Finding toddler games to keep your child entertained should be easy. But as you’ve probably already realized, this task can be quite tricky.
Does the following sound familiar? You’re a busy parent who needs fun activities to keep your child entertained (and, preferably, learning) while you attend to your other to-dos. So, you spend hours online trying to find games.
Is screen time the answer? While some screen time, especially when it is interactive, can be fine for toddlers, too much time on screen isn’t beneficial for the healthy growth and development of a child.
So what can you do? Turn to HOMER, of course!
Our learning experts understand the importance of healthy development in children and have compiled a list of seven fun and engaging activities your toddler can enjoy while at home.
Let’s get started!
What Makes A Good Toddler Game?
1) Effectively Engages Their Senses
Children use their senses to explore the world around them. From the moment they were born, they’ve been touching, seeing, smelling, tasting, and hearing the different sensations in their environment.
But engaging children’s senses isn’t just to help them explore and understand their world. Studies have shown a direct link between cognitive development and sensory play. This makes it important to include sensory experiences in your growing child’s activities.
2) Gets Them Moving
Physical activity has many health benefits for children. It helps:
- Improve children’s balance, posture, coordination, and flexibility
- Strengthen young and growing muscles, hearts, bones, and lungs
- Keep children at a healthy weight
Physical activity is also essential for overall well-being. For example, children who are more active tend to sleep better, be more relaxed, concentrate better in school, and be more confident.
In addition to the above benefits, physical activity is also important because it provides a fun outlet for kids.
3) Allows For Creative Expression
You don’t have to do too much to encourage creative expression. Just allow your child to continue using the materials, paints, crayons, and other resources available to continue learning and growing.
Incorporating creative projects into playtime is not just about fun. While that’s important, creative activities also help develop important skills such as problem-solving and fine motor skills (depending on the activity).
In addition, these types of activities allow children a way to express their feelings.
4) Gets Them Outside
While you can certainly play games with your toddler inside, outdoor play can help improve motor skills, muscle strength, and vitamin D intake.
Active kids (whether inside or outside!) tend to become active adults, which means that incorporating some outdoor play for your toddler can help them generally become physically strong and healthy well into adulthood.
The above are a few essential considerations when choosing the right toddler games for your child. Now, let’s break down our list of seven fun and engaging activities your toddler will love.
7 Fun Toddler Games To Try Today
1) Mail Adventure
What You’ll Need:
- HOMER’s Mail Adventure Kit
What To Do:
We love Mail Adventure because it encourages dramatic play in children.
With our kit, your toddler can recreate their very own mini post office. You’ll find a cotton canvas bag, post office stickers, envelopes, and so much more to help them discover the beauty of snail mail.
You can encourage your child to write letters (or just squiggle) and deliver them to different family members.
This role-playing activity has many benefits, including fostering a sense of the importance of written communication and helping them develop their writing skills.
2) Bug Hunting
What You’ll Need:
- A magnifying glass
- Notepad and pen/pencil
- Backyard (or local park)
What To Do:
Children sometimes watch movies that depict bugs as villains, or their siblings may label them as “gross.” This can make it challenging for kids to see these creatures as anything other than that.
Bug hunting can help kids realize that these little beings are often fascinating and harmless!
To get started, you’ll need a backyard or garden space. If you live in the city, the local park will work, too. When you get to your destination, explain that the mission is to find as many bugs as possible and not touch them (to avoid potential bites).
We like to think of this activity as an observation task, rather than a capturing task. You may want to take photos to document any bugs your child finds so that you can look at them again later.
If you have multiple children, this can also turn into a healthy competition. Who can find the most bugs in 30 (or 60) minutes? You can even expand the game to include other creatures, like worms.
Play Tip: Always make sure an adult accompanies each child. The adult should be the one flipping stumps or logs, as this will help ensure safety.
3) Puzzle Creation
What You’ll Need:
- Scissors
- Crayons
- Pen/Pencil
- Glue
- Craft paper
- White sheet of paper
What To Do:
The aim of this activity is simple: help your child draw and create their very own puzzle.
To get started, paste the white sheet of paper onto the craft paper. Then encourage your toddler to draw and color any image they want to. If drawing is still a little challenging for them, you can simply take a page out of their coloring book and paste it.
Using a pen (or pencil), draw puzzle lines on the picture to divide it into several puzzle pieces. Finally, cut along those lines (your child can help with a snip or two using toddler-safe scissors). Just like that, your child will have created a one-of-a-kind puzzle!
This is a great activity to help develop fine motor skills and encourage creativity.
4) Craft Box
What You’ll Need:
- A box
- Colored paper
- Glue
- Pipe cleaners
- Crayons
- Stickers
- Any additional craft supplies from around the house
What To Do:
All that’s required is to fill your box with the above-mentioned craft supplies, and then encourage your kid to create anything they want!
This can mean making clouds with the cotton balls, drawing their favorite animal, or even drawing mom and dad. There are no limitations.
This activity is a great way to help your child channel their inner creativity.
5) Pasta Necklaces
What You’ll Need:
- Uncooked pasta (the tubed ones)
- Food coloring
- Sealable plastic bags
- A tray
- String or cotton thread (or shoelace)
- Paper towel
- Rubbing alcohol and beads (optional)
What To Do:
To get started, you’ll need to help your child add some color to the pasta. You can achieve this by placing the uncooked pasta into the sealed plastic bags and adding a few drops of food coloring. Rubbing alcohol can help to dry the coloring faster.
After doing so, seal the bag and encourage your child to give it a good shake to ensure each pasta piece gets some coloring.
Next, line your tray with paper towels, and then pour your pasta from the plastic bag onto it. Allow it to dry.
While you’re waiting, help your child cut the desired length for the necklace and tie a knot on one of the ends. When your pasta is dry, have your child string on the pasta and beads (optional) to make themselves a colorful necklace.
Once they’ve reached the end of their string, tie the ends together, and, just like that, you have a beautiful necklace!
Creativity, fine motor skills, and sensory play are just a few of the benefits of this fun toddler activity.
6) Indoor Obstacle Course
What You’ll Need:
The materials you use for your indoor obstacle course will depend on the supplies you have around your home. For example, you can use chairs, old boxes, cushions, blankets, etc.
What To Do:
Start by helping your child come up with a list of challenges. Once you have a few, you can then build your course around those obstacles. If you’re looking for inspiration, here are some ideas:
Balance beam — Place a long strip of painter’s tape on the floor. Can your child walk a straight line?
Hot lava — You can line up cushions or yoga mats and encourage your child to think of these as hot lava; they’ll need to hop over those places.
Tunnel — Line up a few chairs that your child can crawl through.
As you can see, you can create anything that comes to mind with the supplies around your house. This is a great activity for your child to have a lot of fun while also getting in some physical activity.
7) Seed Planting
What You’ll Need:
- HOMER’s printable field notes template
- A large glass or plastic jar
- Fast-growing seeds (e.g., peas or beans)
- Old milk or juice carton
- Ruler (or measuring tape)
- Paper towels
- Pencil
What To Do:
Use our field notes template to plant a seed with your child and watch it grow.
The beauty of this activity comes in the journey — your child will need to regularly inspect and measure the growing seed and observe the physical changes.
Through this activity, your child will learn the basics of how plants grow. Language development will also come into play as you encourage them to express the notable changes they see from the seed. They will also develop patience as they wait for the seed to sprout.
Play And Learn With Toddler Games!
From our list of toddler games above, we hope we’ve inspired you to continue introducing fun, engaging, and entertaining learning activities for playtime that your child (and you!) will enjoy.
Check out the HOMER Blog for more fun ideas to try at home!
