Your best activities/games for busy 2 year old?

[milkyman]

I need inspiration!

Messy play is your friend
Shaving foam straight on a table
Play dough
Finger painting
Sand
Water
Shredded paper
Cooked spaghetti
Dried pasta
Dry rice
Gloop- cornflour and water
Junk modelling
Rolls of wallpaper on the floor with crayons
Cooking
Splashing in puddles
Anything that engages all their senses and gets them moving and thinking
For real inspiration go on pinterest
I can spend hours on there

My 24 month old especially loves: (most ideas found on Pinterest!)

• sensory bins with dried beans for example and scoops
• waterbeads (so cheap and lots of fun!, can be bought on amazon!)
• playdough with parts to press in and play with like beads etc
• water play (I just put lots of towels on the floor in the winter and a big bowl of water with jugs etc)
• helping mummy cook in the kitchen, bought her small spoons and a little vegetable scrubber, apron etc so she can join in
• playing with saucepans and baking trays! (This is a noisy one!)
• pouring and transferring activities with rice, pasta, pom poms etc
• drawing on a white board and chalk board (she wipes off herself and starts over and over again!)
• colour sorting activities, for example giving her a pile of blue and red buttons to sort
• painting/colouring/stickers/glitter - lots of crafts!
• splashing in puddles, even if it's raining we get into our waterproofs and go splash!
• "treasures" from outdoors,she loves collecting "treasures" like pinecones, conkers etc and will play indoors with them for weeks after!
• basket of musical instruments and home made shakers

-building dens indoors

Like I said before I get many ideas from pinterest! It's great for inspiration!

Have got some good craft ideas from

www.frogsandsnailsandpuppydogtail.com

which are cheap and easy for a non-craft person!

My 2 yr old loves baking fairy cakes - ie stirring and dropping mixture into the tray - but if I'm trying to get tea ready I give her some biscuits or oatcakes, some cake decorations (whatever on offer) and I have two tubes of ready to squeeze icing in the cupboard. She tends to leave them but they're rather pretty and cheery in my lunchbox at work

She also loves peeling the back off stickers and gluing - so I give her some paper, some glue on a plate and some bits of paper to make a picture.

We too seem to do the same thing so it's great to swop tips. X

Thanks all, I shall try some of these out!