5 Indoor Activities For Toddlers The Next Time They Say ‘I’m Bored!’

• With kids being stuck indoors for more than a year now, parents have been on a continuous hunt for fun indoor activities and play ideas to keep their little ones occupied. Some have built indoor playgrounds and playrooms, kiddie nooks, and even placed inflatables inside their home.

  Indoor activities for toddlers

  If you are slowly losing your sanity trying to keep up with your kids, here are some more boredom busters shared by moms from our parenting community Smart Parenting Village. These are guaranteed to keep them entertained (and learning!) for hours.

  1. Make and design donuts

  

  PHOTO BY Courtesy of Lea Anne Gutierrez

  Don’t fret — this does not require baking skills. Mom Lea Anne Gutierrez, who is based in Doha, shares that one of the activities that her son, Migs enjoys is making donuts from homemade playdough and designing it with beads.

  “It’s very easy and fun to do,” shares Lea. On her Instagram account, she also gives instructions on how to make the homemade playdough. You will need:

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  • 1 cup flour
  • 1/ cup of salt
  • 2 tbsp of cream of tartar
  • 1 tbsp oil
  • 2-3 drops of essential oil into 1 cup of boiling water (optional)
  • food coloring

  Instructions:
  Combine and mix flour, salt, and cream of tartar. Add the oil and essential oils. Mix a few drops of food coloring into the hot water. Mix everything, let cool, and massage with your hand.

  2. Water play

  Water play isn’t just fun, it’s also good for your children’s brains! “Aside from providing sensory stimulation, water play can help develop a child’s language skills, problem-solving skills, gross and fine motor skills, perceptual skills, cognitive skills, and social skills,” shares Geraldine Africa, OTRP, an occupational therapist to SmartParenting.com.ph.

  

  You can start water play with materials you can find at home.

  PHOTO BY @alfieangelica/Instagram

  Apart from putting toys in your child’s bath, you can also introduce water play by taking out a storage box and putting plastic and glass containers of different sizes inside. Fill some of the containers with water and add food coloring for fun. Then, give your child a scooper and let her fill the empty ones with water!

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  You can design small containers with different themes!

  PHOTO BY @thecrafterteacher/Instagram

  You can also make a “duck pond” using a small plastic container and adding pebbles, leaves, flowers, sticks, and some toy ducks in it. Your child will have an awesome time with their new toy!

  3. Sensory play

  Water play is a form of sensory play, which is any form of activity that lets your child explore through the stimulation of one or several senses — touch, hearing, smell, sight, and taste.

  According to Lourdes Bernadette Lopez, CSP-PASP, a certified speech and language pathologist, sensory play allows children to accomplish more complex learning tasks like gross and fine motor development, cognitive and language development, as well as social and emotional development.

  

  Sensory play is a cost-effective way to keep kids entertained.

  PHOTO BY Instagram/startermama

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  While it sounds complicated, sensory play is actually easy to set up at home. For example, you can use uncooked rice and add it into a deep bin. Provide some spoons, funnels, and cups and just let your child play with the rice using these tools!

  “The first time my twins played with a rice bin, they were only 2 years old and they spent 55 minutes pouring, scooping and later on pretending to sell me some ‘rice juice,’” shares Katzi Santos, a mom of two. “That’s a long time for a two-year-old to be focused on one thing!”

  4. Bring Me

  You can incorporate learning to this classic game by making your child fetch objects of a certain color, or that starts with a certain letter, or is a certain shape, suggests mom Ellen Velasquez. Another variation of this game is “touch,” where your kids will touch the object that you will describe, says mom Myrna Tinio.

  You can also upgrade this game into a scavenger hunt! Customize it according to your child’s age, abilities, and interests — for example, if you want to use this game to teach your child about colors, you can scatter around the house small swatches of specific colors as clues, then instruct her to look for a certain number of objects around her that resemble the color of the swatch she currently has.

  5. Play gym

  If you have the space, mom Bea Limpiado suggests investing in a play gym. “This keeps him active despite staying at home,” she tells fellow moms in our Village. “Sobrang sulit!”

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  This play gym was lovingly made by daddy and comes with a slide, too!

  PHOTO BY Courtesy of Bea Limpiado

  You can purchase various play gyms in online furniture stores (see our list here) or you can also check out the Pikler Triangle, which is described as an “all-in-one sensory-motor development toy, if you have younger kids.

  Share with us in the comments how you keep the kids occupied at home! Click here for more learning activities.

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