100+ easy toddler activities
Show me a parent who doesn’t love a list of awesomely easy toddler activities that will keep their little one entertained for a while.
Parenting a toddler can be hard work but sometimes the simplest of activities can provide a few hours of peace (OK it’ll probably more like 10 minutes but it’ll feel like hours!)
After ten years working in education and almost five years as a stay-at-home mum, I’ve finally managed to pull together this huge selection of easy toddler activity ideas to share with you.
I’ve divided them under skills headings to make this huge list more user friendly but in reality your toddler will be developing several skills during each activity.
How these easy toddler activities work…
Most of these fun toddler activities take a matter or minutes to set up and tidy up.
A few take longer or are likely to make some mess…but they are lots of fun so I’ve included them too!
Just a few really quick points that may or may not be super obvious to you already…
1. Let your child lead.
These activities are designed to spark interest in a child. There needn’t be any rules with regards to the way they decide to (or not) with the setup.
What a child ends up doing may not be as you intended but go with it.
2. Is it educational?
Children learn through play. A toddler doesn’t need to be sitting down memorizing letters or practicing their counting.
Our home educated 4 year old is reading and writing simple text but he’s learnt organically. Rather than sitting at a desk with pen and paper he’s learnt by writing in sand at the beach or mud in the garden.
Children who learn to read at their own pace (whether aged 3, 6 or 8) “catch-up” with their peers and actually enjoy reading more as a result.
So, here are 100+ fun and simple toddler activity ideas…
Easy Toddler Activities | 5 minute set-up
Having a few simple toddler activities can be really helpful…especially if you need 5 minutes to call the dentist or pop to the toilet!
Here are a few ridiculously simple ideas for fun toddler activities that you can setup super fast.. and they’ll hopefully keep kids entertained for longer!
- Set-up a Vets with toy animals, bandages, combs etc.
- Empty your odd sock bag and match then up.
- Roll some balls of playdough to scoop up and squish with back of spoon.
- Garage – upturn a vehicle and add some tools.
- Separate a few containers from their lids and toddler tries to re-unite them.
- Tangle toys on an elastic band or two!
- Throw a blanket over some chairs or pull out the sofa and you have a den!
Toddler Activities for Fine Motor Skills
There are so many fun activities that will help toddlers to develop their fine motor skills. Use these ideas to inspire your own variations.
Playdough Rescue
Water Play – Use pipettes to transfer water into bowls.
Nature Faces – use mud to stick leaves, twigs, pone cones etc to make faces on trees.
Paper Plate Haircuts
Birdseed Activity
Nature Tape – Stick 3 strips of double sided tape onto paper and peel back. Toddlers to collect petals, leaves etc and stick down to create a beautiful picture.
Cooking – kneading, chopping, sprinkling, pouring.
Sidewalk Chalk – draw letters, roads, shapes etc
Playdough – roll out flat strips to practice marking.
Nature Constellations
Nature Weaving
Paper Ripping – keep old magazines for ripping up. Great if you’re planning a paper mâché activity soon!
Fine Motor Threading– Thread straws through a hole-punched cardboard tube.
Chopsticks – Use chopsticks or other sticks to practice picking up items.
Post Box – Make a small hole in a cardboard box. Children can post buttons, pasta etc through the hole.
Sticky Tape Rescue – use tape to stick characters to a table. Toddlers have to free them by peeling back the tape.
Rubber Band Rescue – Wrap characters together with rubber bands. Toddlers have to untangle them.
Crazy Straws – Thread fabric circles onto crazy straw.
Bead Jar – Practice picking up small beads using pinch grip and dropping them into a jar.
Which Lid? – Give a variety of jars and tubs and let your toddler figure out which lids fit.
Color Wheel
Colour Sorting – cover a tray in lots of little bits (pipe cleaners, buttons, string etc). Use tongs or a clothespegs to pick up colours to sort.
Cutting Busy Box – Create slips of paper with designs for toddlers to practice their cutting skills.
Dot Painting – Free printable sheets for toddlers to practice stamping.
Fake Flowers – Poke fake flower stems through the holes in an upside-down colander.
Kinetic Sand
Shaving Foam Towers
Car Wash
All Tied Up!
Matching Shapes
Toddler Activities For Gross Motor Skills
Gross motor skills require whole body movements that use the large muscles in the torso, arms and legs.
Having developed gross motor skills will help children be able to climb trees and use a skipping rope.
More surprisingly perhaps, gross motor ability will also help toddlers to perform fine motor skills like drawing and using scissors.
