20 Fun Toddler Activities That Give Their Bodies and Brains a Boost
You don't need to buy oodles of toys to keep them entertained.
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Toddlers at home? You'll need an arsenal of fun activities for kids to keep them entertained. But here's a secret that you probably already knew in your gut: You don't need a playroom full of fancy toys to keep young ones occupied (though we do love a good toy). There are plenty of objects you have around the house that, with a few quick adjustments, can transform into perfect toddler activities. And not only are they engrossing, they can boost toddler development, too, working on skills like the pincer grasp, fine motor coordination, gross motor coordination, and identifying color and shapes. You can expose them to different sensations and textures, too. Best of all: no screens! (Keep screen time in your pocket for those moments when you really need it.)
One word of caution: Toddlers are toddlers, and they have no common sense yet, so all of these activities must be closely supervised. (We know you know that already, but it must be said.) This is especially true of any activity that has small pieces, which could present choking hazards, or that uses water, which might be a drowning risk. But with you guiding them, these toddler activities are even more enriching and fun!
Rainbow Rice Sensory Bin
DIY rainbow rice is a feast for the eyes, and a toddler can then spend hours scooping, pouring, and digging through the pile to find little treasures. Just be prepared to do a little sweeping afterward.
Get the tutorial at Happy Toddler Playtime »
RELATED: These 50 Fun Activities for Kids Will Keep Them Entertained for Hours
Pom Pom Drop
Take old tissue boxes and cardboard tubes from paper towels and toilet paper, tape them to the wall, and give your toddler some pom poms to send down the chutes. They'll love exploring the different paths the poms can take.
The Floor Is Lava
We've all played some form of this game at home: The carpet has turned into lava! Kids have to jump from square to square to stay safe, getting a lot of good indoor exercise in the process.
Get the tutorial at Hands On As We Grow »
RELATED: Backyard Games for Kids That Will Get the Whole Family up and Moving
Sidewalk Chalk Spray
Flour, food coloring, and warm water can combine to make a liquid chalk, and your toddler can make cool street art at the squeeze of a spray bottle. Plus, all that squeezing strengthens tiny hands.
Tape Shape Matching Game
Take shape-sorting to the next level with a life-size version spread all over the house! Tape out shapes on the floor with painter's tape, cut out matching versions with construction paper, and send your toddler off on a matching adventure.
Busy Board
Buckles, flaps, locks, and knobs — all of these things are endlessly fascinating for a toddler. Instead of constantly telling your kid to stop fiddling with your dresser drawers, attach a bunch of hardware to a board and let them have at it.
Clothespin Rainbow Match
Create a rainbow out of construction paper, hand your toddler colored clothespins, and have your kid affix the clothespins to the corresponding colors. Not only does this activity get them to practice color-matching, opening the clothespins helps them work on their pincer grasp.
Get the tutorial at Adventures and Play »
RELATED: Fun Activities for 1-Year-Olds You Can Make With Items You Already Have
Bottle Bowling
Empty water bottles and a kickball can transform into an at-home bowling alley that also improves gross motor skills. This mom also added a point value to each "pin," so an older kid can practice counting and simple math at the same time.
Rainbow Alphabet Spaghetti
Toddlers will love digging through the wet, multi-colored spaghetti and finding all of the alphabet shapes — an experiment in different textures. After the shapes are all found, you can even let them stand in the bin and squish their feet around, too.
Get the tutorial at The Imagination Tree »
RELATED: The Best Learning Activities for Toddlers to Get Them Ready for Kindergarten
Pool Noodle Lacing
Lacing a bit of thick string through a pool noodle helps improve their coordination; as you get older, you can turn it into a counting game, or challenge kids to match different patterns.
Walk the Line
Mark a path on the floor with painter's tape, and challenge your toddler to follow it and work on that gross motor coordination. Make sure to leave gaps in the tape for kids to jump over!
Tape Car Track
After the balancing act is over, you can re-purpose the tape on the floor as a "road" for toy cars, and see if your toddler can line them up in a row. Beep, beep!
Play Dough
Whether store bought or homemade, play dough gives toddlers the opportunity to get those hands working. Asking them to make little balls will also help them with their pincer grasp.
"I Spy" Bag
Fill a sealed pouch with poly pellets and treasures, and see if your kid can "spy" them all through the window. But be sure that this activity is well supervised and the pouch is sealed up tight: You don't want toddlers playing with small toys, which could be choking hazards. (You can also use a soda or water bottle and rice, which you can fill with larger toys.)
Mystery Box
Take an old tissue box, or an empty container of baby wipes, and place a variety of objects of different shapes and sizes inside: a Duplo piece, a toy car, a fuzzy scrap of felt, etc. Challenge your toddler to reach inside the monster's mouth and find one of the mystery objects without looking — just by feel. When all of the objects have been found, you can "feed" the monster again!
Pom Pom Placement
In addition to color-matching, this game challenges kids to pick up pom poms with kid-safe tweezers, which helps them with their fine motor coordination. You can buy this game, or re-create it by putting different-color circles of construction paper in the different cups of a muffin tin and letting kids fill it by using children's learning tweezers.
Finger Paint
Finger-painting is a classic toddler activity for a reason — it gets their hands touching different textures, it gets them thinking about colors, and it gets them to make a masterpiece you can hang on the fridge.
Lacing Cards
Lacing a piece of string in and out around the border of a shape helps toddlers' fine motor coordination, and your tot might have to use the pincer grasp to get the string through the holes. There are plenty of lacing toys to buy in every shape under the sun, but you can also DIY with a piece of cardboard or felt, a hole punch, and a shoelace.
Backyard Obstacle Course
Hula hoops, pool noodles, and frisbees can be transformed into a tot-friendly race course with obstacles to jump over, crawl under, and run around. The best part is you can tailor the difficulty of the course to your kids' level of skill, and even have parallel courses for siblings to do at the same time.
Bubble Wrap
It may seem simple, but popping bubble wrap actually improves the pincer grasp! Now you can say that all the hours you spent mindlessly doing it yourself were actually put to good use.
Marisa (she/her) has covered all things parenting, from the postpartum period through the empty nest, for Good Housekeeping since 2018; previously, she wrote about parents and families at Parents and Working Mother. She lives with her toy-collecting husband and daughter in Brooklyn, where she can be found helping out her team at bar trivia or posting about movies on Twitter and Bluesky.
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