What are some of your favorite toddler activities at home?

Make homemade play dough! In a large pot, combine 1 cup flour, 1/4 cup salt, and 2 tablespoons cream of tartar. Mix together and add 1 cup water, 1 tablespoon oil, and food coloring until you reach your desired color. Cook over medium heat and stir for about 5 minutes until the mixture forms into a ball. Remove from the pot and knead on a floured surface until the play dough is nice and smooth. Store in a container with a lid.

Give your toddler an old house painting brush you're ready to retire and set them up in the driveway with a container of water. They can dip the brush and "paint" designs all over the driveway, the sidewalk, or the outside of the house.

Car ramp races were big with my son when he was a toddler. Take a length of cardboard, draw a couple of lanes and set it on an angle (the bottom of the stairs works well for this). Toddlers can release toy cars at the top of the lanes and watch them race down.

Make an epic pillow fort with couch cushions, sheets, and chip clips to hold things in place!

Make a town on your floor. Use painter's tape to create city streets, make buildings out of LEGOs to place around the different blocks, and drive hot wheels around the town.

Play dress-up. Few things delight a child more than seeing grown-ups wearing a ridiculous variety of wigs, masks and accessories, so join in on the fun!

Use cushions and other household objects to create an obstacle course with things that kids can go over, under, through and around. Time them and see if they can beat their own times!

Squishing sensory toys like Play Doh, kinetic sand or aqua beads are all satisfying sensory activities for toddlers!

Easter egg hunts are easy toddler activities all year round...it definitely doesn't have to be Easter! This is an absolute favorite activity for our toddler, all year long, indoors and out! We've learned to keep a bag of plastic eggs easily accessible for impromptu egg hunts, so we don't need to dig through the Easter box every time he requests one!

Playing with water is an awesome, time-honored sensory activity for toddlers and little kids. A water table is great when the weather is warm and the kids can splash outside, but if you are ok with a little mess, big bowls and plastic cups on the kitchen floor will do just as well. Lay out a big towel or two to try and contain the mess, but a change of clothes will probably be inevitable!

Sticky note alphabet hunt! If you appreciate sneakily educational activities for toddlers that are also super entertaining, this one's for you. Just take a pad of Post Its and write the alphabet (or numbers), one letter or number per note. Then, hide all of the notes around the room, and send your toddler on a mission to find them. My 3 year old LOVES this game. Best of all, it keeps him busy for a while, it is super to prepare, and helps reinforce letter and number recognition to boot. Win-win-win!

For an easy, no-prep toddler activity, I don't think it gets any better than blowing bubbles. Chasing and popping these magical floating spheres is the height of fun for little ones! It's an active, easy toddler activity you can do anytime, anywhere.

Kinetic sand is great for any number of sensory activities for toddlers, but our favorite use by far has been to dump a bunch of it in a large plastic bin with mini trucks. My toddler and preschool boys could sit and dig with their mini trucks for hours! (Maybe not all at once, but they would sit for surprisingly long stretches at a time!)

Read together. I love how it gives us a chance to cuddle up and be together without having to chase anyone around. Even my very active boys enjoy it.

Bounce a balloon in the air without letting it touch the floor.

Take a bubble bath.

Save a cardboard box or two from the recycling bin for your toddler to transform into a rocket ship, a playhouse, a sword and shield, a doll's crib...whatever they can imagine! I highly recommend getting cardboard scissors (to be used by an adult!) if you think this might become a regular thing, as they make it SO much easier to cut shapes out of your cardboard.

Spray some shaving cream on a covered tabletop (or on a window!) and let your toddler draw in it with their fingers.

Find something around the house that you have a good number of to repurpose as bowling pins - empty puffs containers, water bottles, tissue boxes, toilet paper. Arrange them either in a bowling setup or as a simple pyramid, depending on what you use. Let your toddler roll a play ball to knock them down, and make sure he helps set them up again!

Poke small holes into a cardboard box and let your toddler pound golf tees into the holes with a toy hammer. This is also a good use for a spare piece of styrofoam you might have lying around.

Hide and Seek is especially well suited for playing inside with toddlers and preschoolers, as you can control the environment a bit more than when you are in a larger outdoor space. Plus, toddlers love the thrill of finding, and being found!

Picking up sticks was one of my toddler’s very favorite things to do outside, and I appreciated that it saved me the trouble of all that bending over to pick them up myself!

Simon Says has been a BIG hit with my kids in their toddler, preschool and early elementary school years! I like that it reinforces listening skills.

The awesome thing about toddlers is that they can find fun in almost anything - even cleaning up! Especially if you throw a silly song into the mix ("clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere, clean up, clean up, everybody do your share") putting toys aways and tidying up can be one of the most practical and helpful things to do with toddlers.

Hide (and find) stuff. Hide toys or whatever you choose for your toddler to find, or have them hide something and tell you whether you are "cold" or "hot" as you try to find it. My kids get such a kick out of this simple activity!

Red Light, Green Light.

Planting seedlings is one of my favorite springtime toddler activities. It involves plenty of scooping and pouring, which is always a toddler favorite! Just scoop soil into any small containers (we use yogurt cups with holes poked at the bottom), place a few seeds inside, cover them with more soil, and water. Keep your seedlings inside near a window for sunlight, and use a bin or box to contain the mess. Water them regularly, and watch them grow! Once your seedlings are ready you toddler can help you transfer them to your garden or a larger container.

Sort stuff - you’ll be surprised by how long this holds a toddler’s attention, and it's great for developing fine motor skills, too! You don’t need special sorting toys, just find something at home that can be sorted by color or shape, like fruit loops, legos, crayons, etc. Of course, be sure to keep a close eye if you use any small objects that could end up inside a curious toddler’s mouth!

Scavenger hunts can be great indoor activities for toddlers! Set them on a hunt to find and gather objects they will recognize, such as three yellow Legos, five blocks, a red apple, a pillow, and two blue socks. You'll help your toddler build her vocabulary as you play, and can even sneak in some color recognition and counting practice! Another fun variation is to draw pictures of different objects on individual post-it notes and hide each note. I make a "list" of the hidden items by drawing them all on a single post-it/paper, which my toddler loves.

Build a tower...then knock it down! Use Duplos, blocks, Magna Tiles, cups - anything your toddler can stack, then knock over.

If you are okay with a little mess (hey, you have a toddler, mess comes with the territory!), let your toddler take everything out of a safe kitchen or other drawer (pots & pans, clothes, spoons, etc), and then put everything back in.

Working on a puzzle is a nice, quiet activity for toddlers that also promotes fine motor skill development. Puzzles with larger pieces are best at this age; be sure to start with fewer pieces (24 or less) and get bigger puzzles as they get the hang of it.

Encourage pretend play. Preparing a meal, taking care of a baby, mowing the lawn...toddlers love to mimic the things they see us do, and that's how they learn about the world around them! It's also a great way for them to develop language skills.

Simple crafts like crayon leaf rubbings, decorating paper plates, and outlining letters or numbers with stickers are all fun things to do with toddlers at home. So many ways for little hands to create art, learn, and have fun! Great for fine motor skills, too.

Help with laundry - dumping stuff out is a favorite toddler pastime, so put it to good use and let them help you take clothes in and out of your washing machine and dryer. It keeps me from having to bend down as much, too, so it's a win-win!

Make your toddler the star of his own video by recording him playing, dancing or being silly - my kids LOVE watching videos of themselves over and over again. Plus, they are always fun to share with Grandma and Grandpa. :)