Book Review – Toddler Activities Made Easy: 100+ Fun and Creative Learning Activities for Busy Parents

All play, no prep toddler activities

Your little toddler is bursting with enthusiasm, wonder, and…ENERGY! And you’re a busy parent. No matter the time, space, or kind of materials you have on hand, this book gives you plenty of quick, easy, and fun-filled activities to engage your child’s curiosity.

Toddler Activities Made Easy uses everyday household materials to create educational and entertaining experiences for your toddler. With activities that take only 5-minutes or less to get ready, this book makes it simple and fast for parents to turn a moment of idleness into play learning.

Toddler Activities Made Easy includes:

100 + awesome activities?Engage your toddler with active play, early science experimentation, creativity, imaginative games, and outdoor exploration?no matter which toddler activities you choose, they’ll be learning and having fun!
Quick, no-fuss setup?Use common materials that you have lying around the house to prep toddler activities in just 5 minutes.
Developmental milestones?Choose toddler activities based on skills developed with labels for early literacy, fine motor skills, visual spatial skills, and so much more.

Turn a regular box into a school bus. Make musical instruments from office supplies. Experiment with puddle splashing. Whatever the game is, this book makes it fast and easy for you and your toddler to have a BLAST learning.

After talking about the pirate themed chalk obstacle course the other day, I got to thinking about other easy, low prep games and activities you can do with kids outside. A lot of these are ideas I found on Pinterest that don’t link to blogs anymore if they ever did, but often that’s all the detail you need to figure out what’s going on.

First, a couple from blogs that are still alive. If you have a lot of trees in your yard or in your park, you probably also have a lot of sticks, so you can pretty easily do this stick maze activity from Mother Natured. Build the maze yourself or have one child build if for another. Either way it’s lots of fun and you can keep it built to use as a labyrinth or for pretend play.

If it’s hot where you live you might want outdoor activities that involve water like this fill the bucket relay game. The only thing you might not have at home is giant sponges, but this is still pretty low prep, inexpensive and lots of fun if you have two or more kids to play. Check out how to do it from The Resourceful Mama. And check out my post all about ice and water sensory activities for more ideas to beat the heat.

Make some x’s and o’s or use something you already have to be your game pieces (you can also just draw them on paper plates for a super fast version) and make a large tic tac toe board on the sidewalk. The bonus of reusable game pieces is kids can play with the same grid over and over, which is great if you don’t have a ton of space.

I also love the idea of drawing a big bullseye on the sidewalk or driveway and using beanbags or sponges to try to hit the target. If you have hula hoops you can also set them in a grassy area and have kids try to hit them.

Check out more fun outdoor games for kids from The Printable Princess. These are more for big groups of kids, but if you’ve got a classroom full these are good ones to have on hand for getting some energy out.

Do you have favorite outdoor games for kids to play when it’s hot? I’d love to hear about them!

Have you read?