This is just another reason why we need to be giving children plenty of opportunities to move around.
Here are some fun toddler activities that develop gross motor skills:
Throwing and Catching
- Throw beanbags into baskets.
- Number 6 baskets. Roll a giant dice and throw ball or beanbag into basket with corresponding number.
- Play catch with a soft football.
- Hold up a hoola hoop while toddler tries to throw a ball through.
Indoor Activities
- Make an indoor obstacle course.
- Make a balancing beam.
- “Pretend to be a lion” etc…
- Bounce on a mattress.
- Indoor climbing frame (we found this amazing one second hand!)
- “Find me something…red/smooth/metal”
- The Floor Is Lava – move around the house without touching the floor.
- Jigsaw Hunt – hide jigsaw pieces around a room (under tables, on top of a chair etc).
- Painters Tape Ladder – use masking tape to make a ladder on the floor. How far can you jump? How mong is your body? Can you stretch to this rung?
- Play Twister.
- Play hopscotch – use masking tape or those big foam jigsaw pieces.
- “Simon Says…jump up and down” etc
- Traffic Lights – toddler/s run around. Call out traffic light colours. Red means stop. Green means run fast. Amber mean hop. Mix it up and add new actions.
- Dance!
- Balance a book on your head and see how far you can walk!
- Egg a spoon race.
Big Action Songs
- The Hokey Pokey
- Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes
- Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, Turn Around
- I’m a Little Teapot
- If You’re Happy and You Know It
Fun ‘Chores’
- Put some music on and see who can throw soft toys in the basket without missing.
- Use sponges to clean the car.
- Vacuum cleaning.
- Watering the garden.
- Sweeping up.
- Cleaning windows.
- Beating rugs and cushions.
Outdoor Fun
- Tree climbing
- Wheelbarrow races
- Obstacle course – balancing on tree stumps, jumping over puddles.
- Swings.
- Chase.
- Pull a small wagon around collecting sticks, produce or collage items.
Toddler Activities To Teach Numbers
Many of the letter recognition activities listed above can be adapted for use with numbers.
Spray Counting Game – read the number on the floor and spray the water that number of times.
Water Pistol Writing – write numbers on the ground with a water pistol.
Clothesline Numbers – Hang ‘washing line’. Write numbers on scraps of paper. Child finds numbers and pegs in order on washing line.
Counting and Colour Sorting – print the cards and place the correct number of coloured items on each.
Number Egg Smash
Number Fishing Game – catch the numbered fish.
Cooking – getting in the kitchen with your toddler provides so many opportunities to talk about numbers. We need 3 eggs. Let’s count how many cupcakes we’ve made…
Number Swat – line up foam numbers on the floor. Call out a number for your toddler to swat!
Feed The Bunny – feed the bunny the correct number of carrots.
Hedgehog – make a really cute counting aid.
Number Pebbles
Clothespin Counting – Clip on the correct number of keys.
Measuring Jumps – measure with tape measure or footsteps. (We compared with how far wild cats can jump).
Fine Motor Counting – use utensils to pick up the correct number of items.
Paper Plate Fun
Sandy Numbers
Slippery Dip -a brilliantly simple idea. Roll the dice and use tongs to deposit that many items in the tube!
Toddler Activities To Teach Letters
There is absolutely no expectation for a toddler to be reciting ABC’s.
Play provides children so many wonderful opportunities to expose kids to letters naturally.
Here are some of our favourite toddler activities to learn letters and words:
Simple Treasure Hunt
– Draw a simple treasure map and mark Xs on it. At each X hide a letter or word. They should join together to reveal where the treasure is hidden.
– use a paint brush to carefully excavate each letter. Free printable.
Alphabet Construction Zone – construction vehicles and letters are a great mix.
Posting Letters Role Play – role play is a great way to get kids recording letters and numbers.
Learn Your Name Hotwheels Cars– add letters to hotwheels vehicles and place them in the correct order.
I Spy Letter Hunt – hide letters in a clear jar with rice.
Duplo Tower
Train To Lettertown – use a train to collect letters and return them to Lettertown.
Connect The Letters – free printable
Cleaning Windows
Sensory ABC Activity – discover letters hidden in rice or sand.
Erase The ABC’s – use a wipeable marker to draw letters on the window.
Alphabet Sensory Bin – hide letters and objects in a sensory bin.
Letter Sounds Ice Activity – freeze letters and corresponding objects in ice.
Alphabet Soup
Trucks and Alphabet Rocks – write letters on rocks and add to construction site.
