This is cross-posted from The Opinionated Parent.

Looking for things to do with a toddler? Often, so are we! We’ve been looking for great sites full of activity ideas for kids between the ages of 1-3 and we think we’ve found some that aren’t too shabby. Some are blatantly obvious and others are rather creative. Many are great variations of things that I do in my classroom and have been simplified for the younger set. The boy is 17 months old and has yet to watch TV so we’re often looking for creative ways to entertain him and the internet is an ever growing resource.

I define “baby/infant” as newborn to 1, “toddler” as 1-3 years old, “preschooler” as 3-5 and 5 & up as “school aged.” However, it seems many “toddler” ideas are completely inappropriate for kids under 3. Use these ideas with your parental instinct at hand. Obviously you aren’t going to play with marbles with an 18 month old child. Unless you’ve always wanted to try the Heimlich maneuver.

Enjoy!

1. Toddler themed preschool activities from Preschool Rainbow. I love this page for the slightly older preschool set.

3. Thirteen toddler activity ideas from LilDuckDuck and more ideas from the same site.

4. Just ten but wonderful ideas from Associated Content.

5. 70 Toddler Games and Activities from Abel Cheng at Parent Wonder. This is a neat site. I’m not sure where they’re blogging from but the grammar tells me they may be an ESL site. Good content though, and just ignore the plethora of ads.

6. Some fun ideas from loveyourbaby.com.

7. Ideas from Ann Douglas at sheknows.com.

8. Thirteen bath time activity ideas from Baby-Patch.com

9. A whopping 134 ideas compiled from a chat board of parents. Many for preschoolers but some would work for toddlers too!

10. Check out this ‘best answer‘ from yahoo!answers about entertaining an 18 month old at home.

11. If your kids are 2.5 or older, Enchanted Learning is one of my favourite sites. I use it for ideas for school all the time.

12. Read to your kids! Okay, that’s not a site but you need to know how incredibly important this one is. For book ideas, search “read aloud books.”

13. Have the computer read to your kids for you! Try Starfall, a very popular site with early childhood teachers such as myself. Or hear one of my favourite children’s authors read aloud and then learn how she does it so well and how you can too.

14. There are lots of other sites that will read to your kids for you. Not that it’s a substitute for YOU reading to them, but it’s pretty fun. Try BookPALS Storyline Online. All of the others that I use are via subscription. Anyone know of other free ones?

There must be more! To have your favourite activity websites for kids aged 1-4 added, email them to theopinionatedparent@gmail.com with “toddler activity sites” in the subject line or leave a comment here and I’ll move them over.