Stay at home mums - How do you entertain your baby/toddler?

[mummylove]

My dd is 18 mths and loves being outdoors, she totally gone off her toys and prefers crayons, paints and chalk/blackboards. Her favourite activity is the playground, i take her every day or to see the ducks. She use to see her friends a couple of times a week but now most of the mums have gone back to work and the babies are in nurseries. I have just got a list of playgroups to take her to as I dont want her to miss out on interaction with other children.

Can anyone suggest fun things for us to do indoors and out... that does not involve too much money.

Thanks

Do you have a sand-pit? Ours has provided hours of entertainment. And ds loves sticks and stones and a few very hardy pot plants that he waters and weeds and quite often covers in sand and kills but he doesnt know that!

Sounds like what you're doing now is great fun..
How about swimming - gives you and her an opportunity to meet new friends without being in a play environment. I got really fed up with toddler groups being run on jungle rules and our children always coming off worst...
Inside stuff is great fun, especially as the weather starts getting poor. How about play dough? painting at an easle? gluing and sticking as she becomes more adept and wax crayoning?? I used to love having the play tent and tunnel up in the hall too - I remember DD having teddy picnics in there !! DS (17 months) will be getting into this soon too!!

hello, my dd is 19 months, I would check out if there is a sure start group in your area. i am unfortunately one street outside the catchment area although am allowed to attend sessions at the library (as it is a public area), they do songs, drawing and colouring and stories, and it is free! If you have access to a paved garden then you can give your dd a paint brush and a pot of water and she can paint onto the ground (if you don't mind the mess, you can use paint). DD also likes digging so it may be time to do a bit of gardening.

mine is 18 months too h elike play food a lot - is just starting to mimic and a till he loves

go to your local charity shops
havbe loads of toys for pocket money prices

oh ans swimming too

I've got a great recipe for salt dough if you want it. It lasts for months in the fridge (and on the carpets/chairs/walls unfortunately....) and is really cheap and east to make.

Trips to the library, don't know what they are like in the UK, but here in NZ you could spend a morning in one! Then lots of books to bring home.

Putting out bread crusts for the birds in the garden, brilliant because ds has learnt to stand still so he doesn't frighten them.

Die penne pasta bright colours and make necklaces.

Sorting out washing

Putting things from one container to another, pegs are good, or lots of tops from milk bottles.

Sweeping.

It may sound like my ds is a domestic slave, but I think it's important that he gets used to doing the odd job here and there. He really is getting quite good at mopping too...

thanks - there are some great ideas there.

i got her her play cookery set yesterday with plastic plates, cups, saucepans, cutlery etc... all for £5 - bargain. she loves it, she is so into sorting things, takes great enjoyment in emptying her pencil case filled with crayons and putting them back in one by one.

Hi Mummylove,

always hard to know if I'm getting the age right (youngest dd now 2 and a half) but other ideas are water-play - put a washing up bowl of water on the kitchen floor and give her a scrubbing brush or dish cloth and some of her plastic toys to wash; my dds both still love scrubbing things outside too - they have a plastic table which gets lots of cleaning! ; music and dancing; water painting outside - ie just let her paint with water on the ground - if you have a bit of patio; or chalks on the ground outside; watering the garden; sticking tends to be a bit less messy than painting

ooh an posting
get a cardborad box and cut aslit in it and let her post things

Cbeebies and a pack of Cheesestrings

Not really!

Not really!

Yes you do Suzy, i know your secrets cos i do to but i use Shrek and pom bear crisps.

Today we have had half an hour at creche doing singing, now they are asleep and a friend will come over later. I try and get them out of the house everyday even if its only to tescos otherwise they go mad. I work from home so find it very difficult to keep them entertained all the time

CP3 - me too (work from home). I also try to go somewhere, like you say, even if it's only Tesco. At least they get out and you can get them to help put things in or look for things on the shelf (even if you can see it anyway!).

Other ideas:

If wet - put wellies on and go out and splash in puddles.

Wash the car! Mine love this - they get filthy doing the wheels and get utterly soaked but who cares! If you've not got a car, maybe just take washable toys out and wash them!

