joint activities for a one and three year old?

[ionesmum]

I have two dds aged 13 mo and three. I'm pretty happy with planning activities for my three year old (e.g. painting, glueing, tea parties etc.) but poor little dd2 gets stuck on her own in front of her toys whilst I supervise. It'd really be nice to organise some games / activities that they can do together. Does anyone have any ideas? Tia!

Supervised playdough?
If you have a garden (or just in bath) water toys, squirting, pouring, bubbles etc.

my 2 are similar ages (dd 3 next week, ds 15 months).

the best activity is playing with some sand in the garden - you don't need a sandpit (ours is in a baby-born baby bath)

also things like finger painting - it gets messy but is fun (also ds gets bored quicker than dd so you need a standby activity to keep younger one amused)

dancing - any dancing! both find this hilarious.

could she manage stickers? not much mess, not too tricky. Realistically, when mine were 13mths, being stuck in front of their toys was about the limit of it! Now they're 4 and 2, I have to handle problems caused by little brother "doing it wrong", and "stealing my things"!

oh yes, water in the garden is fun too. they took it in turns yesterday to fill the swimming pool with the hose. we were soaked.

(sorry - not showing off!)

Thanks for the ideas. We are really limited as to where dd2 coul dget messy but th ebath woul dbe a good place! As for dancing, dd1 tells me to stop!

we've got bath paints, which are okay if the bath isn't about getting clean! We have found that although they don't stain the bath, if the children use them to paint on themselves they are coloured for a few days after.

I 'll look out for those. It sounds mad but I can't remember what dd1 did when she was dd2's age!

There is a game called Elefun (I think) which I am sure a small toddler would enjoy evenif they were never the winner!

What's Elefun? Sounds good!

It wasn't too bad when dd2 wasn't mobile & would just sit and watch, but now she's into everything and we have so little space where she can join in safely with dd1's games. I kind of feel I'm letting her down, dd1 got lots of attention at dd2's age being the only one, and she's still getting it all now.

IOnesmum - I'm in completely the same boat. DD is 3, DS is 1 next week. He absolutely adores her and wants to be close at all times. She is not very good at playing alone and wants me to join in all her games. I end up walking up and down the room holding DS's hand whilst she's saying "pretend I'm Nemo and you're my daddy looking for me!"
I usually just end up taking them out for a walk as it's easier - rainy afternoons make my heart sink!

I used to take mine to a play area.

I found this age gap quite difficult to do joint activities though ds(eldest) would join in if i was playing with dd. Dd is now 21 months & it's definitly getting much easier.

a plastic teaset from the Early Learning Centre

got played with (together, without supervision) nearly daily for about two years

Here you go:

www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002HNMUQ/202-0272865-3530274

I certain these have already been mentioned but;
climbing on the sofa ad infinitum
tea set, yest that's a good one,
soft play centre
and I found letting little one watch big one play on the computer, Cbeebies website etc, to be quite long lasting too

It really does get easier and one day you will find they just start [playing with each other

Thank you all again, I will fish out dd1's tea set, it's lurking in her room somewhere. If I try to do something with dd2, dd1 tries to take over, it's very difficult. Thanks WCL, will have a look at that link. Dd2 started to walk today so maybe thta will open up a few more possibilities!