Create a fun, portable flannel board for your next road trip or doctor's office visit. To begin, cover the top of a shoe box with felt, secure the felt underneath with glue, staples, or a hot glue gun. This will form the base of the flannel board. Next, create the play pieces. Cut pieces of flannel into various sizes and shapes, such as animals, cars, people, ... Read More >
Pick one of your favorite places to visit: the aquarium, arboretum, or museum. Go to their website, and with your child, find pictures of 5-10 different things to look for. Then create a list for your child, adding pictures may be helpful for young ones. When you go to the place, you and your child will have a great time looking for those items. An alternate ... Read More >
While out and about, I always keep a bag of crayons in my purse for those moments in the day when like it or not, my kids are just forced to wait. When they tire of drawing and coloring pictures, we play crayon games (this is especially good for restaurants). Take a handful of used crayons of various sizes and spread them on a table. If your ... Read More >
Here's another great activity when you are waiting in a restaurant or at the doctor's office or at the airport. Family Records. How many times can your child (or you) hop on one foot in 20 seconds? Clap hands? Cluck your tongue? Snap fingers? Hold your breath? All you need is a watch, pen and paper to keep score. Read More >
A fun road trip game: Try to find each letter of the alphabet on the license plates of cars. Start with "A", and the first person in the car to find the letter gets a point. Keep going until you get to Z! Read More >
On a piece of paper, write the name of your child, a family member, friend, pet, favorite character from a book or TV show, etc. and ask your child to guess whose name it is. If she needs help you can give her clues (example: it is someone in your family, it's a girl, etc.). Be sure to talk about the sounds that the letters make. This ... Read More >
Keep a pad of post-its with you when you go out. When you need to pass a little time, take out ten, and you or your child can write Xs on half and Os on half. You can then have an impromptu game of tic-tac-toe on any table or wall that is nearby. With an older child, you could also write a series of letters (e.g. A, ... Read More >
We all know that young kids love playing with stickers, but the problem is that they really do stick to everything and it's often hard to peel them off. Your floors, walls and furniture pay the price. What I do is buy lots of sheets of multi-colored sticker dots (the ones you can buy at Staples), and we play a game where my kids can put stickers on ... Read More >
When you're in a waiting room with your child or anywhere where you need to 'kill' a few minutes, you can play this easy rhyming game. The parent starts by saying, 'I'm thinking of a word that rhymes with ____ and it starts with ___.' For example, you could say 'I'm thinking of a word that rhymes with BED and it starts with H.' Your child would then yell out ... Read More >
This is a great fall-back for when you find yourself waiting somewhere with your kids and you're empty handed. Take one of each kind of coin from your wallet and play guessing games with them. For my youngest child, I give clues to describe which coin I'm thinking of: "This one is silver, it has a face on one side, it's the biggest" etc. For my older ... Read More >
While on the road we play "Yellow Car." Our two young boys watch for specific yellow cars and each car has a different point system. Yellow Jeeps are 2 points, yellow Mini Coopers are 3 points, a yellow Motorcycle is 4 points, all other yellow cars are 1 point. To make things even more interesting, yellow boats are 5 points and a yellow car pulling a boat ... Read More >
When you are out at a restaurant and want to occupy the kids, try this activity at the table as an alternative to Tic Tac Toe. Place ten (white) packets of sugar and one (pink) packet of artificial sweetener on the table. (Or you could use coins -- ten pennies and one nickel.) Players take turns choosing to remove one,two,or three packets. The object is to force ... Read More >
When I need to distract my two-year-old twins while waiting at the doctor's office, on an airplane, or when we're at home, we play a game we call "oodles of doodles." I grab a pen and paper or, even better, a magnetic doodle pad and draw an animal, trees, flowers, a house, etc. and have the kids guess what I'm drawing. They love guessing right. They also ... Read More >
Here is a great activity when you are waiting at the doctor's office or at the airport or in the car. Start by making an animal sound and have your child imitate it. Then keep adding sounds and see if your child can follow the pattern (e.g. moo moo meow ruff). Then let your child take the lead and start a pattern you have to copy. Read More >
This is a great activity for kids to do on a car trip. Name an object that you see while driving, for example, a tree, a cow, a tire, etc. Have your child describe it using the 5 senses: what does the object look like, does it make a sound, what would it taste like, etc. This encourages your child to think creatively and analytically about ... Read More >
A great game to play while in the car, waiting at a doctor's office, etc. Start teaching your children antonyms. You say hot, they say cold. You say up, they say down. Continue and once they get the hang of it, siblings will play by themselves! Read More >
Whenever we're in the car and my toddler seems bored I ask her to find a red car. She loves this game! It's turned into finding all different colors. You can also do this activity by asking what color the car in front of you or beside you is. This easy-to-play game makes a car trip pass more quickly, which is easier for everyone! Read More >
A great way to pass time at the doctor's office or in restaurants is to take out all of your change and have your child sort the coins by kind, size and color. They can stack them, create shapes with them, count them etc. If you have a cup or container with you, you can also have your child toss the coins. (Of course, you'll want to ... Read More >
While waiting for the doctor, toddlers get pretty bored. I found that bringing my digital camera (or phone) in and having my son take pictures of my funny faces, or having him pose with funny faces, helped the time go by more quickly. Short videos of him singing his favorite songs was also a big hit. No more worrying about him spinning out of control on the doctor's stool, or ... Read More >
Here's an activity you can do before bedtime or on long car rides. Suggest three or four characters (say a pig, a basket, a car, and an apple) and challenge your child to create a story that uses these characters. Then switch roles either using the same characters or have your child pick new ones for you. You can also play this game in restaurants, using the menu and ... Read More >
Lay a piece of paper over a coin, credit card, or key and rub a pen or pencil (pencil works better) back & forth over the surface to reveal what lies beneath. Kids love this game and think it's magic when the image appears on the paper. This activity is great for restaurants! Read More >
This is a great activity for long car rides! You and your child (or children) take turns adding to a story. The parent begins by saying the first line (e.g. 'Once upon a time there was a little girl who loved to go the circus. And then one day when she went the craziest thing happened...'). Each storytelling participant then takes turns adding to the story. ... Read More >
Keep your MagnaDoodle in the car on your next vacation. Have your child draw different things she sees or pictures of the events you attend. Then take a photo of her completed work. Send photos to an online photo website, or any other photo place that will combine them into a bound book. (When you create the book online, you can usually type in ... Read More >
Children at a young age can start to do math with simple concepts. Determining which of two given numbers is bigger or smaller can give young kids the confidence that they need to move on to more complicated math concepts. Once a child can count at least from 1 to 20, you can play a game where you tell a child two numbers and then ask which is ... Read More >
Whenever you need to explain that you have to go somewhere to your little one who loves Dora, make it into an adventure! When we go to the bagel shop I say, 'We have to go up the hill, through the park, to the bagel shop.' My daughter loves it and we chant it like Dora and Boots on their adventures. Read More >
Left to their own devices at the beach, little children invariably turn into collectors. It it is ... Read more >
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