Indoor Stuff to Do with a 2 Year Old

Hi there!

We've had success with the following.

Theme days (Princess Day, Sports Day, PJ Day).

Play tent (make a blanket tent and play house or dollies or nap time).

Crafts- Michael's almost always has some craft kits on clearance for less than $1 each. We've picked up paint by number kits, balsa wood animals to color/paint, misc bows/ribbons to make cards, stamps, plastic stained "glass" kits....).

Make paper towel tube telescopes & run around the house playing pirate.

Make toilet paper kaleidoscopes (simplest version is to get two pieces of Saran Wrap, put beads/etc... on one piece, put other piece on top, twist the sides, rubberband around the end of tube).

Make paper plate "cards". Cut small slits all around the edge of the plate, run a ribbon over/under through the slits and tie off. Let kiddo decorate with stickers, stamps...

For the learning workbooks- Hooked on Phonics has some of the best. You can even find some of them at local dollar stores (we found Numbers, Shapes, Colors, Letters,and Math). It helps too if you put on some really spunky music and dance around while learning.

Hope this helps. :-)

How about macaroni art, for stuff around the house? Necklaces or gluing onto paper? Otherwise, Michael's has pretty cheap stuff. Stickers are terrific right now for my little guy. I just bought a bunch of alphabet and numbers stickers in a huge pack that was $3 at Michael's.

Movies? My 2yo is just getting into Toy Story and Cars, where he'll sit and watch them for maybe an hour. I've been using it to wind down after dinner.

Running around the mall or Target has always worked in a pinch. And then they can "play" with the toys in boxes.

If you have a Home Depot or similar place, a lot of them will put up swingsets over the winter in anticipation for summer purchases. They can play on those. (We LOVE the Great Escape for this reason. Gazebos to go in, chairs to climb on, huge space to run...)

Don't forget the good old fashioned "fort" building with couch and chair cushions so she can have her "own" space, especially with a new baby around.

How about dancing with her. Great exercise for both of you and you can hold your 5 month old too. I used to do this when my youngest was a baby and my oldest was a toddler. Check out this website: http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/ She has a lot of great crafts for preschoolers.
Also walking around an indoor mall is great to go out.

I bought a few large bags of dried pinto beans and poured them into a large bin and threw in some cups, spoons, etc and my daughter, who is 2 1/2, will sit there and play with it forever. She'll just dump them from one cup to another or fill up a container. My 1 yr old also loves to play, but he tries to put them in his mouth sometimes so I have to be very careful with him. Also, I pull up a stool to my kitchen sink and fill up one side about halfway and let my daughter play in the water. I put a towel down under the chair because she ends up getting some on the floor. I give her the same as the beans...cups, spoons, ladles, etc. All kids love to play in water. One thing that we do that she loves is paint. I go to the craft store and buy those L. wooden jewelry boxes that are less than a dollar and buy some paint. She'll paint them and sometimes i'll use them as a gift for my mom from her and she has some in her room that she'll put her play jewelry in.

get some Popsicle sticks and make puppets.... just cutting out animal faces and taping or gluing to the stick will work...finger painting on poster board is also a great way to end the day. I only do it when I can then put them in the tub right after.

Baking. They can always help pour the ingredients into the bowl.

Dance Parties...just tune up the music and dance

Games - remember go fish (dollar store sometimes sells those kinds of card games)...I taught my kids that a week before grandparents visited....and that is all they did. Funny they (the grandparents) haven't been back since

Paper dolls are making a comeback as well.

Books - library is free and they do story times for the little ones and sometimes a craft goes with it.

Enjoy those long winter days that are to come.

I used to keep a small sliding board from step 2 in my house for my kids. They'd go up and down it and when they got bored with going up down it, they would start using their toys on it. One of our favorite things we used to do is get two cars and make them race down the sliding board.
Starfall is a great site for kids-granted it is slated towards kids 5 and up but your two yr old will still enjoy it

Let her string macaroni to make necklaces and bracelets.

Find a recipe online for the flour/salt dough that you can bake, then have her use cookie cutters to make Christmas ornaments for family - she can cut them, then you poke a hole in the top for the spring and bake them, then she can paint them and help put the string/ribbon through the hole. Bonus on this, because it's fun for her and you get some Christmas presents made.

Finger paints

Let her make musical instruments out of paper towel roll, TP roll, or by taping 2 paper plates together - just put rice inside, cover the ends, let her tape the ends/tape the plates together with the space in between so the rice can shake. Then she can decorate the outside with stickers, colored tape, or markers.

Take a wooden clothes pin (or even a paper towel roll) and let her choose colors of streamers to tape to one end. Then let her dance to music while waving the streamers around.

