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Activities Your Toddler and Baby Can Do Together

Activities your toddler and baby can do together.

You know how it goes.  

Your preschooler or toddler wants to play with you, but your baby is sitting up, crawling, maybe even walking, and wanting to be a part of the action.  

If you have more than one child (and not through having multiples) you have gone through the phase when you need an activity for your older child, but your younger child isn’t as content to just sit and watch anymore.  

This can be made more challenging when your baby is in the get-into-everything phase, and still putting everything in her mouth.  

It is one thing to set them up with two different things to do, but sometimes you only want to deal with one set of toys, one activity, one focus.  Plus it would be nice to foster a little sibling play.  

Here are 10 activities you can do with no or minimal set up that foster development and fun for toddlers, preschoolers, and older babies.

It can be hard to find things to entertain both your baby and your older child. But there is a lot you can do with both with minimal effort on your part as a mom. Here are 10 activities to do with a baby and a toddler. Toddler activity | Baby activity | Sibling activity | Preschooler activity | Family Fun #toddler #preschooler #baby #simple #activity #no #mess #easy Team-Cartwright.com

No Fuss Activities Baby And Toddler Can Do Together

There are lots of fun activities you can set up for your little ones. Sensory activities, STEM projects, big imaginative play.

But honestly? I don’t always want to set up something big. I don’t always have the energy. And I for sure don’t always have the time.

These activities can be done quickly and with ease, making them perfect for us busy moms.

1. Take a Walk

Little kids and babies all love to be outside.  Wear your baby or put her in the stroller.  Grab your older child and off you go.  

Talk about what you see, what you feel, what you smell.  Use all the senses you can.  (You can help your kids learn without trying!)

The movement will keep your baby happy, your older child can run around a bit, and you get some exercise too.

2. Read a Book

Any time I read to my older child my younger ones come crawling over to hear the story.  All kids benefit from hearing stories read out loud.  The baby might need some toys to play with while they listen, but they can do that while you read.  

If your older child is interested, have them ‘read’ to the baby.  They will like feeling like the teacher to the younger child, and the younger child will love that big sibling is paying attention to them.

 Bonus to this it could carry on as the kids get older, creating a great sibling bonding tradition.

3. Have a Dance Party

My kids have had some sweet moves since they were very young, and none of them can resist a good beat.  

Big kids love to dance and run to the music, little ones like to wiggle and hear it too.  

Music boosts brain development.  Make a playlist of preschool songs with motions in them to practice some gross motor skills or just groove to your favorite songs.

It can be hard to find things to entertain both your baby and your older child. But there is a lot you can do with both with minimal effort on your part as a mom. Here are 10 activities to do with a baby and a toddler. Toddler activity | Baby activity | Sibling activity | Preschooler activity | Family Fun #toddler #preschooler #baby #simple #activity #no #mess #easy Team-Cartwright.com

4. Make a Blanket Jump

Take some blankets, pillows, or towels and toss them around the floor.  Have the older child jump from blanket to blanket a la the floor is lava.  This gets lots of energy out and works gross motor skills.  

Mobile babies will enjoy crawling from blanket to blanket to mimic their sibling, also getting some energy out.  The different textures work as sensory play.  

You can customize the theme of this to match your child’s interests.  Jump from meteor to meteor in space, use lily pads in a pond, be monkeys in treetops, and of course the lava standby.


More Must Do Activities!

27 Taste Safe Sensory Activities for Toddlers, Babies, and Preschoolers! Learn how to make edible paint, edible slime, edible play doh and more! Sensory bin fillers your kids can nibble on and be safe with. #Sensory #sensoryplay #sensoryactivities #sensorybin #learningactivities #toddler #preschool Team-Cartwright.com

text: The ultimate source of STEM activities for preschoolers and toddlers with list of pictures of Science Technology Engineering and Math
4 pictures, shapes, numbers, letters, and colors. Text overlay Super Simple Toddler Learning Activities To Do Every Day

5. Start a Pots and Pans Band

Grab your pots and pans and some wooden spoons and go to town.  Your older child can practice mimicking rhythms with you.  They can count out beats.  They can also compare different sounds from different size pots.  

