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!