The library has free stuff every week. You can also do fun things around books you get. For example get a kid book about Thanksgiving and after you read it get construction paper and make indian or pilgrim hats. And it doesnt have to be holiday themed, you can come up with stuff around the house to be useful.

There are also little wooden shapes at a craft store (10 cents a piece). Have her paint a few and tie a ribbon thru the hole and give to people as an ornament for there tree. Write the yr on the back so they can look back at it.

You can even get stuff like a kids vacuum or ironing board and when you are doing he hosework have her using hers. I would give my daughter baby clothes and she would be ironing. As you may think it would be boring , some kids like to think it fun to be like mommy. All kids are diffrent , my 1st son would be like yeah right im not doing that.

Good luck and dont sweat it. As long as you are spending time with her, I am sure she will be happy to do anything.

The thing that helped our son learn his alphabet at 2 was Leap Frog's "Talking Letter Factory" DVD. We had books, sang songs, used learning toys, and nothing worked. He watched this video twice and knew his alphabet. It is only 30 minutes long and you might be able to check it out free at the library.

I just posted this to another very similar request:
It's getting a little cold to do this, but give her a paint brush and a bucket of water & let her "paint" the deck, driveway, car, house. Both my 3 1/2 year old boy and almost 2 year old daughter LOVE this activity. That's a good activitiy if you just want to sit for a minute. If you want to be active with her, do stickers. It's great fine motor skill development. You might need to get the sticker started by peeling back a corner, but let her pull it off and put it on paper. If you get solid colored gift bags & holiday stickers, she can decorate them with stickers & you can use them as the gift bags for gifts she might be giving to Dad, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. Also, playdough (as you mentioned) & cookie cutters. Again, it's a hands on activity for you too at this age, but you'll both have fun.
Let her help make cookies. If you make any sugar cookies (any time of the year if you have the right cookie cutter), let her decorate some with sprinkles or jimmeys (put wax paper down first & then you can use all the extra that goes flying off when she's shaking the container).

Check out Letter Of The Week, www.letteroftheweek.com. It's a free site that offers lesson plans that you can tweak to fit your child's needs. You can coordinate crafts and field trips to match your letter of the week. They have great ideas there and also online email group for support and suggestions through Yahoo Groups. And it's FREE! 5-10 minutes a day for a 2 year old and they learn while having fun!

Good physical activities for indoors: pillow fights, building tunnels with chairs and blankets, tumbling and gymnastics, exercise to video routines, dancing lessons, bopping a balloon around. Exercise balls are fun for kids.

Contact with nature is nourishing to the brain and nervous system, so physical activity outside (walking, biking, free play, a trip to the park) is worth the effort. It will help them regulate their day/night cycles during the dark winter months.

Check out The Toddler Busy Book. It's been around forever. There might be a copy at your library. It's full of fun, cheap, ideas to do with the kids. Most of the materials for crafts are already available around the house. It's the kind of book where you can flip open to a page and pick an activity real quick while your littlest one is down for a nap.

I have a 2 yr old daughter as well and recently all she wants to do is projects, its amazing how much time she can spend doing something these days. LOVE IT! So far she has been doing a lot of painting, I bought some washable kids paint and really big sketch paper, like 24x36 so she has tons of room, I also let her use those puff balls and glitter or other pretty things to stick in to the paint, or sometimes glue. She sits in her booster for this so she cant get paint all over the house...lol.
Big wooden beads (bigger than choking hazard) with pipe cleaners to thread them on. those foam stickers, are good, except I have to help her peel the back off, regular stickers and a special book to put them in. Playdough and a butter knife will keep her busy for a long time. We made a doll house out of a cardboard box the other day, and made blankies and stuff out of scraps of fabric. Mega blocks, regular blocks and little "guys" are always fun. My daughter loves books, she will sit by herself and "read" for quite a while, her favorites are the toddler version of the I spy, and any book with a lot of animals she can point out. ( I think reading to you child and having books available are the best way to familiarize them with the alphabet ).

Good luck, im hoping to find some good ideas from your answers as well!

Don't be afraid to take her out in the cold. Kids need lots of outside time, and if it is above 10 degrees, it won't hurt her to go out if she's bundled up. (Same for the baby.) Go for a walk at least once a day.

But, obviously, you won't be spending as much time out side. We go to the library, Science Center, Natural History Museum, Children's Museum. All those memberships are less than $250 for the year-- so worth it. We do a lot of housework and cooking. I bought him a $15 chalkboard/whiteboard easel at Ikea and do "letter a day" on it (I do it the night before so it's there when he comes down). We read alot. Put on music and have a dance party. And he's up to 50 minutes of TV somedays-- a "On Demand" (24 minute) show in the morning, and one in the late afternoon. Good luck!