Play Fest families got together and came up with some really stimulating play ideas for toddlers on Twitter and Facebook. We’ve captured the ideas to share back, so you you’ve always got a handy point of reference to come back to if you ever find that you are stuck for an idea or two.

What is like life with a toddler?

We asked Play Fest what life was like with a toddler to which there was a general agreement that it’s exhausting, hilarious, maddening, hectic, busy, frustrating, rewarding, manic and stressful, yet the most amazing experience. Bearing all of this in mind, how on earth do you keep one of these entertained?

Play Fest gave it’s top tips for stimulating your toddler through play:

• give them opportunity to learn through discovery e.g put objects in a box & reach in without looking to feel it
• Little ones like to imitate what you’re doing. Even if it’s just stacking bricks
• Don’t put in too much effort – inevitably they’ll be fascinated with the thing you least expected!
• Everything breakable moves up a shelf
• Make it simple but fun. Think outside the box

Play Fest families shared favourite toddler play ideas that you can try for yourself:

• Toddlers love play that involves textures; glitter & foam and playdough
• Games like duck duck goose & traffic lights are great for introducing taking turns & coordination
• Messy activities – as young as possible
• Reading
• Building
• Cook lots of spaghetti and put it in a washing up bowl and cut it up. Add food dye to make it more interesting.
• Role play
• Crafts with pasta shapes and making texture pictures
• Pretend play e.g. play kitchens
• Playing games like i-spy when out and about to learn about surroundings
• Food play with jelly, angel delight, pasta, noodles as well as the usuals like water, paint and cornflour
• Baking is great for experiencing tastes, smells and textures
• Simon Says, hokey cokey, head shoulders knees and toes, if you’re happy and you know it, old mac donald – singing games
• Simple jigsaws
• Shopping list game memory game
• Matching pairs game
• Jumping in puddles
• Make things from old cereal boxes, toilet rolls…anything from the recycling box.

spaceship stations, from old cereal boxes, toilet rolls, well anything from the recycling box

Toys and Toddlers

Play Fest discussed a distinct lack of good quality engaging & stimulating toys for 18-24 mth group that they can learn on their own. Many have to introduce older toys under supervision.

Any toys that help children learn colours and shapes are great, but introducing textures is even better.

Finally science play for young ones was a product idea challenge.

Al Boxall-Gordon

I am the founder of IzziwizziKids.co.uk and the Play Fest.

Four year olds are starting become quite independent in their play, can get more adventurous with the activities that they do and can be quite helpful. Jennie Lindon explains helps you to understand the psychology of 4 year olds in this exclusive video and we had lots of lively conversation around 4 year olds and play during your Play Fest. You can save 10% on Jenny Lindons Book What it Means to be 4 exclusively with Izziwizzi Kids quote “izziwizzi” at the checkout. We have summarised some of the ideas that came forward during Play Fest to give you ideas with your 4 year old.

Feel free to add your comments.

These were favourite products for 4 year olds during Play Fest:

- Fuzzy felt
- Books
- Face Paints
- Happy Hopperz available from KidzOutdoors.com
- Jigsaws
- Board games to explore taking turns
- Puppets
- Think fun Zingo bingo
- Cars
- Role play with figures
- Old fashioned to encourage imagination (eg no batteries!) – wooden toy farm, bus and abacus
- Plastic animals and dinosaurs
- Anything robot
- Anything Toy Story
- Balance bike

Favourite Activities:

- Racing to do specified challenges such as see who’s the first to pick up 10 items
- Sticker charts
- Camping out in bedroom
- Riding bike
- Anything craft
- Making perfume with recycled plastic bottles and water
- Sensory play

Keeping Kids Occupied on Car Journeys

- Lots of singing
- Name a colour and they have to name as many things as they can in that time
- The Mini Flick game – spot a mini and flick the person next to you
- I spy
- Car snooker

Al Boxall-Gordon

I am the founder of IzziwizziKids.co.uk and the Play Fest.

Don’t miss your exclusive interview with Kim Johnson of LittleHelper.co.uk at the bottom of this page

Usbourne Childrens Cooking and Baking Books

Don’t miss your exclusive interview with Kim Johnson of LittleHelper.co.uk right here!

Al Boxall-Gordon

I am the founder of IzziwizziKids.co.uk and the Play Fest.

Three year olds are energetic, learning to talk and becoming more independent. Jennie Lindon explains helps you to understand the psychology of 3 year olds in this exclusive video and we had lots of lively conversation around 3 year olds and play during your Play Fest. You can save 10% on Jenny Lindons Book What it Means to be 3 exclusively with Izziwizzi Kids quote “izziwizzi” at the checkout. We have summarised some of the ideas that came forward during Play Fest to give you ideas with your 3 year old.

Feel free to add any further ideas in the comments below.

Activity ideas with 3 year olds from Play Fest:

- Making wooden spoon puppets
- Walks in nature or outside
- Messy stuff, painting and jumping in puddles, lots of outside stuff
- Water – transfer water from jug to jug using montessari techniques
- Creative – drawing, painting, playdough, chalks,
- Playing out in the garden
- Bounce, dance, sing and shout
- Role play superhero characters
- Making Gloop
- Tig
- Hide and seek
- Counting songs
- Bear hunt or picnic
- Penne pasta and some string
- Sand or mud pies
- Make musical instruments
- We love playdoh and colouring books at the moment
- planting flowers, seeds and summer bulbs is great for this time of year
- Playing Dinosaurs is another favourite, & usually involves alot of greeness and grrrrr
- Grow own veg
- Geo caching was recommended. Here is how it is described by one mum during Play Fest. You need a gps system- i use my iphone. You log on to http://www.geocache.com or download app. Lots of treasure boxes hidden all over the world. They give you the location on the cache (treasure) and then off we pop to find it! Gives the kids a purpose for walking- mine absolutely love it. You can take an item of treasure as long as you put something in it’s place. Worth a go

What can we do to encourage 3 year olds to be helpful?

