Craft & Learning Ideas for Toddlers

Make crayon cakes - this is so much fun.

Take a whole bunch of old/broken crayons and take the paper off of them. Have the boys help you sort them into piles by color. It's ok, even better if they break the crayons into little pieces during the process.

Fill up the cups of a cupcake pan with piles of the broken crayons...you can keep all of the same colors together, or make fun combinations like pink crayons and brown crayons, or a rainbow mix. Try not to overflow the cups - fill them about 3/4. Bake them at 350 - the crayons will melt and form "crayon cakes," perfect size for little hands to color with, and so fun because they will have different colors or hues when coloring. Using the gold and silver crayola crayons in the mixes are fun too for a sparkly finish. Once the crayons are totally melted, pull them out of the oven and give them some time to cool completely before pulling them out. You can pop them in a freezer for a minute while cooling, just don't leave them in there too long or they will crack a little later.

Get some construction paper and use the crayons you made to make Halloween or birthday cards for family.

The Leap Frog Word/Letter/Math Factory dvds are great!

Also, I recommend this arts and crafts busy book for toddlers, I have the preschooler aged book, but wither is good:
http://www.amazon.com/Toddlers-Busy-Book-Activities-3-Yea...

We are going to do cheerios and fruit loops and string them on a piece of yarn (either tape the end or put a little glue and let it dry to make the ends easier to thread) and make their own "candy" necklaces. It helps fine motor skills and my 2 and 4 year old can both do it!

We do "preschool" at our house, but it is usually small things...like practicing letters with the older, cutting paper, gluing, taping, cooking things, mixing food colors in frosting to see the colors and the changes, singing rhymes/songs, talking about weather/seasons. We read lots and they love watching LeapFrog or anything from Sprout. Sometimes we just have fun outside looking at bugs or leaves.

Other craft ideas...when it gets closer to Christmas, we are going to do a 30 day paper chain so they can count down. For Thanksgiving, I trace their hand and make feathers (either out of paper or buy feathers) and they make hand turkeys-the thumb is the face and the fingers are part of the feathers and for Christmas, I trace their foot and both hands and then glue the hands to the foot to make wings and have them make their own angel (cool because they get to see how big their hands and feet were that year). My sister made a "garland" by tracing her hands and her daughters hands and then alternating them on string...very cute! We also use Popsicle sticks often...I make a reindeer with them that the kids can color and decorate for a tree decoration. I got a simple craft book and a preschool book so that is where I get a lot of ideas. We like making paper plate masks- lions and whatever else- then the kids wear them around the house. They like to just color in coloring books too. Playdough is good too! A good "finger paint" idea is just pudding on a baking sheet. Also last year my sister used a baby pool (i'd probably just use a big bowl-one for each of them and a plastic tablecloth) and brought in snow (use sand toys for added fun) for her daughter to play with when it was too cold to go outside...the snow melted, but the mess stayed in the bowl and dumped down the sink and then they got more. I remember when I was younger, after a fresh snowfall, we would go get cups of the snow and then poor lemonade or other juice over the snow and eat it...was tons of fun! Homemade winter slushy! You can also mix food coloring and cold water in a squirt bottle and go outside and squirt the snow to make designs in the snow that just wash away when the snow melts!

Well, that was a lot more than I though I had...some that I hadn't thought about in a long time so I now have ideas too! :-) Thanks for jogging my memory...lol! I can't wait to see what other suggestions you get so I get more ideas too!

OMG that is my favorite age!

My son LOVED Cedarmont Kids videos. There is a series of DVDs where they sing popular kids' songs w/motions as well as traditional American classics. There is Toddler Tunes, Bible Action Songs, Songs of America, etc. The kids sing and are sometimes dressed up, and they do motions or even a dance to each song.

Texture play is always good for that age and very brain developing. Have them play w/different materials like silk, cotton balls, rafia, sandpaper (very fine), pudding, tissue paper, paper towels...I even let my kid play w/foil. He'd crumple it up and then try to unfold it. Its even more hilarious w/Saran Wrap. Anything could work.

Fill different socks with easy to swallow but dangerous items like rice, marbles, corn kernels, paper clips.

Give them a notebook and each day have them put stickers on it. It will help w/their fine motor skills.

Give them a stack of post it notes and have them stick them on a door.

Taping things together is always fun. You can tape things like straws, paper cups, paper bags, empty paper towel/toilet paper tubes, and paper plates together. Just hand them pieces of tape and they'llput it wherever they want to on their given item.

I liked cutting up pieces of paper like tickets, gave my kid an envelope, and he would spend his time putting his tickets in and taking them out.

Sometimes if he had pockets in his jeans, I would hand him things like pennies or a rock or even a spoon and he would try to see if it would fit in his pocket. It is so cute seeing him try to fit something in his pocket. I handed him an empty salt shaker once and bless his heart he tried for so long to get that in his pocket.

Boys love paper airplanes! Jsut make sure to fold in the tip.

gl and have fun. That is a great interactive age.

I would say playdoh or just blank paper and crayons.

DVDs we love: my 2-year-old still loves watching Baby Einstein (Van Gogh and DaVinci). She will also sit and watch big sister's LeapFrog videos, and if you can find music videos (or even just the CD's) for the Laurie Berkner Band, those are fantasticly fun to dance to.

For a fun craft, you can mix shaving cream with glue, and then let them "paint" with it - the glue will make it hold a little longer, but when it dries, it'll still be foamy, like the shaving cream. (I don't remember the proportions, though.) You can add food coloring, too, to make it a fun color.

Speaking of food coloring, my kids love to bake. Even little ones can put muffin papers in a muffin tin, and stir batter, and even poke the muffins with a toothpick to see if they're done. Or bake cupcakes, and for extra fun, they can frost them. If you don't mind giving them a bath afterwards!

Or, just tear up little bits of paper, give them a glue stick and some construction paper, and let them go. They'll have a ball with that one.

Also, it's something you'll have to supervise carefully, but see if you can find a cheap plastic penny bank. Kids that age love learning to manipulate small items. I think you can probably find a plastic bank for around a dollar in the dollar section at Target (or maybe IKEA, too), plus a couple of rolls of pennies, and you've got two kids entertained for around $3.00.