Activities by Age: 1 to 3 Years Old
WIC Playground
Children ages 1 to 3 should have daily physical activity. Give your child opportunities to do activities independently. For example, you can let her climb up into her car seat. This helps them develop coordination and new skills.
In addition, you can participate in physical activity with your child. You may want to wait until 6 years of age before you start organized sports for him. Children younger than this have a hard time understanding rules and strategies that are involved with sport teams. Appropriate activities include running, jumping, climbing and throwing, catching or hitting a ball. Children can also participate in developmentally appropriate organized activities such as tumbling, gymnastics, and dancing. Below are some activity ideas to do with your child.
Developmental Activities
The U.S. Department of Education and Kathleen Gordon (from www.parenthood.com) have seen success in the activities below. They teach the child new concepts, while also including a lot of fun.
Supporting actions to help your child learn:
Actions Especially for 1 year olds:
- Accommodate empting and filling almost anything.
- Put raisins or pieces of cereal into a plastic gallon milk jug and let baby figure out how to empty it.
- Arrange play dates, but be ready to be a referee and divert attention away from conflicts.
- Save junk mail for baby to open and re-assemble.
- Start introducing simple behavior limits.
- Create a sense of daily order and consistency.
- Begin to chat about consequences that come from disobedience.
- Begin replacing liquid with solid food.
- Reinforce waving goodbye to friends and family.
- Play games like pat-a-cake.
- Allow controlled snacking but don’t let it hinder mealtime appetite.
Actions Especially for 2 year olds:
- Present connections like salt and pepper, and bread and butter.
- Talk about how things work.
- Help identify noises like a vacuum, dog, cat, car, and truck.
- Accept simple assistance with chores like picking up toys and books.
- Encourage naming things.
- Expand speaking ability by adding new words to baby’s spoken sentences.
- Provide clear and simple choices.
- Don’t expect successful sharing or taking turns.
- Present opportunities to draw. Don’t tell what to draw. Dexterity and fun are more important.
- Provide safe outlets for physical activity and exploration like boxes, barrels, tires, push-pull toys, and ride-on and ride-in toys.
- Start teaching cause and effect.
- Play "follow the leader" and sing sequential songs.
- Play "you are a mirror," by facing children and asking them to imitate your actions. Then reverse roles.
- Accommodate messy mixing, sifting, pouring, stirring, and shaping.
- Glue things together with a messy glitter glue stick.
- Paint with pudding, icing or whipped cream. They’re safe when eaten.
- Use icing to glue cereal, crackers, or fruit to make pictures or mosaics.
- Glue paper plates together with beans inside and decorate them to make tambourines.
- String large-holed beads or macaroni onto shoestrings.
- Get kitchen help with scrubbing potatoes or snapping beans.
- Make up sound games that use noises like moo, woof, quack, etc.
- Use props like a stuffed puppy when reading a book aloud about puppies.
Actions Especially for 3 year olds:
- Play silly word games and talk about imaginative adventures.
- Repeat and undo actions to help her understand change and consistency.
- Establish routines.
- Introduce puzzles with about six pieces.
- Offer simple choices.
- Read aloud or tell stories exactly the same way each time without making changes.
- Tell child-centered stories and talk about when she was a baby.
- Encourage activities needing hand-eye coordination.
- Solicit kitchen help like adding pizza toppings, decorating cookies, or, with supervision, cracking nuts with a mallet.
- Expand verbal skills by expanding sentences. For example she may say, "Look at the dog." Reply, "Yes, the dog is big and brown."
- Count items like cookies and recipe ingredients.
- Do easy science projects like making ice cubes.
- Encourage safe experimentation like turning lights on and off.
- Play musical games.
- Encourage free art expression and don’t tell your child what to draw.
Other Fun Activities
These activities will help keep your kids active!
Freeze Dance
Way to Go! Way to Grow!
http://www.healthyweightforkids.org/getactive/freeze.htm
Animal Freeze Dance
Way to Go! Way to Grow!
http://www.healthyweightforkids.org/getactive/animalfreeze.htm
Stop! and Go!
Way to Go! Way to Grow!
http://www.healthyweightforkids.org/getactive/freeze.htm
