Dd doesn't attend nusrsery what can I do at home so she doesn't miss out?

[Tsarina1]

Due to cost restraints my Dd won't attend nursery, what can I do at home so she doesn't miss out? I am a sahm & all her friends are attending nursery & I am anxious she is not left behind. She has excellent speech & good social skills(the majority of the time!!). At the moment she goes to a weekly playgroup, library a couple of times a week, she has 2 baby music classes & playdates. We read loads. I just want to know what nursery would do on a normal day & some ideas to implement at home.

How old is she?

Nursery is free 15 hours a week term times once they are 3. She won't miss out on anything before 3-4.

Sounds like you're doing plenty already. If you're in the uk she'll be entitled to fifteen hours at nursery/preschool for free.

They mostly do running around and playing, dressing up, story time, making and colouring, a bit of letters and counting, perhaps decorating biscuits, leaves in the autumn etc, that sort of thing. Anything really. Depends how good the nursery is. Ours was brilliant, they got up to all sorts of activities.

How old is DD? Once she turns 3 she should be able to get a free preschool place (if you are in the UK) and before that I don't think that there is any real benefit in attending a nursery.

Things like helping with the housework, cooking together, walking to the park or shops, singing and dancing and making music with bottles and saucepans, painting, feeding ducks, gardening, playing in the sandpit, having a splashy bath, collecting leaves, making collages, sorting laundry, building dens, making train tracks...

She is 2 so will be eligible next year. It's just that friends with kids in creche/nursery seem to be getting up to so much & I am just awful at crafts/bakine etc, I hate the mess involved with messy play, I am so uncreative & hate baking so if anyone has very simple craft ideas or could tell me how to decorate biscuits I would be so grateful.
I'm not putting myself down, I really am terrible but on the otherhand I love reading to her, dressing up, pretend play & anything outdoors!!

Neither of mine went to nursery and it never occurred to me they might be missing out, quite the opposite in fact :)

Do you do Pinterest? You can just type in "simple activities for two year olds" and you will get loads of ideas. :)

I have a 17 month old and a mindee of the same age and we do lots of simple things. On Thursday I cut out ghost shapes and they glued on cotton balls, as a small example.

Pintrest is fab for toddlers.

I use it all the time. Very cost effect activities for toddlers. I have an 18 month old and struggle to find something constructive but when I go on there, there is always something to do that free or very cheap and clever.

We've been doing motor skills this week with Cheerios and spaghetti sticks, taking a bucket out side and finding leaves and flowers then sticking them to a tree we drew on the window and made lovely smelling playdough out of jelly.

Have a look it's great. This is the foundation stage so it's all learning through play and texture!

Xpost!

www.theimaginationtree.com/ this is also a great website with loads of ideas

Www.artfulparent.com is another fantastic treasure trove of craft/art ideas.

If you desperately want to decorate biscuits (and I don't think she's losing out by not) then buy some rich tea biscuits and some squeezy tubes of ready made icing (any supermarket) this plus some sweets and 100s and 1000s and you can make faces etc.

Look at "the stay at home mom survival guide" - she has a website is on Facebook and on pinterest (not the book by similar name though). She has lots of great ideas grouped by age.

But overall its simple. You don't have to be good at baking or arty to decorate biscuits - as a pp says you can just get little tubes of icing and buy plain biscuits or get the ready mixes that you just mix water into and bake (find them in the cake isle). The results dont have to look good.

Agree with all the PP, Pinterest is fab for easy ideas. Also, for fairly clean messy play, get some shaving foam and cornflour. Cornflour and water on its own is amazing, just add a touch of water so it's gooey, my kids will play for hours with this. When it dries you can just sweep/Hoover up any cornflour. Mix shaving foam with cornflour and you get 'fake snow' which can be squished together to build 'snowmen'. I bought a big compost tray and we do all messy play activities in that.
Beware that nurseries (as opposed to preschools) may well still cost a lot even for 'free' sessions, my daughter does 1.5 days a week and the bill is still around £250 a month.

Dd1 didn't go to preschool until she was three simply because the one nearest us didn't take them until that age. I never thought she was missing out, what would they remember at that age? I was a bit reluctant to let her go to be honest, it felt like the start of a slippery slope. I still hate taking them back to school after the holidays.

I am rubbish at doing crafts with children so mine went to toddler groups for that. The one at the museum was free.

But messy play can also be gardening, or making fairy dens out of twigs, or drawing on the bath with bath crayons, or "helping" you with hand washing or the washing up or washing your car or bike or making actual dinner rather than cupcakes, or making fat balls to feed the birds.