By Jordan Benton
Stay-at-home moms Brittany Henson and Ashley Oswald, both former elementary school teachers, detail their favorite DIY activities for stimulating your toddler’s brain at home.
1: Tracing with Buttons
Grab some construction paper, a marker for drawing your child’s first initial on the paper, and either buttons, uncooked pasta, cotton balls or stickers for tracing. Set your child up at a table and let them line up the buttons along their initial.
“It’s a simple activity that incorporates a lot of cognitive thinking,” Henson said.
2: Get Moving with Lines
You’ll need painter’s tape and a space either indoors or outdoors for laying out the tape in a unique pattern for your child to walk, bike, or trike on.
“You can make it as complicated or as simple as you want with different shapes or designs, and obstacles,” said Henson.
3: Use a Book for Inspiration
Choose any book and create an activity from it like making a caterpillar out of your child’s name.
“The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a great book because it’s a classic and it teaches so many things like colors, spelling your name, what is healthy food and unhealthy food, the life cycle of a butterfly, etc.,” Henson explained.
4: Color Matching with Dot Stickers
You’ll need different colored dot stickers and a large paper roll.
One way to learn with dot stickers is drawing different colored circles all over the paper and then giving your child dot stickers to match the sticker to the appropriate color on the paper.
“I’ll also draw monsters and next to a monster I’ll put a number, so they have to put the same number of dot stickers as the number for the monster’s eyes,” said Oswald.
5: Apple-Themed Activities
You’ll need a bunch of different colored apples.
“I did two weeks of apple-centered activities,” told Oswald. “We sorted them by color, cut them in half, dipped them in paint and painted with them. We made apple sauce in the crockpot with them. We also made a 1×5 grid with painter’s tape on the ground and counted with the apples.”
6: Homemade Sensory Table
You’ll need a plastic tub, water, soap and children’s toys.
“When it’s a water table, I make colored soap in my blender with water, dish soap, and food coloring,” Oswald said. “I make a few different colors and put it in the water table, and that occupies my kids for a solid hour.”