What do you do on a weekday evening with toddlers?

[Laalaalala]

My son is 2.5 years old. Only child.

3 days a week at nursery 8am-4pm and loves it. 2 days a week with grandparents. I work Full time and husband does too.

he is a typical toddler, loves cars and rough play. Doesn’t like sharing, limited speech but it is coming on. During the week I never know what to do, we come home we play, start making tea, I’m running around trying to get things sorted then we all chill out. I don’t want us to start watching tv etc.

he doesn’t like us reading books, he pulls the books off us and likes to turn the pages and look at pictures himself. He’s only really interested in cars.

what do you do as families or is this just a normal routine? Weekends we always go out and do things together. What toys are educational we could do as a family? I’m looking forward to when he is a bit older and we can play board games etc together

At that age mine were in the bath around 6/6.30 then book and bed.

Red Dog Blue Dog is a good game.

Playing cars.

My son is the same age OP, we don’t get back from nursery until 5.30-6 but the first thing we do is go in the garden! Run off a bit more energy, bubbles, play football.
Bedtime for him isn’t until after 8, but we start bath at 7.15 so spend a good amount of time in the garden, we’ve also got Paddington/ gruffalo/ bluey jigsaw puzzles for age 2+ that he loves doing. Otherwise it’s music on Alexa or his Tonies box and dancing! That can easily pass half an hour

Play cars with him.
Have you got a basic hot wheels track (the type that's essentially a slide and loop de loop). They're great fun.
Gets some books about cars (ones that are just pictures and facts).

Wooden train set like Brio, ideally leaving it out so he can get into more involved tracks. Mine both adored brio and still won’t get rid of it at 10.

On a similar track, lego or duplo? Or Toot Toot card, if you can bear the noise. Anything with tracks and bridges.

Toys like that, especially if he likes vehicles, keep them busy for hours

Simple Orchard Games like 'Smelly Wellies', 'Dotty Dinosaurs' or 'Shopping Game'were good.

We have finally got something we all enjoy in the past 2 weeks, we go for an after dinner walk and pick blackberries which 2year old devours in her pram 🤣

Granted it will only last a few weeks, but DH and I are both really enjoying getting out between 6.30-7.30 as that would usually be the time we are clockwatching until bath/bed (sounds awful but we're all tired and a bit overstimulated by that point).

DD usually enjoys free play with small world toys - doll's house, farm animals etc. Gathering random small toys into mini suitcases, dressing up, jigsaws. Trampoline, sandpit and play house in the garden. Walks along the canal and market. We have a few Orchard toys games which she likes, and Connect 4 and Hungry Hippoes.

We get home at 5:15pm and DD usually plays with her toys or watches TV while I cook dinner. Some downtime is fine after the busy environment of nursery. After dinner she has a long bath and we read books and then sleep time.

Wind down time; tv, bath, book and bed.

I was a stay at home mum so looked forward to bedtime.

Usually do something on the way home from nursery, park or shops. Then home by 5/5:30. At that age mine wouldn't play much by himself yet so it was playing with him until 6/6:30 when I would start dinner. He would either help with dinner or I put him in front of the tv. Dinner 7/7:30, off to bed 8/8:30.