10 Supereasy Activities to Keep Toddlers Busy When You're Out
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Toddlers hate waiting. Waiting in lines, waiting to be served food at a restaurant, waiting in their car seat to reach a destination . . . they make it known that they hate it. Instead of subjecting yourself to the whines and cries of your little one, make sure you're always prepared with a bag of tricks — or a "busy bag," if you will — stuffed with games and activities to keep even the toddler with the shortest attention span busy for a while*.
Read through to see some of our favorite activities and games for toddlers on the go.
- Sticker books
- Play-Doh
- Board books (they can handle anything a toddler throws at them)
- Mini Etch A Sketch
- Boogie Board LCD drawing pad
- Coloring books
- Magnatiles magnetic construction tiles
- Crayola Color Wonder mess-free markers (to use on Color Wonder)
- Busy bag games — all of these games can be transported easily in pencil cases or plastic Ziploc bags:
- Spoon matching: Draw different shapes on clear spoons, and create a matching set of the same designs on white spoons. To play, your child should match the clear spoon with its corresponding white spoon.
- Letter popsicle sticks: Write out capital and lowercase letters on popsicle sticks (one per stick) and have your child match the capital letter stick to the lowercase stick.
- Wipe box guessing game: Put a bunch of small objects in an empty wipes container and tell your toddler to put their hand in and guess what they're about to pull out.
- Finger paint in a bag: Put paint in one Ziploc, then place zip side down into another Ziploc to allow them to "paint on the table."
- Color matching: Grab a bunch of paint chips from the hardware store in different shades of the same colors and have your child stack up the cards that are variants of the same color.
- Easter egg letters: Write a lowercase letter on the bottom of a plastic egg and a capital on the top, then give them to your child in halves so they can match the lowercase to the capital.
- Lego stacking: Pack up a bunch of big Lego blocks into a baggie to be stacked by color or to stack to certain numbers.
- Snacks (because when all else fails, food reigns supreme)
*We really hope this works out for you, but we know that toddlers are the most unpredictable. If all else fails, including the snacks, there's always the iPad?