At this age, children develop rapidly and become more independent. They have greater control of their hands and bodies and their use of language becomes more skilled. Frustration and fears are common at this age and you may have to deal with tantrums and give them lots of praise.

Most popular activities for 18 months to 3 years child-

1.Pretend play-

Play pretend with your child, for example, hosting a tea party and inviting all her soft toys. She will enjoy making tea for them. You can do a role reversal and ask her to be the mommy while you be the child.

2.Puzzles-

Small three or four pieces of jigsaw puzzles can be used at this time to help with reasoning skills. Make sure you get age-specific puzzles as difficult ones may discourage her from playing with puzzles.

3.Painting and modelling-

Give your child modelling clay dough, but keep the carpet protected. Do some painting together and make sure you sit in an area where you don’t mind a mess.

4.Screen time-

Watch your favourite videos together and describe what your child sees in the video. My daughter’s all-time favourite is Duck Tales and Heidi. As your child grows older, you can introduce animated movies like Bolt, Madagascar, Lion King, Cinderella etc. Most of the parenting sites talk about the ill effects of screen time, however, check out in the following video, why , how much screen time is OK for kids.

5.Clean up –

Take a brush or cloth and pretend to clean furniture. Your child will like following you around and imitating what you do. This will also help in teaching your child the importance of cleanliness. Age-appropriate chores can be given to children from this age to set the foundation of good habits and cleanliness.

6.Build a toy house-

Take a towel and drape it over a chair to make a house or a den for toys.

7.Fun with paper-

Make paper cutouts for hats, paper boats or simply fold paper to make fun shapes.

8.Sort, order and match-

Take used household articles like socks, containers, colourful spoons and play sorting, ordering and matching game. Toys also can be sorted according to their size i.e. bigger and smaller, taller and shorter. This will help to teach your child the basic concepts of math.

9.Read, read, read-

Yes, it’s that important. Read lots of storybooks with plenty of pictures and repetition. Talk about the pictures. This will help in the development of vocabulary and language skills. The importance of reading in a child’s cognitive development cannot be overlooked.

10.Escape Kit

Roleplay, adventures, and escape rooms are known to enhance a child’s cognitive, social and reasoning skills. What if the adventures are derived from fun games, treasure hunts, escape rooms and board games? Given the Covid- 19 pandemic situation, everyone needs the thrill and excitement of adventures and the fun that the outdoors have to offer, without compromising on safety. There is one such kit that can give you hours of fun in the safety and comfort of your home. It is called the Escape Kit. You can enjoy family time and create family memories for life.

The downloadable kit includes everything you need to quickly and easily organize your Escape Room at home, in less than 30 minutes at just $22. The Kit contains the printable game and the guide detailing precisely all the steps needed for setup, and it highlights what needs to be hidden or cut out. Grab the kit now- Download Escape Kit

So get set to go on adventures, get down to the floor and escape into fantasy land with your little one.

Image courtesy-John Morgan, Kam Said and Abigail Batchelder via creative commons license (Flickr), some rights reserved.

Author’s note-Throughout this post, the pronouns “he” or “she” refers to both the sexes, except where a topic applies specifically to a boy or girl.

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