Best entertainment for 2.5 year old...mini poll...

[thechocolatemonster]

Just found I can strap my two and a half year old into her baby brother's high chair and she can keep herself amused with felt tips for quite a while.

Would love to have any more tips for entertainment for my little girl. You all seem much more up on this than I am!

Jess

2 buckets, some cups and some water.

A sponge too if you're feeling generous.

You can also add food colourings I hear, or cornmeal for gloop.

Its an outdoor activity really, I warn you.

A large tray with a rim, and some fine sand in a salt shaker. She can sprinkle the sand all over the tray in patterns, and then draw pictures with her finger. Shake the tray lightly to start all over again :)

Does it have to be stuff alone? Cos bakings brilliant. Make up some dough (breadmakers are good here but tbh its easy, and you can tell a story while you're doing it-raisins are hail, yeast is a frothing dragon yada yada). Let them do their worst. Then bake it.

Must go and do such things with my kids and get off mn...

My little boy loved to look at toy catalogues,he had a few of them.He loved to look and turn the page and recognise tellytubbies and point things out for both of us to chat about.

dd1 2.4 loves painting and printing with potatoes and anything else that we can find.

Playdough - get some cutters, roller, toy knives & forks, paper cake cases

glueing and sticking (cut up some egg boxes, bits of ribbon, large pasta shapes, bits of string etc - buy some paper plates)

mix cornflour, water and food colouring, get a teaspoon and let it drip onto some paper

Bury some little toys (eg plastic toy animals) in a washing-up bowl full of flour (or a sandpit) and get the child to look for them.

Make pizzas. My 2.5 yr old loves doing this and you even get to eat the pizzas! Make the dough and tomato sauce first (they can help mix it), then give them small lumps of dough to knead and roll out. They can spread the tomato sauce over the base (once it has cooled down),and add slices of cheese, ham and basil leaves. It helps if you have a small rolling pin. A piece of dough the size of my toddler's fist will make the right size pizza for 1 meal - amazingly! You could experiment with other ingredients and make funny faces with olives for eyes and sliced red pepper for the mouth.

Make pizzas. My 2.5 yr old loves doing this and you even get to eat the pizzas! Make the dough and tomato sauce first (they can help mix it), then give them small lumps of dough to knead and roll out. They can spread the tomato sauce over the base (once it has cooled down),and add slices of cheese, ham and basil leaves. It helps if you have a small rolling pin. A piece of dough the size of my toddler's fist will make the right size pizza for 1 meal - amazingly! You could experiment with other ingredients and make funny faces with olives for eyes and sliced red pepper for the mouth.

Make pizzas. My 2.5 yr old loves doing this and you even get to eat the pizzas! Make the dough and tomato sauce first (they can help mix it), then give them small lumps of dough to knead and roll out. They can spread the tomato sauce over the base (once it has cooled down),and add slices of cheese, ham and basil leaves. It helps if you have a small rolling pin. A piece of dough the size of my toddler's fist will make the right size pizza for 1 meal - amazingly! You could experiment with other ingredients and make funny faces with olives for eyes and sliced red pepper for the mouth.

make your own play dough - 4 tablespoons of flour, 1 teaspoon of salt and add water till you get the right consistency. you can also add drop of food colouring.

pasta jewellery - some tube shaped pasta, paint in different colours,leave to dry (you can do this by putting pasta through a straw and stand straw into blue tac). when all pasta dry, thread onto string.

Another outdoor activity my litle girl loves, she's 2.5 yrs.
Buy a roll of cheap lining paper from homebase (about £2) and a few paint tray inserts (not the solid black ones). Mix up kids poster paints and water in the trays so it is runny but not too weak.
Unroll the paper on the grass for about 20ft or so and make sure something can weight it down at the ends otherwise it just rolls back up again. Lay the paint loaded tray inserts on the grass, make a coffee, sit back and let the kids stomp in the paint barefoot and then run up and down the paper leaving coloured footprints.
Word of warning tho - they will end up using their hands, painting each other etc. so dress in disposable clothes if you don't want to wash them. Also, if you use red paint it's quite shocking to see the kids covered in it.
A good indoor activity is to cut up characters from all those 'Toybox' and CBeebies comics you might buy and let her do some sticking with her favourite characters. Stops all the paper waste too, good way of re-cycling.