More Fun Toddler Learning Activities

Since I am home with just my Jonah boy now, I have been a pinning fool the last couple of months, looking for toddler activities to do with him that will be fun and help him learn. I showed you a few a couple weeks ago, and now I’ve got some more we’ve tried and loved! In the picture above, he’s putting Scrabble tiles into a cocoa can with a slit cut in the lid. I also have him put Connect 4 checkers in it. This is good for his hand strength and fine motor skills as well as for his learning letters. And despite the expression on his face, he really does love to put things in, then have me open the lid, dump it out, and do it again! I’ve been really pleased with this activity for letter learning. So far he knows A, B, C, D, E, L, O, P, R, S, T, and Y! I think that’s pretty good for 22 months!

This next activity is somewhat similar.

We have a great Curious George matching game from the Wonder Forge (my fave game makers!) and I took some of the cards out of it and gave them to Jonah to put into this Huggies wipes tub. When he puts a card in, I say, “I see a ____.” – filling in the blank with whatever is on the card. So far, he has picked up the new words girl, boy, man, and bike from this exercise! Some of the cards have words he already knew and there are plenty he doesn’t say yet. When we’ve gone through all the cards, he of course likes to open the tub up and dump it out and do it again! The Huggies wipes tubs are good for all kinds of activities like this.

This last activity we just tried yesterday and it was a big hit! I held a pipe cleaner and let Jonah put beads on it. He figured out how to do it pretty quickly and he really enjoyed it. He did ALL those pictured above before he got bored! He even did the last 5 or 6 completely by himself, holding the pipe cleaner in one hand and string the bead with the other. Boy, was I impressed! After he was done, he put beads in that empty spice jar in the picture for awhile before he was ready to get out of the booster seat. It has a really small opening on one side and he was able to get the beads in. The other side has a larger opening, so if he had needed to, he could’ve used that side. More “put it in, dump it back out” fun!

We’ve been having a lot of fun with these activities! I think I’m going to try and find him another inexpensive memory game for more vocabulary words.  If you try this with your kiddo let me know how it goes! And if you’ve got any more great ideas for playing with your toddler, feel free to leave them in the comments! Might save me some time on pinterest. 🙂