The best kind of activities for infants are the ones that keep them entertained, foster development, and allow parent and child to enjoy bonding time together. In recent months, you’ve probably spent a lot more time than normal thinking about how best to fill the hours with your child! Here are some of our favorite activities for infants and toddlers, guaranteed to help pass the hours with fun.
Fun Activities For Infants & Toddlers
Whether indoors or outdoors, the sky’s the limit when it comes to fun and games. Feel free to put your own artistic flair into any arts and crafts activities, and don’t be afraid to get stuck in to enjoy the games with your child.
Wrapping Box Presents
This activity can easily be done with bits and pieces from around the house, so it’s perfect for a rainy day when a trip to the store isn’t in the cards. Take any old cardboard boxes from around the house, like shoe boxes, online shopping boxes, or cereal boxes, and wrap them up like Christmas presents. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have any leftover wrapping paper around— old newspapers work just fine!
Once they’re wrapped, you can hand them over to your child. They’ll love unwrapping the boxes, and they’ll be working on their fine motor skills as they do it. Once your child has had their fill of fun opening boxes and tearing at the wrapping paper, they can start to play with the boxes. Stack them high and knock them down together, and see what other soft toys you can add to the box pile.
Playing & Pointing
As your child’s vision starts to develop, it’s important to start teaching them to use their sight as they learn. By taking them on a tour of the house or a park and pointing out key items and elements of nature, you can teach your child to match what they see to new and existing vocabulary terms.
This is also a great activity for infants to do at home. As they get older and start making their own decisions about toys they want to play with, you can set out a few of their favorite toys in front of them. From there, teach them how to point and gesture towards the toy they want to play with.
Rattle Fun
In the early years, infants hear a lot of sounds. As adults, we know how to recognize nearly every sound we hear, but infants need practice in orienting the way they process auditory stimuli. A rattle or small bell provides a great way to train your infant’s ears and keep them having fun as they learn.
Softly shake the rattle by their right ear, and once they turn towards the sound, you can shake it by their left ear. As you shake the rattle, let them take a proper look at the toy. They’ll start to associate the sound with the object, and they’ll be intrigued enough to keep on experimenting! To add even more fun to the activity, you can hide a rattle or sound-making toy in the wrapped boxes from above. Adding in the sound-related aspect can make for a wonderful extra challenge— can your child hear if there’s a toy in the box?
Infant Education At Providence Children’s Academy
Early infant education is vital for good development. Learning looks a little different for young children, and they’ll do most of their learning through specially designed activities for infants. At the end of the day, these activities need to be fun and engaging in order to make the learning process natural. Speak to us at Providence Children’s Academy to see how we keep our infant daycare program tailored to your child’s developmental needs.