Television is a good alternative solution to keep your baby occupied when you are cooking food or taking a bath. It is really sad when due to over exposure babies become addicted to television. This can also affect their academic performance in the future. It is hence necessary to find some intelligent solution that can keep your toddler occupied when you are performing daily household activities.
1. Pretend Play
Arrange number of toys, dolls, teddies, kitchen set and doctor set for your baby. Ask your toddler to play with toy stuff when you are busy with other household activities. Keep visiting his room after regular time interval so that he can feel that you are also involved with him. You can also provide him some old household stuff so that he can enjoy his play better.
2. Art with colors and vegetables
You can use newspaper for this purpose and spread them all around the table. Now ask your baby to dip his fingers in the painting color and make different papers on the newspaper. This is quite an interesting concept that can keep your baby occupied for several hours. Don’t forget that colors should be non toxic and hygienic. You can also use potato and okra for printing out more interesting patterns. Ask your baby to use crayon colors, stencil or tracing paper for drawing different object on the drawing sheets. This solution only increases the creativity level of your baby and does not harm him in any other way.
3. Art projects
You can take idea of art projects from Internet or play school. You can draw kite or a big balloon and use color paper and glue for making these objects more interesting and colorful. Ask your baby to use child friendly plastic blades and scissors that are not harmful for him.
4. Play dough
There are many interesting plastic objects available in the market that can be mould into different shapes like ball, stars and moon. If your baby is fed up of plastic shapes then you can use flour for making out interesting patterns. You can also color flour with different colors.
5. Matching and sorting
Offer your child a mixture of different vegetables like beans, peas and carrots. Ask him to sort the vegetables and collect them in different utensils. This task seems to be very interesting for your baby and also increases his evaluation power. If he is not able to identify different vegetables then use a chart showing picture of vegetables with their names.
6. Water Games
Toddler loves to play with water and you can easily keep them occupied for several hours. Ask them to float some rubber toy in a plastic tub or ask him to transfer water from one basket to another with the help of a small glass.
7. Baking
When your toddler is fed up of same toys then you can use cookies instead of toys. Store then in refrigerator and ask your baby to cut the cookies in different shapes. This activity can be performed in kitchen when you are cooking food.
8. Puzzles
Puzzles are excellent solution to keep your toddler occupied all the time. There are various animal and number puzzles are available in the market. Ask your baby to understand the puzzle and solve it.
9. Educational CDs
Ask your baby to watch educational CDs and check his analyzing capability. This is an excellent solution that keeps him occupies for several hours.
10. Music and Dance
Play some interesting music and ask him to dance. You can also join your baby for making the event more interesting for your child.