I’ve had a lot of questions on how to keep your toddler busy while you’re doing school. I’ve found that giving our Teeny Tot her own workboxes was really the key to keeping her occupied. She just turned 3, and her motivation right now is to feel like she’s doing the same thing that the big kids are doing.
Here are some of the items in the Teeny Tot’s workboxes today:
- Wooden Fish Puzzle (I couldn’t find the exact one, but this is close)
- Wooden Lacing Blocks
- Ice cube tray from Bed, Bath & Beyond, bamboo toast tongs, and pom-poms
- ABC lacing beads from JoAnn’s craft store, small ice cube tray from Bed, Bath & Beyond.
- Beads & Pattern Cards
And here are some of the items in action. These are our Beads & Pattern Cards from Learning Resources. When she first started, I had her practice lacing the beads, now that she’s 3 I gave her a card and had her match the pattern on it.
Another thing that really helps keep her occupied is reading time. Quite often Strawberry Shortcake will read to the Teeny Tot. She loves it, and it benefits everyone!
This is a game called Tangoes Jr.. It’s great for younger kids, it comes with 7 large magnetic game pieces and 12 double sided puzzle cards. The pieces are magnetic so they don’t slide around.
This is one of our Hot Dots Jr. alphabet packs and Ace the talking dog pen. The Teeny Tot loves the little sounds that the pen makes. I would tell her the name of the letter and have her click on the matching lowercase dot.
These are one of our favorites. They’re called Kumon ABC’s write and wipe. These cards are uppercase, but they also sell lowercase and numbers too. You use them with dry-erase markers and though you can’t see it in the picture, there are light dotted lines to trace.
I hope that helps give you some ideas to keep your toddler busy. If you have any to share, please feel free to leave a comment!
Stay tuned next week for Teeny Tot Tuesday!
Hi Erica! I would love for you to share some of Teeny Tot’s trays at my tray link party. I change out my toddler’s trays weekly as well and have a lot of fun planning them. I also love your printables and we use them all the time 🙂
http://his4homeschooling.blogspot.com/2012/01/whats-on-tray-wednesday-2.html
what great ideas! thanks so much for sharing!
I love all the pics of Teeny Tot and all the ideas for her boxes. I have a 2 1/2 year old boy and
just started homeschooling my 6 and 7 year old boys this year. I always thought the baby was low maintenance until I had to focus more attention on the older boys. I have created busy bags, have a ton of wooden puzzles, etc. If I am cooking he can do “math” as he calls it for awhile quietly. If we are having school time and I am talking to one of the other boys he starts talking loudly and repeatedly (even if it is to announce that he is coloring). He interrupts asking for food or anything else he can come up with.
He is obviously competing for attention and I know he is only 2 and I know we just started our home school journey, but my 7 year old is easily distracted and so am I…lol! Any advice on methods and ideas for training a 2 year old and keeping them busy during school time is welcome 🙂
I saw the pics of Teeny Tot using the IPAD 2. I thought about trying that with him until he walked up while his brother was using it and hit it with his plastic hammer and cracked the screen :/.
Hi Heather,
Eek! Sorry about your iPad! Maybe he’s not quite ready..that or you need to sit down with him and show him how to play with it correctly :o)
I have a fairly loud 3 yr old too, so I can feel your pain! LOL! I just try to tell her to use inside voices when she’s talking, which happens all day long.
I also set up a “Mom I Need Help” board. I found some little plastic shaped people clips and got a different color for each of my kids. You could also use paper clips. Then I cut a folder in half (the school folders with the pocket along the bottom). I put each of their little clips on the folder part, and a paper with ideas at the top of things they can do while they are waiting for me, like Color, Read, count to 100. If they need me they go get their clip and clip it to me so they don’t interrupt me while I’m talking to another student. Then when I’m done the clip reminds me to go to that person and see what they needed. It works, simply because they like to use the little clips LOL!
Here are the ones I got, but I found them at a local teacher store, so ours are 4 different colors:
http://amzn.to/2gfAS8m
Hope that helps!
Thank you for sharing this post at WOTT, Erica! We have an ice cube tray kind of like the one you used with the alphabet beads, but it definitely doesn’t have as many holes. Teeny Tot is so cute with how focused she is 🙂 We are using the snowman printables this week. Thank you for being a blessing!