Hallway Ball

Supplies Required:
Ball
A hallway

"Hallway ball" was one of our family's favorite activities when W was between 5 months and 10 months old because it was something that he loved to watch us do (before he could really participate) and was something that he loved to do himself when he was old enough to throw the ball.  We typically use a beach ball for hallway ball because it's light, fun to throw and hit, and it's not hard enough to hurt if someone gets whacked in the face (which almost always happens at some point during the game).  E stands or sits at one end of the hallway, and I sit or stand at the other end.  Before W could crawl, I would sit him in front of me and help him participate.  We basically throw, hit, or even kick the ball as hard as we want to because there is nothing to knock over or break in the hallway.  It's fun to watch the ball bounce off the walls (and sometimes the ceiling).  This activity always leads to lots of giggles. 

Pretend Picnic

Supplies Required:
Play food
A blanket
Stuffed animals and/or dolls
Picnic basket or other container (optional)

When E was two, one of her favorite things to do was have a pretend picnic with her stuffed animals, and it's still an activity we do once in awhile.  We set out a blanket on the living room floor (we have an awesome one that my grandmother made that is a perfect picnic blanket), and then we arrange all of her animals in a circle around the edges of the blanket.  Some of them need to be propped up with a pillow or little bench or something else so they can sit up.  Ella then gets out her play food and distributes it to the animals, who eat.  After the picnic, they sometimes go "hiking" on our fireplace.  Or they line up in front of the TV to play games.  When W was a baby, he even became part of the picnic.  It was a good tummy time activity, and I'm sure being surrounded by animals made tummy time slightly more interesting.

 

Reading in Bed

Supplies Required (a supply list for this activity is pretty much ridiculous):
books
a bed

After my son W was born, I wanted to make sure that I set aside some special time for my daughter E, especially in those early newborn days where W was so dependent on me.  So one night shortly after W was born, I asked E if she would like it if I spent the next morning reading to her in her bed.  She was super excited about the idea, especially when I said it would also involve having breakfast in bed.  (My husband, who had to make the pancakes and serve them to us in bed, was probably less excited about the idea.)  When E woke up that morning, I climbed into her bed with her and we read several books.  My husband brought us a tray of pancakes while we were reading.  E loved this, and ever since then, we have probably done this activity about once a month.  She especially loves it when the reading has some sort of theme--for instance, when I read her ALL of the books she checked out from the library (usually that's about 15!) or ALL of her Clifford books.  Shortly before Christmas, I suggested to her that we should gather all of the books she had about Christmas and winter and we should read all of those on our reading in bed morning.  She had fun gathering all of the books the night before. 

E loves Curious George, and for Christmas, she got a big Curious George book with all of the original Curious George stories.  (If you are at all familiar with the original Curious George stories, they are LONG.)  So after Christmas, when we had our reading in bed morning, she said she wanted me to read that entire book (350 pages or so!) along with two other Curious George compilations with 10 stories each.  I told her we could only read 2 of those big books, so she picked out the original Curious George book and one of the newer ones with 10 stories.  I read all 10 stories from one of hte newer books, but we only made it halfway through the original Curious George collection before E got tired.  I couldn't believe she had finally reached her limit! 

Dog Park

Supplies required:
cardboard box or some other item to build the dog park in
modeling clay (again, I love Crayola's model magic)
miniature dogs (we used these:  http://www.amazon.com/Safari-695504-Ltd-Dogs-Toob/dp/B000GYZ3QG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324142646&sr=8-1)

A few weeks ago E and I made a dog park out of modeling clay.  We put the dog park in part of a cardboard box.  We made a bridge, a pond, grass, a bowl of dog food, a bench, etc.  We also used some wooden blocks to build a little shelter for the dogs so they could be out of the sun.  After we built the dog park, E had a ton of fun letting the dogs play in the park.  We got out a small bouncy ball so the dogs would have a ball to play with.

Here's a picture of the dog park (and my son W peeking up over the box):

Glitter pinecones

Supplies required:
pinecones
glitter (white or silver work especially well, but any color will do)
glue
white paint
paint brushes
paper bag(s) (optional)

Last weekend E and I made glitter pinecones.  Luckily, we have a forest in our own front yard, so we were able to collect plenty of pinecones for this project.  (I'm pretty sure we could have collected enough pinecones for an entire school to do this project.)  Although the project was a little messy, it was easy, fun, and now we have beautiful pine cones to display in a bowl on our dining room table.

