the best 5 minute activities for toddlers

Another sunny long weekend, woohoo! For us that meant some respite from trying to balance two full time jobs and a toddler and the opportunity to catch up on some housework - exciting stuff!

We have been trying hard lately to fit in some kind of structured activity every day. Not for any particular reason other than Osk hates the buggy at the moment. Now that we are not spending an hour out and about walking each afternoon, a focused activity breaks up the time for everyone.

As usual, all activities must occupy him for longer than they take to prep/clean up after. In reality, that means an activity must occupy him for at least five minutes. As always, we supervise all activities.

So if you are looking so for easy peasy toddler activities that won’t take hours to set up and clean up after, here is our go to list (check out the links to my other posts for more detailed how-to dos):

water painting

Whoever first thought of this should get a medal.

Painting with water is the easiest, quickest, cleanest activity to do with a toddler. It’s a great highchair activity, and easy to whip out in a restaurant (a girl can dream….) or during a socially distant garden coffee to occupy them just a little bit longer.

The set up is simple. We use a a sponge paint brush and a piece of cardboard box, usually just torn from one of the 10,000 Amazon boxes in our garage. Add a small plastic bowl of water and you’re ready to go. Just let them “paint” away and watch their pictures magically appear. Easy.

rainbow rice

I have a whole blog post about rainbow rice. He loves it. I love it. It takes longer than 5 minutes to set up the first time, but you can use it again and again and again, so I’m always happy to break the rules for it.

Our tuff tray is perfect for rainbow rice as he can push and scoop the rice whilst the sides keep it (mostly) contained. To keep him interested, I try to change it up with different themes e.g. construction toys, cooking utensils, farm animals etc.

soap splash

Playing with water is one of Osk’s favourite things to do and luckily, it is by far the easiest thing to set up and clean up after. The warm weather lately has also made it lovely to do this outside most days. We use our tuff tray more than our paddling pool now and the dark colour warms up the water nicely!

*Washing his fleece after doing some painting in the garden*

I let him fill the tuff tray with some water and add a little bit of baby shampoo or bubble bath. He will happily create foam and splash in it for ages washing whatever he can find lying around the garden. When the weather is rough, a mid afternoon bubble bath with some ball pit balls is a great alternative!

flashcard postbox

I posted about how to do this this on instagram in the early days of lockdown, back when I was still feeling that I should be actively teaching him stuff. Having spent so much time with him lately, I now realise that he is learning constantly and we don’t need to schedule or structure it. We only do this activity now because he enjoys it (he just would not do it otherwise….)

I don’t have the sort of child that sits still and quietly looks at the flashcards as I reveal them. Instead I give him one card at a time and I say the word out loud, he glances briefly at it, sometimes attempts the word and then stuffs it into the box.

He’s happy, I feel like a good mum. Everyone wins.

wool scramble

We discovered this one in a pinch on Easter Sunday this year when the rain ruined our chances of an egg hunt outdoors. I had a few bags of wool offcuts that I picked up online and used them to hide some eggs, creating our mini indoor egg hunt that went down a treat.

Since then we have used the wool to hide his toy farm animals (learning their names and sounds as he found them) and fruit (to learn the words as he pulled each piece out). To make sure he stays interested, I always hide a few fun surprises in there that he hasn’t seen before, like a new toy or some tasty treats.

Enjoy!