Magnetic Letter Matching – use wipeable marker to write letters on a tray. Toddler to match the letters.
Alphabet Cave – hide letters and hunt.
Alphabet Sift – use a sieve to find the letters in the sand.
Letter Roads. – letter shaped roads
Name Practice Activity Using Toy Cars – similar to above but write full name as road.
Alphabet Construction Zone –chuck loads of letters in with construction vehicles.
Alphabet Pancakes – make letter shape pancakes.
Hidden Letters – wrote letters with white wax crayon and use watered down paint to reveal them.
Jigsaw
Connect The Dots Letters – draw lots of letters on a big sheet of paper. Join all of the same letters together.
Geoboard Alphabet Matching – great for developing fine motor skills. Match upper and lower case.
Snowball Alphabet – throw a ball at the right letter.
Word Webs (free printable)
Reading | explore the wonderful world of books with your kids. Make ir exciting by putting up a tent or teepee or building a den.
Outdoor Toddler Activities to Teach Letters
Take a look at these outdoor activities that will help toddlers to learn letters.
- Parachute Man Activity – can your parachute land on a specific letter.
- Letter Hunt
- ABC Sidewalk Chalk Game – a simple sidewalk chalk game
- Garden ABC Letter Hunt – hide foam letters around the garden.
- Letter Matching Roads – use sidewalk chalk to draw roads between the upper and lower case letters.
- Alphabet Scavenger Hunt – this clever idea uses a paper plate to keep track of the letters you spot on your walk.
- Alphabet Learning with Chalk & Rocks – draw letters with sidewalk chalk. Toddler to use pebbles to follow lines.
- Water Spray Alphabet Hunt –write letters with sidewalk chalk. Toddler finds them and uses spray to make them disappear.
Outdoor Toddler Activities
- Pebble Decorating
A fun activity for expressing creativity and practicing pencil control. We take our Giotto Pens down to the river or beach.
- Bug Hunt
- Paint Outdoors
- Water Fight
- Clean The Windows (with water pistols!)
- Sandbox
- Bark rubbings
- Dino hunt/ dig
- Chalk Drawing
- Diggers in the mud.
- Plant some seeds/ trees.
- Kick a ball
- Feed the birds
- Nature collage
- Build a bug hotel
- Pond dip
- Climb trees
- Leaf threading
- Nature wands
- Mud kitchen
- Paddling pool
- Make a plastic slide
- Build a den
- Float boats down a stream
- Jump in puddles
- Paint with flowers
- Have a picnic.
- Climb a tree
- Build a monster truck track
- Clean the real car
- Clean toy cars
- Pouring water into containers
- Watering plants
- Make mud pies
- Build a den
- Nature’s Rainbow (free printable) |
Messy Play Tray Ideas
There are so many elaborate messy play tray ideas out there but I tend to keep it simple.
Activities that don’t create a huge amount of food or product waste and are easy to clean up are great. If they can be reused then even better!
Spare parts – toilet tubes, food boxes etc can be used to build, tear and squash before being recycled.
Newtonian Fluid – this stuff is awesome and not as messy to clean up as you might think. Add water to cornflour and you’ll make a liquid which acts like a solid when pressure is applied. If you have solid flooring then just let it dry before brushing up the remaining dust (don’t add water and try to wash it off first as it will spread diluted white liquid everywhere).
Autumn Leaves with tractors and trailers.
Herbs – If you have a herb garden or some pots then adding some to your messy play sessions os a great way to fill your home with beautiful scents. Choose herbs depending on your mood…for calm use lavender.
Paint, rolls of paper and vehicles – make track marks with different tractors, cars and monster trucks.
Cut grass – some play animals or dinos with some cut grass can be fun for toddlers. Mine love feeding their dinosaurs especially the figures with moving mouths.
Shredding or cutting magazines – Scissors – people have mixed feelings about toddlers and scissors. Personally, I’ve always allowed mine to use them and have taught them how to use them safely. Initially they used these scissors that are harder to injure oneself with. We’ve never had an issue but you know your child so do what you think is best.
Balancing scales with bits and bobs – let your toddler experiment with the scales. They can balance different objects and see what happens.
Toddler Bathtime Activities
- Hook the duck
- Bath basketball
- Colourful Bubbles – we use Lush bathbombs and bubble bars.
- Sea animals
- Plastic Balls – push down and pop them up
- Bath crayons
- Foam letters
- Paintbrushes
What are your favourite easy toddler activities?
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