Toddler moms

What kind of arts and crafts do you keep at home for your child? What kind of activities do you do with your toddler on the weekends, or for SAHM, during the day?

Re: Toddler moms

Great question

Right now we just smash food on the floor,highchair, and hair That's our arts and crafts

Re: Toddler moms

Anything that crayola makes that is washable is great. Washable finger paint, crayons, etc. I reallly like the Crayola stuff where the paint only works on the special Crayola paper. It is like a clear gel and only shows color when you use it on the paper. So your couch and walls will be safe. We are also in a huge puzzle phase here. I must sit and do puzzles for at least an hour throughout the day! Memory games are fun to. At this point, we just match them up facing up. Hmmm...what else? There are usually about 35 time outs also in there, so that takes up a lot of the day too!

Re: Toddler moms

Julia loves to color, so I cut out shapes for her to paste on pictures, so she learns her shapes and colors.

Also, just wanted to share....

I've been wondering why Julia has been walking around the house saying the letters I A lately..... So I called my MIL and she started laughing saying she is teaching Julia to spell her name when she watches her for me on wednesdays , she holds the pen with Julia and she spells out her name and they write it on the paper, I couldn't believe it, she can almost spell her name! I'm so proud of my baby!

Message edited 6/6/2007 9:22:38 AM.

Re: Toddler moms

Posted by MelToddJulia

Julia loves to color, so I cut out shapes for her to paste on pictures, so she learns her shapes and colors.

Also, just wanted to share....

I've been wondering why Julia has been walking around the house saying the letters I A lately..... So I called my MIL and she started laughing saying she is teaching Julia to spell her name when she watches her for me on wednesdays , she holds the pen with Julia and she spells out her name and they write it on the paper, I couldn't believe it, she can almost spell her name! I'm so proud of my baby!

Re: Toddler moms

I love arts & crafts so we do a lot.

This book is pretty good- "The Toddler's Busy Book" by Trish Kuffner (It's probably time for me to get the preschool edition soon- dd is 2 1/2)

We love the Color Wonder stuff. They make clear markers, soft sticks and fingerpaints. (It only comes out on the paper.) Washable crayola stuff is great. I have the watercolors, markers,paints, and crayons. DD loves to color so we have a zillion coloring books. Play-doh is a favorite. I made my own felt-board. Very easy and cheap. She plays with that too. Paint with water books. Aquadoodle. She loves it when I give her a sheet of stickers and a piece of construction paper to put them on. Keeps her busy. We are using glue sticks now too. I cut out an outline of a sheap and she glued cotton balls to it.

I try to do seasonal stuff too. If it's Valentine's Day we paint hearts and flowers and stuff like that. Clovers for St. Patty's. I get ideas from the computer and from the library.

I just happen to like art, so we do a lot of this stuff.

Re: Toddler moms

Hmm.... arts and crafts.... well, there have been many attempts but none that were very successful yet.

I got a book, something like 365 Games Smart Toddlers Play and the activities include age ranges so that helps but honestly I haven't found a really good one yet. When I do, I'll post it.

This weekend we are going to try bowling. I've been saving empty plastic bottles (soda, water, etc) to use as pins.

We tried baking cookies together - Jake tried to shove a wooden mixing spoonful of raw cookie dough into his mouth.

Arts and crafts take ALOT of prep work for it to go smoothly because Jake doesn't have the patience for me to set things up for him, paste things, cut things, etc.

So I prefer activities that are more "ready to go" until he can really sit still for arts and crafts. Believe it or not, giving chores to help me with is big. He likes swiffering, sweeping, and LOVES to help me take out the garbage (gotta get that on video for future use).

Plain old paper and crayons are great - he loves when I draw pictures for him and ask him to name them. Sidewalk chalk is good too.

Re: Toddler moms

Those foam sets at Michaels are great too. I get them whenever they are on sale.

We started with the foam stickers, I got a tub of fish and I would draw a fish bowl on a pc of construction paper and he would sit and peel the stickers and put the fish in the bowl til it was full! (good for dexterity, peeling those little backs off the stickers LOL)

There are also tubs of various shapes and letters, etc. to paste on other bigger foam sheets or anything really.

We are up to the foam kits, we made a barn and a doghouse recently - a little more stressful for me but he enjoyed it!

Re: Toddler moms

Michael has stickers, tons of crayons, tons of drawing pads, coloring books, an easle with magnets, dry erase board and chalk board, we have a lot of Aqua Doodle things, play-doh (which I avoid, lol) and paints. I love doing arts and crafts with Michael and he love showing off his projects! He knows how to use safety scissors and glue so our projects get messy, but it's fun!

Re: Toddler moms

Kevin loves to color. So I have all kinds of coloring books, print pictures from playhouse disney and have lots of differnt color and types and sizes of drawing pads. We switch it up between crayons and pens and washable markers. We use stickers a lot too - we make pictures and he likes to color on the stickers. He loves letters and words so often I write the letters or a word and he guesses what it is and then colors it in.

He loves to paint - so when I don't want the mess I use the water color paint books, the Crayola color wonder paints or those small paint books that come with the few paint colors. We also have finger paints and we paint with those or I take out macaroni to use for different textures things to paint...but that isn't as often since it is messy.

I cut shapes and we do glueing. Or gather stufff from outside - flowers and leaves and stuff and glue those. He likes the real glue or the glue sticks too. I also have cut up pictures that I have doubles of so he can glue and color them too.

Chalk borad/sidewalk chalk as used very often too.

Playdoh and all the accessories are a daily routine.

Message edited 6/6/2007 10:19:02 AM.

Re: Toddler moms

We color with washable crayons in Jared's coloring books. He's learning his colors that way. He's really not a sit down and do an activity type of kid.