Playing with Audrey Pt. 2 | At Home Activities to Play With Toddlers

I started a series last week – At Home Activities to Play with Toddlers. And today I am showing you two more activities for you to play with your toddler.

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Part 1

STICKY ART MURAL

• contact paper
• masking tape
• foam letters or shapes or animals
• feathers
• ripped or cut up pieces of construction paper
• large buttons

To set this up, roll out a large section of contact paper. Peel off the backing and tape to the wall- sticky side out. Put some foam letters & shapes, feathers and pieces of construction paper into a plastic bowl near the wall. As always, make sure you’re watching your kiddo because they will likely try to eat all the things! Ha!

I showed Audrey what to do once and then Girlfriend went to town creating her sticky art mural.

I cannot tell you how much I love this activity! The second we started playing with this, Audrey was absolutely into it! We played for about 20 minutes, sticking all kinds of things to the contact paper.

Quick tip- Audrey preferred the foam stickers with the backing on. When Noah came home & played with Audrey, he took all of the backings off before sticking the shapes to the contact paper. This made the shapes super sticky and Audrey couldn’t get them off. Part of the fun for her was taking the shapes off and putting them on again so not being able to get them off frustrated her.

Not only is this a fun way to play with your toddler, this activity is actually really really good for your child’s physical development, too. Ask any pediatric OT and they will tell you there are so many benefits to working on a vertical surface! I often wonder what it would be like if I had known these benefits when Connor was Audrey’s age. Would he have the same challenges he has now? Or would he have stronger hands and a stronger core? I bet he would be stronger and more coordinated overall.

(Read about the benefits of working on a verticle surface here, & here)

I left this up on the wall after we were done playing. I loved that Audrey went back over to her spot multiple times throughout the day to add more items to her sticky art.

There are so many great sticky art ideas on Pinterest. I am really excited to see how this activity evolves as Audrey grows. For older children, I have seen moms draw Christmas trees on the contact paper and have their child use pom poms as ornaments to decorate the Christmas tree. Or you could section the contact paper and have your child sort the foam pieces by color, shape, or animal. The options for this activity really are endless and that is one of the many reasons why I love this activity so, so much!

FINDING HIDDEN OBJECTS

• Bin
• Crinkle cut paper or shredded paper
• Anything you want to hide. Foam Blocks, Bath letters, wood blocks, balls, Animals

For this one, you most likely have everything at home which I love! I used some gold streamers that we had left over from Audrey’s birthday party, a storage bin I found in the pantry, and foam blocks.

I dumped everything in the bin and mixed it up a bit and then let Sis have at it! She liked the feeling of the gold streamers and played with those for a few minutes before realizing there were some exciting things hidden in those streamers!

I loved watching her work hard using her fingers to get the streamers off of the pieces she found. This required a lot of concentration!

Having Audrey just find an object and peel off all of the streamers was challenging enough for her for now. For an older toddler, you can have them find specific objects using just their hands. For example, ask them “Find me a circle.”.Have them use just their hands to feel around the bin for the circle. Or hide the letters of your child’s name or sight word in the streamers. Once they find all of the letters, have them put them in order to spell their name or word. Again, there are lots of ways to modify this activity for your child.

I hope these activities have been helpful and inspired you to play with your toddler.

Let me know if you try any of these activities. And make sure to check back next week for two more ways to play with your toddler!

Audrey’s Shirt

Audrey’s Shorts

My Tee

My Jeans

Watch

Photos: Megan Higgins Photography