Inexpensive Ideas For Entertaining Toddlers?

Check out local library. Most have story hour for toddlers. Also some of the big bookstores have story times. If there is a children's museum in your area, a membership will be well used. How about feeding birds or ducks, weather permitting. Some malls have AM walking clubs, or midday kids activities. How about a "scavenger hunt" at the mall.

Anonymous

November 18, 20040 found this helpful

crafts, crafts, crafts..............if you want to private mail me I can send you a bunch of craft sites for her age!

EC

Check out a MOPS group in your community! I too am a stay home mom and have found the best support group for myself and my kids to have friends that they have been playing with for years now. We all get together during the day and have play groups. Our MOPS group meets 2x/month so we do other outings during the off weeks. Check out gymnastics for "field trips", our community has a Senior Center that hosts KinderGym within for a small fee 3x a week.

Often local community or technical college have parenting classes covering exactly what you are asking. It is also a way to meet other people the same ages and circumstances as yours.

BTW we lived at the library. We would read there, we would check out piles of books to take home. Always being sure to get enough to "last" until we came back again.

Riding the bus is also a lot of fun in any weather. You don't even have to have anywhere to go..."the wheels on the bus go round and round..."

Michael Carter

November 19, 20040 found this helpful

Several of our local malls now feature an indoor play area for the kids! You take their shoes off and let them run around and climb on these indoor playgrounds for free!

Warren D. Lockaby

November 20, 20040 found this helpful

I cannot over-emphisize this: read to them. Read your tiny children poetry, even though you know they won't really understand it. Read them children's poetry that they will understand, and then teach them to read it themselves. Have them reading proficiently before they begin kindergarten. They will amaze you! I have a nephew who was studying his mom's medical encyclopedia before he started kindergarten, and he amazed his doctors too. They would render their diagnosis, and Corey would question it or affirm it based on his knowledge. He was five years old at the time.

Children are born with starving minds, and most of what they'll ever know will be learned before they're six years old. Take the time and talk with them, read to them, and give them a passion for knowledge. Teach them to read, and try to build within them a passion for reading. They WANT to learn and anything you can do to assist them will be with them for the rest of their lives. The big thing is, give them yourself. Give them your knowledge, and then direct them on a path to learn more than you'll ever know. And yes, you can.

Wow...what great ideas. Also, go to pbskids.org and disneychannel.com and you can print off coloring pages and worksheets that are fun for the kids. And they are free.

There are lots of indoor activities to do right in your home. You can play active games like Mother May I, Red Rover, roll a ball back and forth, do stretches and exercises together, active songs that require listening skills, Twister, jumping, treasure hunts, and more. If you had a covered patio available for play on wet days, that would work well.

Check out www.meetup.com its a wonderful website with tons of parenting groups for every location. The group I belong to has a calendar cram packed with all sorts of get togethers that are usually free. You can find every kind of group possible. I highly recommend it!

See if they do annual passes to your local zoo or aquarium. This allow you to go as much as you want for 12 months, that way you have a fun adventure and if your toddler gets tired you can always come back another day.

At my local zoo children under 4 are free and if you go 3 times during the year you've paid for your ticket. I know people who do monthly or fortnightly visits.