Great Toddler Activities for daycare?
I’m an assistant teacher for daycare, and I work in the Toddler room. I don’t have any training in this field as far as schooling goes, just nannying full time experience.
I am great with children, because of my patience and love, and energy I have for them.
Anyways, for 2 hours at the end of my shift I am alone with about 8, 2-3yr olds. Any great songs, art protects, games,etc etc etc. you might suggest?
I’d love suggestions from mothers, babysitters,and daycare teachers.
Sounds like fun! 
Well considering that the last two hours are when children are leaving and you are by yourself…you do want those easy clean up activity.
Paint in a bag—2 primary colors are very exciting. I use freezer quart or gallon bags and reinforce with tape along the top and sides. Especially with the 2 year olds!
Reading and puppets…acting out nursery rhymes. Maybe you would like to choose a nursery rhyme a week and during this period do some related-easy clean up activities that correspond.
Songs! Songs! Songs! Interactive are the best…wheels on the bus…here we go ’round the mulberry bush etc. I like the books (one author: Iza Trapani) that takes a familiar song and changes it just a little. My Toddlers love it when I “sing” the books and then we do an activity related.
Parachute: because you are the only adult…I would suggest you pair up children and use blankets instead of an actual parachute. What you put on it can be theme related or not. Anything works I’ve used feathers, leaves, foam shapes, soft balls etc.
Create a mural that can be done at this time of the day. Place bulletin board paper or that brown/white wrapping paper on the bottom part of a wall. Provide materials to glue on to it or color. Its fun to start with markers/crayons and the progress to items that are glued on. They like to come back to it.
I love contact paper with this age… During the fall I create a tree trunk and tape contact paper, sticky side up, for where the leaves would go. I then provided foam leaves and they could stick them on or take them off. This is fun to also just tape, sticky side up, on the floor and see what they do with it.
Musical Instruments…especially if this isn’t done routinely during the day. There are very few Toddlers that do not like music and instruments.
My two year olds like for me to tape down paper on a big section of the floor so that they can sit right on the paper to use the crayons. It’s also fun to teach them how to do “rubbings” and have “mystery textures” underneath…taped to the floor. The purchased rubbing plates work very nice as well. Cutting out alphabet or numbers or shapes add variety.
Have a puzzle time. I find that my 2 year olds are very adept at puzzles. I have on 2.5 year old that does 24-32 piece puzzles over and over and over…he never tires of them…I actually have to tell him , “later” so that he does something else LOL
I’ve done “marble painting” inside of an oatmeal container…this definately keeps the mess down! The kids paired off and rolled the container back and forth and were in awe when they saw their “artwork”.
Obstacle courses…use the furinture in your room to create an obstacle course. What Toddler does not like to climb and crawl
It’s getting nice outside…can you take them outside…I remember one center that did that daily in the Spring and Summer…their afternoon play time was near “pick-up” and therefor the parents picked their children up from the playground. Worked out pretty good.
Sensory: You probably have a sensory table in your room…for a variation… get a plastic wading pool or two and let the children climb right in with the sensory material. You might have a policy against using “food” as sensory material…but I find that beans, rice, birdseed etc are all very “fun” for this age group. Packing peanuts etc. work as well but not quite so fun!
Hope these help you a little! Search online…you’ll find a lot of neat ideas that you can twist a little to make it work for you!
