To help you plan your toddler routine at home, we prepared a list of 99+ easy, no-prep, daily toddler activities. You can easily combine them and see what works for you and your little one. The great thing about them is that you can set them up in no time and they are pretty engaging for toddlers and preschoolers. Learning can be so much fun, when you change things up!
BENEFITS OF EASY, DAILY TODDLER ACTIVITIES
These easy toddler activities can be a lifesaver for parents and caregivers for several reasons:
Quick Engagement
These easy toddler activities provide us with a quick way to engage our toddlers when our time is limited or when we need a moment to attend to other tasks.
Minimal Preparation
These activities typically require minimal preparation, saving us, parents from the stress of elaborate setups. Quick and easy setups make it convenient for our busy schedules.
Spontaneous Fun
When your toddler needs entertainment, having simple activities on hand ensures that you can create moments of joy without much planning.
Independent Play
Many of these easy toddler activities are designed for independent play. This not only encourages your child’s sense of autonomy but also gives you some moments of respite.
Cost-Effective
These simple activities are as simple as they get! They often involve only everyday household items, making them cost-effective. You don’t need to invest in expensive toys or materials to keep your toddler entertained. Money does not buy happiness for toddlers, your engagement does!
Learning Opportunities
Despite their simplicity, these easy activities offer valuable learning opportunities for your little one. They help your toddler improve fine motor skills, cognitive development, and sensory exploration playfully and enjoyably.
Stress Relief
Parenting can be demanding, we all know that. Having easy activities on hand provides a stress-relief outlet. It allows us, parents to enjoy quality time with our toddlers without feeling overwhelmed by elaborate planning.
Adaptability
These easy toddler activities are highly adaptable to your toddler’s mood or interests on any given day. Whether it’s indoor or outdoor play, these activities can be easily adjusted to suit the circ*mstances.
Consistency in Routine
Knowing that there are simple and enjoyable activities available, provides us a sense of comfort for both of us, parents and toddlers.
99+ EASY, NO-PREP, DAILY TODDLER ACTIVITIES LIST
So, let’s get started with these easy toddler activities!
When we put this toddler activities list together, we took into account, that especially in our early years, we all develop a large web of skills. Specifically, those skills include language skills, physical skills, math skills and social skills. In fact, all of these skills are interdepend and influences each other.
Therefore, these 99+ toddler activities cover all these 4 areas and can be done not only at home and indoors, but also outdoors.
Daily Toddler Activities – Toddler Routine Printable
Motherhood and parenting in general is sometimes kind of overwhelming, because you have not only the responsibility for yourself but also for your family. At times, it seems that we do not have even resources for ourselves and we are stressed out a lot. Thus, it’s pretty easy to lose sight of the “big picture” and what really matters.
Therefore, we went even one step further and created a simple system to track our toddler’s daily activities and routine. In this way, we can make sure, that we offer our little ones enough diversity, learning and fun everyday. We, parents want them to be happy and thrive everyday.
You can use this Daily Toddler Activities Free Printable with checkmark system, if you want to keep track of the activities your toddler does every day. It can help you for example discover the interests and talents of your toddler. Also, you will be able to see what they love to repeat and which are the areas, you might need to help them to build-out further.
Free-Printable_99_Toddler-Activities-Daily_ToddlerInActionDownload
Moreover, we included also a sample toddler schedule at home, that shows in detail the daily activities routine of a 2-year-old.
Free-Printables_99_Toddler-Activities-Daily_ToddlerInActionDownload
Daily Toddler Activities Areas
Our 99+ activities cover 4 main areas:
- Physical activities
- Social activities
- Language activities
- Math activities.
Specifically in our case, physical activities target as the name implies the physical development of the child. Therefore, they embrace the three kind of very important activities for the development of every child – gross motor, fine motor and sensory activities.
We define social activities as every activity that helps the child not only to develop social and emotional intelligence but also develop and improve their life skills. Therefore, in our case social activities embrace art activities, dance & music, and practical life activities such self-care, care for the others, cooking, cleaning, doing groceries etc.
Furthermore, we define language activities as every activity that mainly targets the speech and literacy development.
Finally, math activities include every activity that targets mainly logical thinking, problem-solving, number sense, representation, estimation and measurement.
Certainly, every activity can be variated and cover at least two areas from the above mentioned. For example, a simple activity as walking in the park will be normally classified as a physical gross motor activity. However, you can add different elements to the activity and support other areas of your toddler’s development too. For instance, you can add a math element and ask them to count or count with them their steps. Or, you can look around and ask them to name the objects around, to support their language development for example.
Whatever, you decide to do, remember to have fun and enjoy playing and your time with your little one.