Collect conkers or acorns. Or collect leaves - you could try and find as many different ones as you can and then you could paint them and do prints or just stick them to paper to make a picture.

Thread pasta tubes or other shapes to make a necklace/bracelet - you could send it to granny!

Put an old sheet or duvet cover over the dining table or some chairs to make a den - I've just done this today and ds's put cushions in and made beds.

If you've got birthday's or anniversaries - make cards, even if it's just colouring or do paint, glitter, sticking etc.

Get them dusting etc with you!

Make cakes - even if just one of those pack ones where you add and egg and water. You can get them for about £1-2.

HTH. I've not done the splashing outside but I intend to as it's getting more and more difficult to do parks as everything is soaking wet! Ds's are 3.5 and 2 and they are very active and going stir crazy in the house - as am I!! I've got a 4 week old ds too so getting out is especially hard so the splashing I'll just do on our driveway!

I like the idea of painting the path with water - was going to try it today but it rained so no can do!!!

We made Jelly today, now shes winging because she wants it now, and she doesnt understand that it needs to set. Im getting nothing done today at all and will prob end up working most of the evening whilst sneakily posting on mums net too.

I find a walk out to find an animal is great fun. We have cats but my two yr old likes to go out looking for horses and dogs. We even get to see chickens at a nearby stables. She then talks about it for the rest of the day

Toddlerbob -
Stupid question I know but how do you dye your pasta?

just put dried pasta into a bowl and a few drops of food colouring and mix and the colour will take. After it has dried which is only a few seconds the colour will not come off onto hands. This works even better on uncooked rice which you can colour in batches to get a rainbow effect. Toddlers love pouring it and running it through their fingers, and mums too it feels so theraputic.

If you are feeling really brave they can mix up tubs of cooked pasta (spaghetti is fab but feels a bit yucky) with paint and glitter which can make fantastic pitures when dry. My daughter used to love sitting in a paddling pool of cooked spaghetti and playing with it adding bits of sparkle and paint into the mixture.;

A paddling pool of cooked spaghetti!?!?!? Are you serious?! PMSL!

well as serious as you can get sbout spaghetti and paddling pools!

Honestly my dd loved this from the age of sitting up to about eighteen months!

Havent read all the posts so sorry if these have already been suggested;

playdough with raw spaghetti - to make hedgehogs,people etc.

t-set with rice or very small pasta to pour out of the pot and use as tea.

Ooblick - a mixture of cornflour and water. Mix in bowl so that it looks quite set at the bottom of the bowl. You should be able to grab a handful from the bottom and then it will melt in your hand - a great sensory activity.

I call ooblick gloop and all kids and most adults love it! As cuppy said it melts in your hand or when it touches metal yet can also be like a powder. My dd loves to squeeze out the liquid so she can make a ball with it and then put this ball in a metal sieve and it pours through.

I have also made it with custard powder or added vanilla so it smells lovely or add drops of food colour and watch the colours make patterns.

I have no idea how you die pasta, a woman at playgroup did about 6kg and we all stole some of hers.

When my daughter was 18m all she needed was a glue stick and a pile of scrap paper! She still loves sticking now. She also liked cardboard tubes from kitchen roll/loo roll taped onto the newel post so that she could drop ping pong balls down them, that would keep her amused for hours. She was also (still is) a collector, she liked tp have a little bag that she could fill with "finds" when we went out for a walk - chestnuts, acorns, feathers and so on, although you may end up heartily sick of conkers if you do this! Splashing in puddles was a favourite, as was dressing up in my shoes, hats and so on.

a hosepipe to "water" the garden - you get some drowned plants but they have a great time. "paint" the fence or any walls you have with a bucket of water. Sandpits are great if covered to keep animals out. We went swimming or to mother and toddler groups/ the library as often as we could and borrowed toys from a toy library. Cardboard boxes were popular - to bash, climb on and turn into dolls/ teddies house. You may have a scrap store nearby where you can fill a plastic sack with making things. Locally we also have a printer who sells surplus paper. Neither of mine were interested in dressing up (except in wellingtons for those puddles) but some children at playgroup would spend hours on that.

I picked most of this up from watching mothers with older children