Once we collected the pinecones, we mixed together white paint and glue (equal parts of each, but I don't think it matters that much as long as you have enough glue) and then we used paintbrushes to brush the mixture onto the pine cones.  You can't spend too long painting, or the paint and glue will dry and you won't be able to put the glitter on.  We each painted one pine cone at a time, and then we applied the glitter.  I had gotten a variety package of different colors of glitter, so we used white, red, and two different kinds of silver.  I dumped each color of glitter in its own small paper lunch bag.  When a pinecone was ready, we dropped it in the bag and then shook it around to get it coated in the glitter.  We then took it out and set it on a newspaper to dry and started painting a new pinecone. 

E loved this project, and so did I.  The pictures definitely don't do the pinecones justice.  They are much more sparkly in person.

This was us painting the pinecones before we put the glitter on:

And this is the finished product (again, this doesn't adequately capture the pinecones at all):

"Camping out"

Supplies required:
Flashlight
Play tent or something else to make a tent (blanket and chairs, blanket and card table, etc)
Water bottles
Homemade trail mix
Sleeping bag or blankets
Candle

One evening a few weeks ago, I told E that we were going to camp out the next night after dinner.  I told her that she and her dad had an important job to do for our camp-out--make homemade trail mix.  Since my husband was going to the grocery store that day anyway, he picked out a bunch of things to go in the trail mix, and he and my daughter made it while I was at work.  He said she was so excited about it (probably at least in part because she was putting M & Ms in the trail mix.) 

After dinner the next night, I told E we had to get all of our camping supplies, so we went around the house gathering the things we would need.  We then "drove" to the campsite (which was in our living room).  I set up the "tent" which was a blanket draped over some chairs.  I put E's sleeping bag inside.  We collected "wood" for our campfire (a bunch of wood blocks that I had scattered all over the living room floor outside the tent).  When it was nighttime, we turned off the lights, lit a candle, and used our flashlights.  We "slept" in the tent and also ate the trail mix.  E had a lot of fun, and this was a pretty simple (and cheap, since we already had all of these things) activity. 

We "camped out" on a warm fall night.  If it had been cold out, we probably would have lit a fire in our wood-burning fireplace so that could have been our campfire.  We sometimes roast marshmallows and make S'mores when we build a fire in our fireplace, so that would have definitely added to the activity.  I think we'll do that sometime this winter.

You can just use things you already have around the house for this activity, but I have also seen a really neat play camping equipment set online:  http://www.amazon.com/Pretend-and-Play-Camp-Set/dp/B00021Z2FK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322622982&sr=8-1

I didn't really take any pictures of this activity, but here is our tent:

Grocery Store

Supplies required:
play food (or you could use real food that won't spoil/spill/get ruined)
grocery cart or shopping basket or reusable grocery bag
chairs (or something else that could be a "shelf")
calculator or play cash register

For awhile, "grocery store" was one of E's favorite things to play.  It's a little bit of work sorting out the food and then putting it back in place to play again, but well worth it if your child likes the activity as much as E does. 

We kept this activity pretty simple, but you can make it as complicated as you like.  We turned our dining area into a grocery store by lining up the dining room chairs so that the chair seats could be "shelves."  We then sorted E's play food into food groups  and put each food group onto a different chair.  Then, one of us would be the shopper and the other one of us would be the cashier.  E would take her pretend grocery cart around and pick out the food she wanted.  She would then bring it to me to ring up.  Before we had a play cash register, I just punched random numbers into the calculator and told her how much each item was and then gave her a total.  Once we got the play cash register (I found one for only a few dollars at a Goodwill!), I was able to scan the items and it would come up with a random price.  Then, I would take a turn being the shopper and E would be the cashier.  I enjoy "grocery store" because there is a lot of learning involved (numbers, food groups, etc.) and it doesn't take a lot of time/work to set up.  Plus, having E help me sort the food can be part of the fun. 

It's been awhile since we played grocery store, but E was very into this activity when she was between 2 and 3 years old.