Fun activities to do with a 2 year old?

Question

We live in an efficiency apartment so there is not much room to play. I dont have much money either, so going out to eat or to the zoo is out of the question. Ive tried coloring with her or reading to her, but she gets bored and runs to go do something else.Weve tried going to the park, but the weather is so humid here.At night I take her swimming, she loves to do that for about 30 min, but thats it.Im running out of ideas, please help. What else can I do?

Answer 1

McDonalds playplace. Get your $1 coke and she can play for hours while you enjoy free refills!!! The local libraries also usually have storytime and activities for young kiddos.

Answer 2

Typical attention span. :)

We take our son to the play area at the mall. It's free, there's kids to play with, stuff to climb and jump on, and it's air conditioned.

Take her to the library. Ours has books for kids of all ages, plus a few things to play with for the toddlers. She can just browse and/or pick a book or two to check out.

How about your local museum? Ours has free admission. She might be a little young to stop from touching everything. Some do have areas for younger kids.

Start playing make believe--store, cooking, doctor, anything she wants.

Play-Doh, paint (put a big old sheet down first), make a tent out of chairs and blankets. Play with water. Puzzles. Hide and seek.

One thing I've done that my son loved was to color some sugar with food coloring--3 or 4 different colors (I did that part). Get a canning jar and let her pour in the sugars to make layers of color. Seal it up and save it forever. :)

Get some safety scissors and let her cut up paper. Do crafts--nothing complicated, get out some paper, glue sticks, glitter, confetti, cotton balls, pasta, Cheerios, etc. (You can get glue sticks, scissors, glitter, etc at the Dollar Tree if you have one)

Even though it's not Easter, color some eggs. It's fun and you can make egg salad the next day. (Again, the old big sheet.)

Let her help with the cooking. Make cookies, cakes, brownies just for fun. It's messy but usually interesting for them. My son likes to add sprinkles to everything. lol.

Play kids music and dance around (in an apartment...? carefully I guess.) Get on YouTube and look up Nursery Rhymes, Puff the Magic Dragon, letters, shapes, anything. Lots of great kids videos on there. I wouldn't do that too often but a little is okay.

Good luck.

Answer 3

Hide and seek!  you don't have to have much room she'll love finding you!  My two year loved it when it was his turn to hide sometimes he'd just throw a blanket over himself and lay in the middle of the floor, or the shower!  (Ususally he would hide where I just did!) Make sure you act like it's REALLY hard to find her!  Small kids just don't reaaly have that much of an attention span so don't expect to play to long, just keep switching things!  When my daughter was 2 she loved to help me stir jello and things like that!  You can also make 'tents' by throwing a blanket over a couple of chairs and have a picnic under there!

Answer 4

-blocks building them up tearing them down, log blocks trying to make houses

-Dolls of all sizes can play dress up, or take the doll for a walk.

-Computer programs loads of stuff today

-baking a cake we did this every day so i could get my kids to take nappies. after we measured and cleaned up, and put the cake in the oven, they would go for napes and when they woke up and were good about the nap they could have a piece of cake.

- scavenger hunts. like find the pink [or big tree, telephone wires, pillows] flowers, this can be done in house out of house or just waiting to pick up another child.

- the color balloon

I blow up 50 balloons [1 bag full] and taught my kids colors this way.

- and the finger games, like   when you mesh your fingers together, here is the steeple, and look inside and here are the people those finger games, it hard to write it out lol

Oh and each of my kids made there own book it cheep too

http://www.drgreene.com/555608.html

youll both have a blast at the book thing