Dry Noodle Art is a great activity for toddlers to make with adults.  For this project, you will need sandwich bags, dry ziti noodles, food coloring, string, glue and paper plates.  The adult should dye the noodles by separating cups of noodles into the sandwich bags.  Add four drops of  food dye into each bag and shake.    Open the bags to allow noodles to dry.

Once the noodles are dry, your toddler can begin to create whatever art or jewelry they wish.  Using a string, your toddler can loop together a variety of colored noodles to make a necklace or a bracelet.  You can also glue the noodles to paper plates to make silly faces or creative designs.

Toddlers’ fingers have only so much coordination to handle writing utensils like markers, crayons, pens and pencils.  Jumbo stamp pads are one, easy alternative that tots can grip.  Another, easy medium that toddlers can use safely and harmlessly are stickers.  Stickers are sold in sheets with an almost endless array of colors, shapes and ideas for boy or girl.   It will be helpful to direct your child about where it is appropriate to put stickers.  The Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane created and entire white room and let kids decorate it over the course of two weeks.  Look what happens when you let kids transform space with stickers”

http://poppytalk.blogspot.com/2012/01/what-happens-when-you-give-kids.html

Bingo Daubers (dobbers) are a great coloring tool for kids age 2-4 years of age.  Sometimes kids that young haven’t yet cultivated the coordination necessary to color with small crayons or pencils.  Instead, daubers are large and easy for toddlers to grab with their hands.  Like stampers, all your child needs to do is press the head of the dauber on paper to make a jumbo-sized dot.  You can make different shapes out of dots or you can draw from the dots, for example like a sun with its rays.  Do-a-Dot sells daubers especially for kids if you’re worried about the ink in professional bingo daubers.  A set of six colors retails around $15.00 US dollars.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, toddlers between 1-3 years old are able to find objects even when hidden 2 or 3 levels deep.   3-D shape puzzles are excellent learning toys to support the growth and development of your toddler’s problem-solving development.  Through trial and error your toddler notices curves, flat surfaces, corners, and the number of edges for each 3-D shape.  Using these observations they can practice identifying the matching shape on the plastic puzzle.   Additionally, the colors of the shapes also become important as your toddler can now identify and possibly even announce the correct color for each piece.

Toddlers and tantrums.  They go hand-in-hand.  Parents’ tried-and-true method to appease fussy tots is to offer snacks.  With the AAP’s warning against childhood obesity, what are the healthiest snack choices to offer your toddler?   We recommend low-fat mozzarella string cheese, whole grain cereal, yogurt, noodles or raisins.  There are countless, creative ways to sneak protein and nutrients into your child’s snacks, say adding cottage cheese to your toddler’s noodles, or dipping graham crackers into no-sugar-added applesauce.   Whole grain crackers and hummus is also great for adding fiber into your child’s snacking.  Add your fun & healthy snack ideas here!

Did you know that toddler-sized beds are actually the same size as cribs?  It is for this reason that parents can easily foster their toddler’s transition from crib to bed and save a little money on buying a new mattress.  Just pull the mattress out of your infant’s crib and fit it snuggly in a toddler bedframe.

There are many colorful toddler bed styles for boys and girls.  Most are equipped with a small rail covering half the bed on both sides to prevent your tot from rolling out during the night.  The beds are also barely over a foot above the floor to prevent injury in the event of a spill.

When it comes time to move your toddler from crib to bed, there’s a good chance your toddler won’t even realize that he or she can get in and out of the accessible bed by themselves for some time.

Young children are significantly interested in toys that imitate real household appliances and tools.  Many studies highlight the notion that kids imitate their parents as a means to educate themselves and understand the world around them.  There are exact, toy replicas of kitchen appliances, microwave ovens, toasters, vacuum cleaners, blenders and plastic tool belts available for purchase at toy stores.

As technology rapidly evolves, so too are the details and complexity of these mini-household appliances.  Kids use their memories and creativity to imitate their parents cooking in the kitchen.  Kids practice coordination by emulating the use of a particular tool or machine in the common household.

Parents who participate in activities that their kids enjoy can help develop their cognitive abilities.  This can especially be achieved by joking around.  For example, you can draw a picture of a bird and tell your child its a dog.  The child’s nature response is that it is a bird and not a dog.  But the activity teaches that child that they can use their imagination and use joking around as a social interactive skill.  It might help them open up to new possibilities and give them ways to play with their friends.  It also teaches them that there are many ways to do things and that they should not limit their imagination.  If they like the horse playing then they can adopt those skills in their own personality.

Its like nothing has changed.  When I was going up, all I wanted to do was to color my coloring books with my crayons.  Remember crayons?  Well crayons are a great way to get your kids to color their coloring books.  The use of colors and filling in different shapes and objections are extremely beneficial to  child’s growth.  What appears to be simple things like coloring within the lines is a great skill that kids need to obtain through time.  What better way to stimulate that ability then to start them with coloring books.  The practice will encourage the growth of their hand eye coordination.

And lets not forget the importance working with color schemes, bending, and mixing of colors.  Coordinating colors is a very difficult task.  Coloring also promotes individually and a expression of one’s feeling.  All of the these things are a great set of skills that as parents we want to promote in our children.