What activities to do with 4 YO at 33 weeks pregnant...

[HarryTrotterWotter]

Can anyone suggest anything that involves sitting still?! 🤣 baking, puzzles etc we have done. I was thinking of getting a scrap book & pictures & asking 4YO to choose pictures etc but I'm so lame with activity Ideas!

Cutting and sticking, any messy play/tuff tray ideas, daytime bath, playdoh, painting, build a fort, film with snacks, baking, colouring, reading books, puzzles, construction toys. Prob good to get them used to playing alone a little too and entertaining themselves. Easy access to toys etc for when baby is small.

Get a load of stickers, cut them in half and stick one half to a page. Get them to match the stickers. Easy to prep of an evening and keeps them entertained way longer than a standard sticker book ime.

Following for ideas - I'm only 12w pg but dreadfully sick. My dd is nearly 3 and spent a good twenty minutes picking daisies to fill a little basket, win. Apart from that it's been TV most of the afternoon...

Get an empty plastic cutlery tray and fill each section with something different like pasta, rice, sand, grass, mud etc and make "land" for small toy animals/ dinosaurs!
This keeps my son entertained for a while.

Or get some chalk board roll that you can stick to a surface and just let her draw with chalks without the mess!

We played a lot of doctors. I lay on the sofa under a blanket and she bandaged my leg / listened to my chest / told me what to do / gave me injections etc.

Painting with water in the garden. Big chalk on the street/patio. Aqua draw mat. Squirty bottle full of water to water the plants/clean the patio. Bowl of water and let her wash her dolls/Duplo people/cars etc. You can sit and admire her work.

Playdoh. Add different accessories to keep it fresh. Our current favourite is 'bakery', muffin tins/cases, baking tray, cutters etc. We play with it near the toy kitchen so she can put them in the oven when they're done.

Any kind of colouring/sticking/cutting. Mix up the materials to keep it fresh. Scrapbook is a great idea. You could get her to make a book about the family (give her photos of everyone to stick in) for the baby when it arrives.

Duplo, Magnatiles and Brio are all good sitting still activities that keep them busy for ages.

My son is younger but at 4 can you not take them to the park and sit on a bench? I stopped taking DS 23mo at 36w because I could no longer clamber onto the play equipment and help him to the “big slide”. 39w now and I take him to a garden to explore (National Trust type place), appreciate that’s not sitting but it’s not climbing so consider it a win. Scrapbooking sounds good: old magazines and newspapers. Scavenger hunt in the garden (daisy, leaf, pebble).

It was rough, I was there a couple of months ago and there were 10 days when I couldn’t walk much because the baby moved into a weird position and my leg stopped working. I parented almost entirely from the sofa.

We did sticker books, soooo many sticker books. The doll dressing ones are the best, have a look on Amazon. Also activity books about books she likes - Julia Donaldson ones, supertato, spot the dog. They’re not cheap but so handy with spot the difference, mazes. Magazines also have loads in to do, we like Paddington bear ones.

We did Jigsaw puzzles. We read stacks of books. We did sofa spa with pretend and real nail painting, hand massages etc. She loves cooking so I filmed her doing cooking demos on the coffee table with her play kitchen stuff, that went on for ages. You can do things like coin rubbing. Play dough.

It’s good practise for when on the sofa feeding your baby, you’ll be pleased to have tried and tested activities you can do for a while at a time.

We have a slate floor & I've let her colour that in! Much to her Father's disgust 🤣

Thanks everyone, lovely ideas. She's learning to read so we have done lots of that, & activity books, painting. We live on a farm so there's always something to do, I'm just knackered & huge then feel terribly guilty when she asks me to play & I just can't summon the energy to do what she wants!

Look up five minute mum, she has loads of activities!

I feel your pain...I've got 2yrs9mo between my boys and that third trimester was exhausting. And painful.