Entertaining pre-school children in the credit crunch - please come and add your own ideas

[BennyAndJoon]

I had a 2 year old and a 4 year old happy as larry for over an hour in the garden yesterday.

2 large plastic cups full of plain old water and 2 old paint brushes. They "painted" the walls, ground and fence outside, followed by all of the garden toys.

The concrete flags were a particular hit, as they give a good colour change when wet.

Asda smart price shaving foam - 34p -squirted into a cat litter type tray ( empty obv!) for making marks in with fingers/implements.

Treasure baskets of household items - themed if you like, plastic, IT, wooden, natural, fabrics etc just showved into an old rucksack or pillowcase

Mud pies and mud painting in the garden

Playing with cooked spaghetti

Digging for Australia worms

Taking photos of each other esp after dressing up/make up/face painting

Obstacle courses

Space hoppering down the street and through the biggest puddles you can find when it's raining is a lot of fun

Poisson Rouge is free of course! And the undisputed best website for small kids there is

BennyandJoon - Your newspaper comment has reminded me of something pre-schoolers love doing... cutting up newspaper (and ripping up newspaper). The newspaper pieces tend to get everywhere but once everything has been shredded, they can enjoy clearing it up (dustpan and brushes) and recycling it.

cutting out the earrings, watches etc from catalogues and setting up a jewellery shop - you can then stick them on with sellotape - my Mum ended up going out for dinner with a fetching pair of Argos pink diamond studs stuck to hear ear lobes and didn't realise til she got home.

Dragging little ones around wooden floors on a blanket is always good for a laugh too and getting them to do the hoovering by scattering some shredded tissue around has worked well for us...

when we were small, dsis and i would turn the sofa cushions on their sides and straddle them like horses. kept us amused for hours on rainy days.

This is a great thread - I'm always stuck for things to do.

Stuff we've done recently....

water painting

cleaning ( DD washes down the doors on my kitchen cupboards!)

baking (I'm a big fan of cheesy scones at the moment - DD can do pretty much the whole thing by herself and loves the rolling out/cutting jobs and she has them with soup for her tea)

hunt the thimble

treasure hunt with apples

any kind of drawing that we can do together - e.g. the thing where one of you does the head and the other one does the body. Yesterday we made a family tree with us both drawing faces and DD linking them together with lines.

Fab ideas.

I love the thought of your mum with argos pictures selotaped to her ears treacle!

Home made bubbles with washing up liquid.
DD loves a bath at any old time of day, it passes at least half an hour.
Papier mache - with watered down PVA glue and newspaper.
A ball on the beach is the best thing here though!
Thanks for all the ideas.

i love this thread

dd 22m is very into glueing these days, i put different colour lentils/ pasta/ rice in some small pots and leave her to it, vacuum it all up later

dens are big hit too,my ds(nearly 17) loved den making, one famous den in my bedroom included a radiator and he lived in for about a month aged 7!

we used to make networks of aerial 'slide things' with kite string for all his action figures to slide down and 'cartoons' if you have camcorder. and interviews. we have brilliant interviews with batman and captain pirate etc...

washing windows is good fun too, esp drying with newspaper and vinegar