1. Daily Toddler Activities – Physical Activities
1.1. Gross Motor Activities for Toddlers
You can find videos and details to every gross motor activity on the list below here.
1. Hide-and-Seek
2. Dancing Queen
3. Catch-me-if-you-can
4. Run from the Monster
5. Flamingo
6. Walking like a Duck
7. Fly like …
8. One Little Person Jumping on the Bed
9. Chasing Bubbles or Balloons
10. Go-go-go-Chairs
11. Crawling through Chair Tunnels
12. Up and Down on the Step Board
13. Stairs up and Stairs down
14. Spinning around
15. Flying Clock
16. Jumping over Obstacles
17. Riding on a Hobby Horse
18. Follow the Line
19. Sliding in a Box
20. Climbing on a Human
21. Basket-Swing
22. Yoga Time
23. Basket Ball
24. Shape up
26. Sliding on a yoga mat
27. Toddler on a Broom
28. Balls on a Drying Rack
29. Cyclingin theair
30. Ribbon Rhythmic Gymnastics
31. Frog
32. Hot Lava Game
33. Splashing around
34. Pillow Fight
35. Hopscotch with Puzzles
Fine Motor Activities for Toddlers
You can find videos and details to every activity on the list here.
36. Doing jigsaw puzzles
37. Playing with play-doh
38. Painting and drawing
39. Finger painting
41. Stacking blocks
42. Ball in a bottle
43. Colouring Pages
44. Tracing Shapes
45. Fishing Frozen Fishes
46. Wine cork in a bottle
47. Cooking
48. Cutting with knife or scissors, peeling with a peeler
49. Opening and closing bottles and jars
50. Chase that egg
51. Spooning balls
52. Pretend play cooking
53. Straw and Wooden Coffee Stirrers
54. Ball soup
55. Straw in a Cup
56. Playing with Hot Wheels cars
57. Play with Sticks
Sensory Activities for Toddlers
You can find videos and details to every activity on the list here.
58. Chase the light beam
59. My Toys on the Wall – Mini Home Cinema sensory play
60. Chase the sun bunny
61. Light and shadow show
62. Hot and cold with Hotwheels Changing Colors Cars
63. Pouring Water
64. Tell me the fruit
2. Daily Toddler Activities – Social activities
Music & Dance
65. Singing Nursery Rhymes
66. Listening to radio and dancing
Activity # 2. Dancing Queen
Art Activities
67. Exhibition – Display your child’s art and writing
68. Puppet Show at Home
69. Visiting a Gallery
Practical Life
70. Emotions – Make a face – make a silly, angry, happy, surprised face.
71. Putting toys away (with help)
72. Doing grocery shopping and helping to unpack
73. Washing fruits & vegetables
74. Helping with preparation of food
75. Helping with setting and clearing the table
76. Washing their plates (with help) and helping to empty the dishwasher
77. Sorting, folding and putting away laundry
78. Cleaning (toys, tools, playground, environment etc.)
79. Dusting
80. Watering plants
3. Daily Toddler Activities – Language Activities
81. Name the animal
82. I spy
83. First Books
84. Reading together
85. Trace the letters
86. A is for…
87. Write a letter to grandma.
88. Make a shopping list – Let him take his “shopping list” to the supermarket
89. Flashcards
90. Watching Educational Videos
4. Daily Toddler Activities – Math activities
You can find details and videos to the activities below here.
Math Activities for Toddlers – Number Sense & Representation
91. Count goldfishes
92. Count cars
93. Count Balls on a Drying Rack
94. DIY Abacus
95. Match the NUMBERS
96. Set the table
98. Learn to count with colouring pages and toy cars
99. One for me, one for you
Math activities for toddlers – Spatial sense
100. Shape sorting
101. Stacking blocks
102. Tunnels
103. Balls in the sand
Math activities for toddlers – Measurement & Estimation
104. Check the kitchen scale
105. Wait for a second, wait for a minute
Math activities for toddlers – Patters & Problem-Solving
106. Find similarities and differences
107. Nursery Rhymes
Benefits for your child from being active
Let’s put it this way – the benefits for your child from being active at least 180 min a day are:
- Having fun and being happy.
- Help achieve and maintain a healthy weight.
- Build strong bones and muscles.
- Improve balance, movement and co-ordination skills.
- Promote social skills through interactions with people.
- Support brain development.
- Encourage self-confidence and independence.
- Whatever their level of ability, children need to be active.
These toddler activities act as a lifeline by offering a quick, accessible, and stress-free way to entertain, educate, and connect with toddlers. They provide a valuable resource for us, parents navigating the joys and challenges of early childhood.
These activities create amazing opportunities for bonding between parents and toddlers. These simple activities, done together, foster a connection and contribute to a great parent-child relationship.
Happy Playing!