Support Your Toddler’s Development with These At-Home Activities
These activities are meant to give you ideas of fun things to do with your child that will support their development and expand upon what they are learning in their classroom. Activities are adapted from the ASQ Learning Activities by Elizabeth Twombly and Ginger Fink.
1. What Do You Hear?
Ask your child to sit quietly and tell you what they hear. This can be played indoors and outdoors, and encourages communication skills while they are discovering the world around them.
2. How Was Your Day?
Ask your child about their day, and see if they can tell it in order. Give your child time to express themselves, but model how to talk about the day in order, by telling them about your day.
3. Copycat Drawing
To develop fine motor skills have your child practice drawing what you draw. Start with simple lines, squiggly lines and zig zags. Take turns, which will also help your child practice the skill of waiting for their turn.
4. Favorite Things Book
Use pictures or have your child cut out images from magazines and glue them in a book. They can also color in the book. As they are creating each page, have them describe what’s on it and write it down on the page for them.
5. Jumping Games
Pretend you are a rabbit, frog or kangaroo. Ask your child to see how far they can jump. Make marks with chalk and encourage your child to see if they can go a little further each time.
6. Follow the Leader
Mix up this classic game by asking your child to stand on one foot, fly around the room like an airplane, hop, skip, gallop and march.
7. Red Light/Green Light
This is a great game to play with your child because it gets them to work on listening and reacting skills.
8. Cardboard City
Collect cardboard boxes of different sizes to build towers with your child. Comment and ask questions about what they are building using descriptive words, “Wow that is tall!” “Is it a castle?” Add toys like animals or cars to spur their imagination.
9. Matching Game
Collect two of several different items and separate them evenly into two bags. Take an item out of the bag and ask your child to find the same item in the other bag without peeking. This builds their sense of touch and uses problem-solving skills to feel the difference between the objects.
10. Snack Time Math
Make snack time fun by counting and sorting food. Start off by putting four of the same item in a line. Count them as you do and ask your child to repeat after you. Then ask them to put another item in a line of four and make sure they count them.
