markers.

When we see them at the grocery store we'll get the larger boxes - dd likes to do all sorts of things with them. She'll pull her animals around in them, pretend it's a train, plane or boat, etc.

She loves playing with marbles. She'll spend an hour lining them up, rolling them around, dumping then in and out of containers.

Loves to wash the windows or help with some cleaning.

She loves to play with her puppet theater and puppets. She also likes to help mommy make new ones.

We save junk mail, especially the ones from columbia house with all the lick and stick stamps. She likes to scribble on it and stuff in in the envelopes.

I thought of some more!

I put a big quilt over my dining room table and made a tent, the boys loved it.

Also we have flashlights that they play with alot, those are great with the tent.

As for laundry, what I do is let Eli help me sort, I will fold and hand him things to put in the basket like socks which I will fold last. Also I am teaching both boys to fold laundry by folding small dish towels and wash cloths.

Boxes or laundry baskets are fun here, the boys like to play pirate or space ship.

For me one of the keys to getting house work done is doing it in quick spurts while they are occupied like 5 or 10 minutes at a time.

LOL I am laughing about playing outside. Even though we aren't in Minnesota, the wind here has been brutally cold and I would only let the boys play outside if there was some snow and then only for a few minutes!

Alright! Just a few more ideas, before I hit the shower!

~We love to play with marbles and different lengths of cardboard tubing. She rolls them down and like to guess which will come out first.

~We do a lot of running and tumbling and jumping on the couch cushions set up on the floor.

~We also do a lot of dancing and drumming and making music.

~We have a big crate of dress up stuff, and a big mirror set up beside it.

~Kaya spends a lot of time just looking at books. We also get 4-6 new books a week from the library, and at least one book on tape. She also loves sticker books.

~She likes to play tea party.

~I have a big cardboard box that has a slit cut on one side, and a door cut into the other and I give Kaya envelopes (from junk mail and bills we pay online) and she puts paper in them, sticks stickers on them for stamps and mails them.

~I give her the wand part of the vacuum cleaner (it comes off the vacuum) and let her vacuum the carpets.

~We sing lots of songs and say verses throughout the day.

~She likes to play "basketball", her version being felt balls and bean bags tossed into a bushel basket on the floor.

~We make little ramps out of scrap wood, to roll cars down.

~She loves to do worksheets with shapes, numbers and letters. We're doing really simple stuff, but she loves it and asks to do them every day. She also asks me to write letters so she can trace them.

~During the warmer months, we spend lots and lots and LOTS of time outside!! Hiking, picnics, camping, swimming in the gullies... We stay inside a bit more in the winter, but we still get out there and sled and hike if it's not too frigid!

Ok, that's it for me tonight! I've got some yummy lavender soap calling my name!

He likes to:

Thread beads on pipecleaners

pick out differnent buttons and thread them on a string (I sanded the tip of the needle to blunt it...)

sort differnent tiny objects in an ice cube tray using tweezers

set up dominoes in patterns and then knock one down to see the rest fall... He sort of needs a little help with this one...

He's also pretty active...

We walk around trying to balance bean bags on our heads

have ping-pong ball fights...they're light and o.k. to throw in the house if supervised

flashlight tag

Oh, Lauren LOVES to string beads on pipe cleaners. They then become bracelets usually:) I gave her a bunch of beads today while I was working on a project and she had a great time pretending they were peas lol. She must have dropped them and picked them up 20 times. They're currently all over my living room floor, but she's asleep and I was able to finish my project!

j

these are all great suggestions!! I gotta print this thread out!

Connor likes to...

-"paint" on the shower door with shaving cream
-finger paint, paint with brushes, ect.. any type of painting really
-playdoh.. lots of it, we have lots of accessories for it, that's the one thing he really enjoys and will spend a long time doing
-coloring
-we draw shapes on his magna-doodle
-race his cars around
-play with the animals from his LP Noah's Ark, he likes me to feed them and put them night-night
-he loves playing simon says, well without "simon says".. stand up, sit down, jump, roll, turn around, dance, run, ect.. he loves doing this
-we watch blues clues together b/c he loves it, he points out the clues for me and tries to sing the songs
-music and dancing
-read lots of books
-puzzles
-artsy/crafty stuff, we play with glue sticks, glue, construction paper that I've cut, and so on..


I'm gonna make some lacing cards out of fabric scraps for him, that's a great idea, definately have to use some of these other ideas too!!! :)

Some great suggestions on this thread! My youngest is almost 3.5 yo but still into the 2 yo activities like most mentioned here.

Ok, I'm really a Northerner in disguise, so I know this suggestion isn't feasible now for most of you up there...but it's so good, it's worth remembering for a warm day. My kids love to get a small pail of water and an old paintbrush and "paint" the house, the car, the walk, everything, with it! The water looks shiny and darker than the rest of the surface so they really feel like they are "painting." This will keep them busy for at least an hour.

Ooh! Magna-Doodle! Katie LOVED it at 2 yo, and it was nice for me because it required less supervision than crayons or markers or paints. She loves to draw, and used to make probably 10 or 15 Magna Doodle creations a day.

We're about to take some huge, clean boxes I have left over from a co-op, and put them on their sides, tape them and attach them together and make a maze/house/fort for them to play in. Then I will give them markers and let them decorate the outside. We'll use box flaps for doors for most of it, and if I'm adventurous I'll get out the box cutters and cut out windows.

Stickers were a favorite at 2.

For laundry, I gave Katie socks and washcloths to play with, in a basket next to me. I also talked w/a parenting counselor and mentioned the whole "Mommy folds and Katie rips through it all and unfolds" syndrome we went through at two. She talked about how kids at that age need power, and that is one way of getting it. She suggested turning it into a game - yes, even if it means folding the same laundry a few times. So let the child come through and wreck the folding. Laugh and say, "oh no! You unfolded everything! Oh dear," in a lighthearted way. Then fold again...let the child work it out and the need will dissipate. This did work for Katie, in conjunction with gently redirecting her to her own small basket of socks & washcloths to play with.

I really need to save these threads for spring/summer when it gets hot here. Some great ideas even for older kids!