I’ve had a lot of questions on how to keep your toddler busy while you’re doing school. I’ve found that giving our Teeny Tot her own workboxes was really the key to keeping her occupied. She just turned 3, and her motivation right now is to feel like she’s doing the same thing that the big kids are doing.
Here are some of the items in the Teeny Tot’s workboxes today:
- Wooden Fish Puzzle (I couldn’t find the exact one, but this is close)
- Wooden Lacing Blocks
- Ice cube tray from Bed, Bath & Beyond, bamboo toast tongs, and pom-poms
- ABC lacing beads from JoAnn’s craft store, small ice cube tray from Bed, Bath & Beyond.
- Beads & Pattern Cards
And here are some of the items in action. These are our Beads & Pattern Cards from Learning Resources. When she first started, I had her practice lacing the beads, now that she’s 3 I gave her a card and had her match the pattern on it.
Another thing that really helps keep her occupied is reading time. Quite often Strawberry Shortcake will read to the Teeny Tot. She loves it, and it benefits everyone!
This is a game called Tangoes Jr.. It’s great for younger kids, it comes with 7 large magnetic game pieces and 12 double sided puzzle cards. The pieces are magnetic so they don’t slide around.
This is one of our Hot Dots Jr. alphabet packs and Ace the talking dog pen. The Teeny Tot loves the little sounds that the pen makes. I would tell her the name of the letter and have her click on the matching lowercase dot.
These are one of our favorites. They’re called Kumon ABC’s write and wipe. These cards are uppercase, but they also sell lowercase and numbers too. You use them with dry-erase markers and though you can’t see it in the picture, there are light dotted lines to trace.
I hope that helps give you some ideas to keep your toddler busy. If you have any to share, please feel free to leave a comment!
Stay tuned next week for Teeny Tot Tuesday!
Oh… how I love childhood. Those are exciting learning resources.
Aww, her and TJ are around the same age and have all the same cool things in their boxes.. You have a beautiful family =)
Great ideas!!
Your kids are so lucky. You have some of the neatest games and workbooks. I wish I had all of those. My kids would love that. Looks like so much fun.
What is the abc bead and tray activity pictured? And where did you find a tray like that? Thank you so much for the great ideas!!
The tray is actually a mini-ice cube tray. I think I found it at Bed, Bath and Beyond. The beads were just an alphabet bead set from JoAnn’s craft store in the bead section, it was a couple dollars at most.
So fun!! We have the Tangoes, Jr. set and the kids love it. Such great ideas!!
Thanks for sharing! I would be interested in where you found the lacing cards? I have been looking for ones just like that!
Candice
She looks like she’s having so much fun, and I love seeing all of the activities you put together for her. 🙂
Oh thank you, those are great! Sorry I did not clarify.
I was actually talking about the upper right hand picture wIth the
Lacing shapes. Do you remember where you got those?
Thank you!
I wasn’t sure! Here are the wooden lacing shapes:
http://amzn.to/2gELMRZ
Hope that helps!