Your baby can just enjoy making big noises.  They can turn the pots over and practice putting things in and out of the pot.  I’ve seen wooden spoons used for teething toys, so this could be a good one during those tough times.

6. Play with Blocks

Regular blocks, Mega Bloks, shoe boxes, it doesn’t matter what the blocks are, just let them build.  Older children can practice stacking, working on hand-eye coordination.  

With Mega Bloks you can talk about same vs. different concepts.  You can practice identifying some colors and counting.  You can work in imaginative play by building castles or barns or houses, whatever your child is into.  

Babies can work on hand-eye coordination with basic stacking and grabbing of blocks.  For a bonus interaction, encourage your older child to build a tower and let baby knock it down.  

Both children will be practicing cause and effect skills, while also focusing on patience as they wait for the tower to be built and then knocked down.

7. Race Cars Down a Ramp

Grab a box or stiff poster board and make a ramp for cars to drive down.  

Older children can compare different size cars as they go down the ramp. They can try to use different levels of force to push them down.  

Babies can either hang out at the base and try to catch the cars, or they can sit at the top of the ramp and push them down themselves.  They will practice hand-eye coordination and releasing objects on purpose.  

Both age levels will reinforce cause and effect ideas.  They will be seeing how the natural world works in terms of gravity and acceleration.  It can also be an exercise in taking turns.

It can be hard to find things to entertain both your baby and your older child. But there is a lot you can do with both with minimal effort on your part as a mom. Here are 10 activities to do with a baby and a toddler. Toddler activity | Baby activity | Sibling activity | Preschooler activity | Family Fun #toddler #preschooler #baby #simple #activity #no #mess #easy Team-Cartwright.com

8. Do Yogurt Painting

Alright, this is a messy one.  But it fits in well to snack time. Or you could do it in the bathtub and then go straight to getting clean.

Get some yogurt, add a little food coloring (or not, your choice), and go to town finger painting!  The big benefit of the yogurt is of course that babies can get in their mouths without you worrying too much.  

Older kids can see how colors can combine to form new ones.  They can paint on paper or just on a plate that they rinse off and start over with.  Babies can smear it all around the tray of their high chair.  

This is a great sensory play for both ages and a lot of fun.

9. Play Kitchen

Have your older child make play food for you and baby.  Baby is going to put everything in their mouth anyway, so they will really be in character.  

You and your littlest can sit at a restaurant while your older child plays waiter and chef.  Talk about healthy eating while practicing handing play food back and forth with baby.  Point out colors, shapes, practice counting.  Baby can eat and make a mess.

10. Create an Obstacle Course

This one sounds like you need a big house or something, but you don’t.  

Put a blanket over a coffee table to make a short tunnel.  Put a chair out to climb over.  Throw down some pillows to zig zag around.  This will help your older child burn off some energy while practicing gross motor skills.  

Baby can enjoy playing in the tunnel and crawling around the objects.  Just changing the lay of the land challenges how they think about the world around them.

 

This list is just a jumping off point.  What are some of your favorite ways to foster play between your preschooler and baby sibling?

-Kim
picture of a toddler playing with a xylophone and a baby playing with a xylophone and text: 10 Super Simple No Prop Activities for Toddler and Baby

Here are some more fun activities to try!

Toddlers and preschoolers love science projects! And they can be easy and relatively mess free. Here are 5 simple sensory stem activities for toddlers and preschoolers. Sensory Activities | Science for toddlers | Science for preschoolers | Sensory STEM projects #sensory #activity #STEM #science #project #toddler #simple #preschooler Team-Cartwright.com

5 Simple Sensory STEM Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers

5 learning activities using toy trains.

5 Toy Train Learning Activities

Color Mixing Activities and More!

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