4 Walls + 2 Toddlers

Four walls + two toddlers = crazy wildness.

You can understand.

For those of you who are in the winter months right now, this is the time when sometimes we feel like pulling our hair out. Children, (mine are boys) with endless energy and no outlet, start bickering, cracking their head open from bouncing on -and falling off- the couch to the stone floor, and being overly "creative" in their usage of toys (which usually results in trouble of some kind).

So, this winter, I decided I would spend some sort of creative time with the boys each day. Sometimes separately, due to naps and school times, and sometimes both are together. To give you some ideas, here are some of the things we do. Some of these may work in a hotel room or prophet's chamber too.

• Put a little tempera-type paint in a quart-ish size zip top bag and seal the top with tape to make a paint "wipe-off" board. They can draw with their finger or a q-tip, and squeeze and squish to erase. Great fun, and clean.

• When we did do finger painting, I laid a disposable tablecloth on the floor, tore holes in shopping bags, put them over the boy's heads, and put their arms through the handle holes. They stayed clean; and the whole mess went into the trash when they were done!

• Use blocks to learn about music, letters, simple math, and anything else, like snowflakes.

• Make roll out cookies. -I found a fabulous gingerbread cookie that doesn't use molasses and is a very healthy treat here.  

• "Clean house." They love to sweep, vacuum, and scrub with a rag. It makes a great activity for them, even if they don't actually get something clean.

• Pull out your cooking supplies and let them "cook". An overturned box makes a great stove top!

• Write simple words, or just letters, on a card. Lay the card/s on a metal pan. Then, let them find the correct alphabet magnet to match the card. Sound them out together. (You can do this in the car!)

• Make a puzzle together. Find a picture of something they love, print it out, cut it in the appropriate amount of pieces for your child, and do it together. If it has numbers, shapes or letters, they're learning too!

• We made shakers with toilet paper and rice, decorated them, and then shook them to the rhythm of our "learning apple" songs. (If you play piano or other instrument, that would work great too!)  

The younger one loved being the "DJ".

• They love to push each other around in the stroller, so if I can monitor, they love this "game" and it gets out their energy. I have a little "race track" in my house, so that definitely helps traffic.

• Use a bucket and a spoon to pick up blocks, or shake it up with a bulldozer and dump truck. -Suddenly "picking up toys" becomes a game. If they have to get certain colors or shapes, they can learn at the same time!

• Go on a toy hunt. -If your house is like mine, you don't even have to hide the toys first. We look for race cars, blocks, or other little toys. They think it's great fun when we are searching under and around furniture together. "Is there one under here?" "Is there one over there?" (This is a great life skill. Now when I ask them to LOOK for something, they know how to do it!)

• Shred paper. We have a fireplace, so this activity is not a waste; but you could use scrap paper you would throw away anyway. Let them use that destructive energy to gain some fine motor skills. Then, wrap tape around your hands to use a "sticky glove" to pick them up and throw the pieces away.

• Write numbers 1-10 on paper. Lay them on the floor (in whatever order you want). Go on an adventure together looking for 3 train cars, 6 bubbles, 2 bugs, etc. Every time you say a number, have them stand on the corresponding card. If you have a big room, they can really expend energy looking for and running to the right number!

• Borrow stairs. Sing solfege as you go up and down. (do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do) You can expand the activity by having them go up two stairs or down three, etc, as you skip some of the notes.

• Get ahead on English grammar: you can play a sort of leap frog by doing prepositions "over, around, down, up, before, behind..." etc. This is good for my boys as they are learning two languages, hearing three, and easily get confused which words are English and what they mean.

• Sing Bible action songs, or silly songs, together. Here's one I posted before.

• Make up actions and learn a Bible verse. Try to make the actions as big as possible.

• Go on a "bear hunt." Pretend, using giant motions, to put on a heavy backpack, climb a wall, cross a river, run through grassy fields, crawl through a tunnel, etc. This works really great for telling Bible stories too!

• Sit on cardboard or a pillow and slide around the house. 

• Make a blanket fort/house/castle. Grab a flashlight and books and read together inside their space.

• Line up chairs and make a train. Take turns being the conductor, engineer, etc.

• Grab your brooms and mops and "magically" turn them into dragons, horses, race cars, etc. Ride them around the house.

• If you have a floor to ceiling mirror, jump together and see how high you can get. Mark your jumps with a whiteboard marker. Or, put shapes on the wall and jump to touch them. (Remember, most toddlers don't jump high.)

• Blow up a balloon and throw it in the air. Play a kind of fetch. You toss it in the air; they retrieve it. Lasts a long time with my boys!

I hope this gives you some ideas or stirs your creative juices with your littles this winter! Don't let the toddler years get wasted just trying to survive the exhaustion. That is easy, as I well know. Instead, remember, Samuel was sent to the temple as a toddler or preschooler; Moses moved to the palace at a very young age. Train your toddler today to be a mighty leader tomorrow!

Now, even as I write this, I hear some craziness going on. Time to go tame the jungle!