Things are heating up pretty quickly here in California in terms of activities being cancelled and businesses mandating work-from-home requirements due to the Coronavirus Pandemic. Although it hasn’t happened yet, I have a feeling school closures are just around the corner. So while everyone else is loading up on toilet paper and bottled water, I’m over here scouring Amazon to find some fun and education activities that will keep my four kiddos aged 2-7 occupied and engaged for two weeks at home! Since I know I’m not the only one in this position, I figured I’d share what I’ve ordered and would love to hear your picks, too.
MarvelBeads Water Beads: These tiny beads are amazing and grow to be 20x their size. They also keep my kiddos occupied for hours! I like to dump them in a large plastic bin the night before we plan to play with them and add the recommended amount of water. In the morning, I bury some “treasures” in the expanded balls for the kids to find and put the whole basin out on a towel on our tile floor with some measuring cups, spoons and ladles!
Melissa and Doug Easel Paper Rolls and Colored Dot Stickers: The activities you can do with these two items alone are endless! For this particular order, I had my 2 and 4-year-old sons in mind, as they both LOVE stickers and I’ve been working with them on identifying colors and letter recognition. This endless list of dot sticker activities from Busy Toddler are easy to set up and perfect for their age group, so I plan on trying several of them with the boys. For my girls, who are 7 and 5, I’m planning to read a story with them and then have them draw out the story and retell it to me in pictures. I think they’d also just enjoy making posters for their bedroom, but the possibilities are really endless with a blank roll of paper and some markers!
Super Puffs Biodegradable Non-Toxic Play Puffs: These little puffs are amazing! Full disclosure, I found a small bag of these at my local Dollar Tree a couple of months ago and snagged them, but couldn’t find them when I went back again. This bag is much more expensive than buying them at Dollar Tree would be, but my kids loved them so much, I knew I needed to get some more before school let out. All the kids need to do is get the little puffs a tiny bit wet (I gave each a moistened paper towel to do this) and then the puffs stick to one another. They can build little 3D pieces of art, or choose to lay it down and make a flat piece that sticks together. It was so fun to just let them loose with a bunch and watch them get creative! Here’s what my crew came up with on their play date the last time we had these:
Paint By Sticker Books: These little books are fantastic all the time, but will be great for my kindergartner especially to practice her higher numbers. The book comes with numbered sticker pieces to put together to form a puzzle. So simple, but keeps the kiddos occupied!
Tie-Dye Party Kit: My kids love “creating” things and have been begging me to do tie-dye at home forever! I snagged some cute but affordable white girls t-shirts and this kit and plan to spend an afternoon tie-dying with my big girls. Not sure how user-friendly this would be with my younger boys, but thought it would make a great project for the girls and I while the boys were taking their naps. I also thought it would be fun to tie-dye some bodysuits for the new baby, so I grabbed a multipack of organic onesies.
USA Map Puzzle: The last thing I ordered to try and keep my kiddos busy and learning was this puzzle. For $5 I figured it would be a great topic starter for the boys (especially with the animals on each state) and a good geography lesson for the girls.
In general, we also always have Kinetic Sand, Wiki Stix, Craft Supplies like pipe cleaners and construction paper, markers and dot markers on hand that I’m sure I’ll use for some teaching sessions with the kiddos, but those I’ve hyperlinked will take you to my favorites. We have tons of board games and workbooks, too, so this amazon haul was just a quick effort to get some new goodies delivered before we are on lock down trying to avoid getting this virus! What are some of your favorite amazon activities with young kids at home?
