Toddler Activities: 26 Months Old

One of the challenges of being a stay at home mom is finding activities for your little one to keep them entertained throughout the day. These are a few of our current favorite activities:

Homemade Connect the Dots: You can make a great connect the dots activity very simply from supplies at home - all you need is a sheet of paper, a few stickers, and a marker. I actually let Emma place the stickers on the paper herself, which she loved! Then I had her scribble from dot to dot with the marker. Depending on the stickers you have, and your child's level of interest, you can also change this activity a bit to make it more challenging. We used animal stickers, and the sticker sheet had multiples of each animal, so after mastering the general idea of "connect the dots," Emma got to connect the sheep to the other sheep, and connect the pig to the other pig, etc. You could use colored stickers and have your child connect like colors, or write numbers or letters on the stickers and have your child connect 1-2-3 or A-B-C.

Leaf Rubbing: Our yard is full of fallen leaves this time of year! We selected a few different types of leaves for a leaf rubbing activity. Just picking out the leaves was a good learning activity as we discussed how the leaves were similar or different colors, shapes, sizes, etc. We picked some leaves that were still soft and green, and others that were brown and crunchy.

We did the leaf rubbing together because it requires the usual fine motor practice but was a little more difficult because you have to hold the crayon sideways - something new for Emma!

And, of course...

Read: Reading is one of the best activities you can do with your child at any age!

A few of Emma and Bryson's current favorites are: 

• Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson
• Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
• There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat! by Lucille Colandro
• Not a Box by Antoinette Portis

We did an activity with one of our books, Not a Box. This one was super simple and Emma loved it. Derek brought home a paper box from work, and Emma got to play in the box. She climbed in it, and tipped it over on top of her like a hat, pushed it around the room, and hid under it.

My 3 good things for today are:

1. Falling leaves!
2. Apple cider!
3. Decorating pumpkins!