Entertaining a Wee One

So as you've probably already gathered based on my many mentions of chasing Toby, being his sole source of recreation can be exhausting. For the most part, he is pretty good at playing by himself, but there are some days where mere playing isn't quite stimulating enough for his developing brain. I know a lot of parents say that their child is a genius and they can solve the world's problems so I won't say that exactly, but Toby is definitely an exceptionally intelligent little gent. I'm CONSTANTLY trying to find new ways to keep him occupied so I can sit around and eat bon bons all day get something slightly productive accomplished, like a basket of laundry folded or empty the dishwasher. He's not quite able to help me with those tasks yet, although I do keep trying to get him involved. Most of the time the laundry just ends of strewn about the living room. It's awesome.

Anywhoo, besides finding things to engross Toby's attention I also want to make sure that he has activities that exercise his brain. I used to work at a Montessori preschool and they were really big on lots and lots of sensorial activities for toddlers. Of course I don't remember many of the activities but thank God for Pinterest. There are soooo many blogs and sites with ideas for sensorial lessons to do at home.

Here's a few activities that we've done around here recently...

Bean Scooping and Object Sorting

Who knows how long ago, but long ago in a galaxy far far away I bought a massive bag of dried beans from Costco. We like beans as much as the next person, but clearly not enough to go through five pounds of it.

Anywhoo, I just dumped out a bunch of the beans in a shallow plastic bin and tossed some colorful reusable ice cubes I found in the dollar section at Target. I gave Toby a couple of large spoons and a cup, stepped back and let him explore.

The beans and the spoons are great for developing the scooping and pouring technique. The ice cubes are for sorting, for example: I'd show Toby how to scoop up one of the blue cubes and put it in the cup, then find the other blue cube and put it in the cup.

Thank God Toby is not the kind of little guy to put EVERYTHING in his mouth, so that is why I felt comfortable using small objects with this activity, but I did monitor to make sure he didn't get any ideas. If you feel so inspired to try this, please make sure that you supervise your wee one.

Shaving Cream Paint

Okay so this one was not much of a success. All I did was pump some shaving cream into a shallow plastic bin and add some food color to each. The idea was that Toby could smoosh them around and see how the colors mix. Well apparently my child is dismayed by the texture of shaving cream because he was not down with this idea. at. all. I tried showing Toby how to play in the stuff, then Watson got curious, then I had the brilliant idea to stick Toby's hand in there and he freaked out, and there was shaving cream everywhere. So that was the end of that.

I thought the colored shaving cream looked kinda cool though...

You know what they say about curiosity and cats...

Big Box Play

Derek recently ordered a bunch of new equipment for his business which mean that our house was taken over by boxes. I found the biggest one and set it on its side. Toby loves lights so I gave him a mini flashlight and put them both in the box. Lots of fun for this dude.

Because boxes provide infamous amounts of playtime for littles, another activity we did was color the box. This was probably the most successful of all the activities. All it took was the big box and a few crayons. Happiness for all.

What educational activities have you done with your little ones lately? 

What are some of your favorite playtime activities?