School time Activities for my Little One?

[La Condessa]

I know there are many threads already out there about activities for younger siblings during school time, but I was hoping for some activities specific to my son.  I will have three littles next year when I am doing Kindergarten with my oldest, but I figure the newborn will be fine with nursing, baby wearing, swing, etc., and the three-year-old is very 'old for her age', and will join in with us or self entertain with legos, puzzles, art projects, etc.  But my son (currently 18-months-old) is harder to come up with ideas for.  He seems so much younger than his sisters did at the same ages, and so much more destructive. 

 

He will eat anything he can, so nothing with small parts that can fit in his mouth, or soft foam, or paper, or crayons or markers.  He will smash/destroy things if possible, so anything I give him to play with must be very sturdy, but not too heavy or have sharp corners or pointy parts, because he also throws things and has a surprisingly strong arm and good aim.  He is a really good climber, and I have not tried him in the port-a-crib since he learned to climb out of his crib, but I am hoping that will contain him with some school-time toys--I am not using it right now because I don't want to give him opportunities to figure out how to escape it before I've begun to use it for school.  He has no interest in the cute felt food we have or duplos beyond chucking them at his sisters, but maybe in six or eight months he will take an interest I'm hoping. 

 

Currently my ideas for him are more board books (he loves his books, but many of them are coming apart), a wooden interlocking stacker toy we have (so long as he can be contained in the port-a-crib, and out of throwing range of the rest of us), snacks, and maybe wedgits that the 3-year-old could use too, but remove the smallest pieces before giving them to him.  He loves the toy instruments, but is so loud with them that I don't really think that would work during school.

 

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

[Rachel]

Are you talking about next year as in January or September?

 

Most of the time my 17 month old is napping when we do school, but if he is awake, I just let him play.  I have one of those rugs with streets on it, I'll get it out with a few cars and he drives them around.  He likes doing the stacking rings or cups.  Once when I really needed to distract him but didn't have much handy, I gave him a toilet paper roll and a bunch of puff balls my other two had been gluing on paper.  He spent 45 minutes dropping them through the tube.  Today he put letter magnets on the whiteboard, took them off, and put them back up repeatedly.  

 

If you are referring to next September, your son will change a lot by then, he'll be ready for some puzzles and maybe even play dough or coloring.

[5LittleMonkeys]

Stringing cheerios onto pipe cleaners.

Water play...we did A LOT of school in the bathroom when my youngest was between 1 and 3.

Riding a tricycle or similar "riding" toys around where you have hard floors.

Pillow and blanket forts in the living room.

One big, big hit when dd was old enough not to eat everything was a kiddie pool on top of a large tarp close to where we were schooling.  I put about 20 lbs. of rice in the pool with sand toys\kitchen tools.  This would keep her busy for hours.  There was a learning process for keeping the rice in the pool, but with the tarp it wasn't too big of a deal to clean it up. 

[La Condessa]

Are you talking about next year as in January or September?

 

I'm planning on starting around February and getting at least a half semester done before my baby is due, then a break to adjust to the new baby before starting up again.

[happypamama]

My 2yo (29 months) plays with duplos a ton, so your little guy may in a bit as well.  We also get a ton of mileage out of the wooden train set and the play kitchen.  And stickers and crayons.  And geoboards with rubber bands.  He also likes chalk and watercolors and feltboards.  Mostly for my 5yo, I printed out a ton of preschool learning activity packs, and he loves them; then the 2yo wants to practice cutting and gluing and writing too.  The chunky wooden puzzles from Melissa & Doug are great for him because he can do the puzzles or play with the animals/vehicles.  I use workboxes for my big kids, so if I put a few activities (even just books) in the 2yo's box, he assumes that it's his work, and he is thrilled!

[Rachel]

Stringing cheerios onto pipe cleaners.

Water play...we did A LOT of school in the bathroom when my youngest was between 1 and 3.

Riding a tricycle or similar "riding" toys around where you have hard floors.

Pillow and blanket forts in the living room.

One big, big hit when dd was old enough not to eat everything was a kiddie pool on top of a large tarp close to where we were schooling.  I put about 20 lbs. of rice in the pool with sand toys\kitchen tools.  This would keep her busy for hours.  There was a learning process for keeping the rice in the pool, but with the tarp it wasn't too big of a deal to clean it up. 

I'm going to have to try the rice thing, I think all of my kids would enjoy that.  I hate big messes but I can see how the tarp would help.

[Rachel]

This isn't a suggestion for entertaining your little one, but one thing that has helped with the 17 month old in our house is that our table is counter height, he likes to grab things but isn't able to take things from the taller table.

[Goldilocks]

I never had any luck with the activities for the younger kids during school time. If they were going to keep them busy for any amount of time, they always needed my help.

 

This is a very difficult season of schooling. It will only last for a few years, though. 

 

What worked well for me was starting our school day by playing with the little one.  Building a fort, a block city for cars, playdough, etc. Start them out and then back off.  The hard part is getting the schooling kids away!!