A sweet mama sent a message the other day asking how to plan for and make activities happen with little ones when it feels overwhelming amidst the day to day life with little ones. While I absolutely do not have things all figured out, I’m more than happy to share a few ideas that have helped make it less overwhelming for us.
Before staying home with our kiddos, I taught preschool for a few years and enjoyed it so much in that season. Three and four year olds are SO much fun and might just be my favorite age. ;) They are such sponges at this age and seeing them learn and light up is such a joy. Planning the activities was almost as much fun as getting to do the activities with the kiddos. Coming up with fun and creative ways to embed new concepts and skills, is a challenge I’ll always happily take on!
BUT you absolutely don’t have to be a preschool teacher to embed learning into everyday play or setup fun and simple activities for your little ones. I hope this post encourages you and gives you a few simple ideas to take away! Adding a little list at the bottom with a few simple summer ideas to pull from too! Feel free to screenshot or print out to use as inspiration! I can’t wait to hear which ideas you try and what your little ones thought. :) Okay here we go!
Start Small
If the idea of doing activities feels overwhelming, start small and keep it simple! Pick one activity a week to try. If that seems to be going well and you have the capacity to increase it, try two activities a week, and so forth.
Keep it Simple
Don’t think that every day has to be a full on lesson or “pinterest perfect” craft. Somedays our “activity” is as simple as writing letters with sidewalk chalk, or putting sticky notes around the room with numbers on them. It doesn’t have to cost a thing, or take hours of prep work. Simply being intentional about doing an activity together, or working on a specific skill through play, is so powerful!
Create a Calendar
Print out a blank calendar for the month and jot down however many ideas/activities you plan to try and when you’ll do them. I don’t always follow this to a tee - sometimes we’ll do more activities than I had anticipated, other days we’ll switch activities around, and somedays we’ll scratch the activity altogether, but it just helps me to be intentional about actually making the ideas happen throughout the month.
Browse Ideas
There are SO many resources and ideas out there. You can search just about any topic, theme, or skill and find hundreds of ideas to choose from. Browse ideas, and jot down a few activities that your kiddo might be interested in or ready to try. Pull from this list as you plug ideas into a blank calendar for the week/month.
Batch Prep
I find it helpful to plan activities out for a month at a time and prep at least a weeks worth of activities at once. Gathering the materials & prepping the activities ahead of time (if any prep is needed) is key for me to actually make them happen throughout the week. For me personally, if I didn’t do this, they probably wouldn’t happen day to day. Simply rounding up the chalk, paper, markers, etc. and having them all in a basket with our little calendar makes it easy peasy to glance at and grab an activity in a pinch!
Read Read Read
Don’t underestimate the power of reading with your little ones! This should be a whole post in itself because the incredible impact of reading books together is so worth sharing about. :) But truly! If nothing else, grab a pile of books and curl up with your little one and simply read together. This gives an opportunity to develop a love of books, builds their vocabulary, introduces concepts of print, and so much more.
Simple Summer Activities for Toddlers
