If I don't give my baby girl plenty to do, she gets cranky and starts crawling around and, as you can see, looking for bugs and leaves and bits of dirt to eat so it's always a challenge finding new ways to entertain her. I'm sure most moms have figured out what makes their child happy but for those days when you're short on ideas like I often am, I thought I'd share some things I rely on to make my little one smile.
1. Playing with fake flowers or plants- I have these large fake peonies in a jar and my baby girls LOVES pulling them out and examining the petals and throwing the flowers on the floor. She can enjoy the texture and colors without eating real flowers or the bugs that dwell within.
2. Batting an old keyboard and poking the buttons- Seeing mom and dad on their laptops makes my babe want nothing more in all the world than to smack away at the keys. Just be careful that they don't pick the keys off and pop them in their mouth.
3. Screwing various knobs and handles into an unused cabinet door or piece of wood- This kept my little one busy for a long time and she loves it day after day! I just got a random piece of smooth wood and drilled holes and added various knobs and handles from old dressers and cabinets. You can buy a couple of them at Home Depot or places that sell those vintage inspired glass knobs with colors and patterns and let your baby examine them all.
4. Sitting in a box full of large wadded up balls of thick paper- Seeing as my baby loves putting paper in her mouth and letting it dissolve, I make sure and crinkle up some heavy duty paper, not newspaper which dissolves easily when wet, and fill a box with wadded paper balls for my baby to bat around and throw and crinkle.
5. Pillow mountains- As she learns more about crawling, climbing and standing, she enjoys clambering over different sizes of pillows, some firm, some soft, some really long, and some smaller pillows.
6. Spoons- Something about babies and spoons! I fill a box or a tupperware container with a lid that isn't too tight, allow my daughter to pull the lid off and dump out the glorious spoons in various sizes, some wood, some rubber, some metal, some plastic and get them all nice and dirty.
7. Pulling scarfs, handkerchiefs, pieces of cloth out of a box with a smaller opening- Take an empty tissue container or cut an opening in another box and fill it with soft handkerchiefs, scarves and other cloth materials and let your little one pull them out one by one. You may even decide to tie them each together for one perplexing, continuous pull!
8. Anything that rolls- a canister that used to hold wipes, a paper towel roll, empty water bottles, anything that can roll, especially if you have a hard surface for your baby to push the objects along.
9. A large box with holes- Easy peasy. My husband cut some holes in a big moving box that are large enough for our baby to crawl through or poke her head through. Simple and somehow wildly entertaining.
10. Towers of large plastic cups- you know those red plastic cups that are present at every outdoor BBQ? Those. Just build towers with them or stack them high and let your child knock them down or smash them.
11. Large magnets low on the fridge within reach- make sure the magnets on the back aren't too little and make sure the magnets themselves are nice and large so your baby won't choke. Your child can enjoy trying to pull them off the fridge and drag them along and put them back on.
12. Peek-A-Boo Pages- Draw some faces and little animals and then glue a piece of fabric flap covering them and let your baby lift the flap to reveal the picture behind it.
13. Empty boxes within boxes- Think smaller such as a cream cheese box within a pasta box within a granola bar box within a cereal box. Let your baby pull each box out of the other or try to put them back inside one another.
14. Texture Pillow- Make an older throw pillow a new toy with lots of different patches in various textures, patterns and colors sewn onto it haphazardly. If you have some old blouses, jackets, jeans, scarves, you name it, try sewing different patches in different shapes on one throw pillow for your baby to examine with their curious little fingers.
15. A remote control that you no longer use- Again, you want to take care to make sure the buttons won't easily come off while your baby pokes at them, but babies seem to love a nice remote control with lots of colored buttons to push and poke.
Of course I want to stress, as I'm sure you don't need to be told anyway, that you should still supervise your child with any of these "toys" because if your baby is anything like mine, he or she puts everything in their mouth. I try to pick things to play with that aren't too hazardous should they end up in her mouth, but with objects such as an old keyboard, make sure the keys don't come loose or that the backs of magnets are large enough not to choke on.
These are some of the things I've used without just buying more and more toys, but if you have any more ideas, please share them in the comments because there are many days ahead!
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