30 Entertaining and Educational Daily Activities for your Toddler

Finding the activities to keep your toddlers busy and happy is a challenge. They're full of energy, need constant stimulation, and have the capacity to absorb and use new information.  

If you're constantly searching for daily activities for 3-4-year-olds, we prepared a little list of games and projects you can introduce to your baby.

30 everyday activities for your toddler

Here are a few activities you can introduce into your toddler's daily life. 

Have a little parent-child bonding time: 

1. Build a fort with couch cushions and blankets - Have a little adventure where your toddler can use their imagination. 
2. Paint clay pots - This allows children to self-express.
3. Sing their favorite rhymes together - Singing engages emotions, and you can create something special together with your baby. 
4. Take silly pictures together and create a collage - Create some memories.  
5. Find the family photo album and look at family photos together - you can create a little storytime for your baby and tell the stories of the family members. 
6. Cook together - Children like to imitate their parents, and they'd love to be around in the kitchen when you cook. Find an easy recipe and cook together. 
7. Let them help you clean - Let them pick up their toys and follow you around while you clean. It will teach them about responsibility and develop their fine motor skills. 
8. Doodle something with crayons, smelly markers, stickers, and stamps. 
9. Play with cold, cooked spaghetti - You can color them and give the spaghetti stripes shapes, cut them, and more. 
10. Play I spy with their favorite book - This game will help your child develop vocabulary and understanding of language. 
11. Read books with pictures - This inspires visual thinking and helps children understand what they're reading.

In case you’re spending your day outside, here are some activities your toddler might enjoy:

12. Take a walk and hunt for colors - This will help them identify colors, and a nature walk is always good for mental health. 
13. Plant a tree or repot some houseplants in the backyard - Direct contact with nature is beneficial for children. 
14. Go to the nearest playground - Your toddler can meet new friends there and develop social skills. 
15. Go to the food market and shop for fruits and vegetables - Let them pick the food for your next meal and teach them about healthy snacks. 
16. Go birdwatching - Birdwatching builds the power of observation and develops attention to detail. 
17. Choose and count the objects you see (passing cars, insects, birds, leaves, etc.) - Fun stroll is entertaining enough in itself but you can include a little math there too. 
18. Go to a petting zoo - Your baby will learn how to be gentle and interact with small and large animals.  

If you have your child’s friends over, try these activities:

19. Finger painting - Spread the sheets and let the kids pour their imagination. You can do this solo, but the company always feels better. 
20. Paint with watercolors - Children can express their emotions through colors and painting. Let them explore the process, and don't forget to save the artwork for the future. 
21. Play dress up - Dressing up and playing roles encourages creative thinking and communication skills. 
22. Play Simon Says - Simon Says is an amazing game to help children connect and develop language and literacy skills. 
23. Play hide and seek - Besides the fact that hide and seek help develop physical abilities and motor skills, it's just plain fun. 
24. Imitate a profession - Kids learn by imitating adults. Playing professions can be a fun game that helps them learn about different occupations. 

And don’t forget to give your toddler some alone time. Let them explore the world and themselves through these activities:

25. Building puzzles - Get your toddler some 8-20 piece puzzles and let them have fun on their own. 
26. Playing mobile games - Educational mobile games are a perfect choice for toddlers to spend their time with quality while having fun. If you're interested, you can read more about the effect of mobile and video games on children and how they shape minds. 
27. Explore cardboard boxes - When it comes to toddlers, simplicity is the best choice. Let your children explore simple things and see what game they create out of them. 
28. Play Dough - Let them explore shapes and colors with play dough. 
29. Coloring book - Coloring can be a captivating and entertaining activity. It helps children develop attention to detail and lets them explore colors and shapes. 
30. Listening to fairytales and stories - Fairytales have been around for centuries, and children love them. Let your baby listen to the old classics or find something new they might enjoy. 

Working to create games and content for toddlers, you realize that simplicity is the best approach. Children are fascinated by colorful objects, they explore the world on their own, and sometimes guided activities don't work as well for them as they do for adults. 

So don't overcomplicate these activities and find approaches that work best for you and your baby. This way, you won't have to spend a lot of money and days' worth of energy. 

Here's how to make activity planning easier: 

• Allow your child to explore what they like. Make sure to give them space and don't force an activity if they don't like it. Did they find something they enjoy a lot? Let them explore it instead of substituting it with another thing. 
• Don't do the activity with an intentional plan, and (if you do) don't worry if the plan fails. Again, children play by their rules. 
• Keep it simple. Don't overcomplicate the details of the activity. Follow the flow. 

You can introduce these activities to your toddlers' daily routine. If you don't have one, you might like our article on How to Create a Routine for your Toddler. 

Let us know if these tips helped you and how did your child modify these activities to suit their style better.