- Clear tables
- Tidy up time
- Sorting and matching socks
- Putting washing in
- Set table
- Clear away
- Put clothes away
- Anything to clean
- Make a car wash in the garden to clean the bikes
- Cooking peas
- Bunny hunts, cat hunts, worm hunts
- Wash the rice before cooking
- Sweeping up
- MCleaning, cooking and gardening sets so children can get involved to help safely.
- Hang out the washing and insists on holding one end of the washing basket when we carry it out to the garden!
- Put pajamas under pillow
- Taking rubbish to the bin and recycling!
- Putting books back on the shelf
-The shopping! Draw pictures on a shopping list and make a game to see who can find the items in the supermarket
- Get the post in the morning
- Washing up

The topic came up about potty training too. Games to encourage kids to use the potty?

- Munching peas
- ping pong ball in the toilet hit the target
- Cheerio in the toilet hit the target

These were Play Festers favourite products for 3 year olds:

Products for 3 year olds reviewed during Play Fest

- Fuzzy felt
- Books
- Face Paints
- Happy Hopperz
- Jigsaws
- Board games to explore taking turns
- Puppets
- Think fun Bingo bingo
- Cars
- Role play with figures
- Old fashioned to encourage imagination (eg no batteries!) – wooden toy farm, bus and abacus
- Plastic animals and dinosaurs
- Anything robot
- Anything Toy Story
- Balance bike

Al Boxall-Gordon

I am the founder of IzziwizziKids.co.uk and the Play Fest.

Two year olds can be a lot of fun and at times quite challenging. What are they thinking? How can we handle those challenging states of emotion? How can we encourage play with siblings? Are we getting our 2 year olds involved in things they are capable of doing?

We had a good conversation about 2 year olds in Play Fest during a week in March where we talked about things you love about 2 year olds and ideas on how they like to play.

These are some of the things that you came up with:

What’s the best thing about 2 year olds?

“I love their random babbling about anything and everything.”
“I love that they get amazed at the smallest thing, everything is exciting!”
“The way they copy things, especially pretending to be grown up…”
” I love how quickly they pick things up, it amazes me each day from new words to remembering that ‘daddy got petrol from there’ yesterday!”
“Ah yes, our son had to fill all his toy cars up with petrol, using an old ketchup bottle as his petrol pump!”
“Good idea, the funniest thing our son said was that he wanted a willy pocket for the front of his trousers! Said it would be really handy. We neally died laughing, but he was totally serious ”
“the best one so far is this: I turned to Chester to see that he was dabbing his ice cream with a tissue…. erm what are you doing chester? I am warming the ice cream up mummy its too cold for me!!”

These are the activities that Play Fest came up with:

• Simple baking
• Ice painting – This one caused quite a stir and one to try out for Izziwizzi Kids Play TV in the future. The idea came from @Encycloplaydia during the Twitter Play Fest. Basically you freeze paints in the freezer and paint with them and they make marks as the paint ice melts. Sounds lots of fun and very messy!
• Anything messy – digging, painting, colouring, crayons,
• Can you find? – a simpler version of i spy!
• Any arts and crafts
• Making masks
• Singing and dancing
• Glue stick and bits of paper
• Water and drawing outside
• Anything in the fresh air – plenty of space to run around and run of energy!

Products Play Fest Liked for 2 Year Olds

• Tomy Aquadraw was a big hit
• Orchard Toys – Lots of jigsaws and games for 2 year olds. Old MacDonalds Lotto was a big hit with the Izziwizzi Kids Independent Toy testers.
• Thumbs up for the brio pounding bench distributed by Marbel Toys. We are still awaiting reviews on the Brio train sets, but another great idea for 2 year olds.

The Play Fest felt that there was a big gap for age appropriate play which are safe for 2 year olds. Toys for 2 year olds were described as often being very babyish.

If you have a two year old in your life, then I highly recommend watching this video interview with Jennie Lindon. Jennie talks about different aspects of play with 2 year olds to give you ideas of how to interact and present stimulating play opportunities for your 2 year old. Enjoy!

Al Boxall-Gordon

I am the founder of IzziwizziKids.co.uk and the Play Fest.

About the NYBY Garden Hoe

A metal garden hoe in child size, this little hoe will allow your helper to give you a hand in the garden, just make sure you point out which ones are weeds!
Image is squashed slightly

Buy from Adventure Toys >>

Al Boxall-Gordon

I am the founder of IzziwizziKids.co.uk and the Play Fest.

About the NYBY Gardening Gloves

A pair of textile gardening gloves, these gloves have bobble grips on the palm and fingers to give better grip of your tools and have stretching cuffs so its easier to put your hand inside, they are light weight children’s gloves so they wont give protection against spiky or stinging plants but are great to have alongside adult gloves so you can both garden together.
Colours vary mainly white with coloured prints.

Al Boxall-Gordon

I am the founder of IzziwizziKids.co.uk and the Play Fest.