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For toddler moms, it’s essential to look for fall educational activities for 2 year olds at home. Even though by now, your toddler will be going to daycare. By the time your child is over 2.5 years old, it’s a great idea to start structuring their day.
You want it to be where it’s more educational to prepare them for school. At this age, you can do educational activities in a fun way that you can even involve the whole family. The goal is to make sure to get those little hands working.
There are different ways to engage your busy toddler. So you know that learning is happening even though they are moving around.
You don’t have to be a teacher to think of some cool ways to get your 2 year olds motor skills working. This time of year doesn’t have to be all work and no fun. It’s about embracing where you are in your parenting journey so your toddler can have as much fun as possible.
Toddler Educational Activities
Now that you are a toddler parent (congrats). You want to start focusing on activities that will discover how your 2 year old learns.
This will become important because, as parents, we want to spend as much time as possible discovering what we can do to provide the structure needed for them to learn and be successful.
If you have a favorite craft, you love to do or enjoyed doing as a child, this is an excellent opportunity to introduce it to your child to see if that will help.
Many times, if you include games or activities with different body parts (like calling out the eyes, nose, and mouth), that will allow for significant interaction with your toddler.
This post is about fall educational activities for 2 year olds at home.
List of Fall Activities
If you are looking for some fun fall activities, it’s not really hard to find. There are so many ways to engage your 2 year olds at home. You don’t have to look further than home.
Some of the best activities you can have for your child come from just understanding that you already have what you need or for them to learn. Your toddler will be grateful for spending time with you. Check out my post here for more fall activities for 2 year olds.
This is the time to develop traditions that can be started and kept for years to come. This is the age there it will be the most impactful for your toddler.
Local Park
Going to a local park is a great way to get some educational activities. You can do fun things. Like have a scavenger hunt and ask your 2 year old to look for leaves, pick out different color leaves or even pretend play that you are an explorer looking for hidden treasures in the trees.
Create fall sensory bins
Two year olds love to play with so many items that you can have a lot of fun with these little bins. You can make them out of anything and put anything in them to help with their fine motor skills. Some excellent fall items to put in the bin: leaves, pumpkin seeds, pom poms, and googly eyes, just to name a few things.
Young children thrive off structured play, so you can use the bin to have them follow directions for putting and taking out the items in the bin, which is an easy activity.
Water Play
In the early fall months, when the weather is still warmer (this depends on where you live), you can use a water table as a great source of outdoor fun. Here is another opportunity to add some educational factors to the level of play.
Now water for toddlers is like liquid gold. So to structure this idea, you have to have a game plan. So they aren’t splashing and spilling the water everywhere.
One idea that is fantastic fun is to have your toddler get a cup, fill it with water about 3/4 of the way and have them place small items into the cup to see if it sinks or swims.
Free Printables
If you want something to do indoors, you have come to the right place. Printables are an easy way to get all sorts of activities into the toddlers. Examples of the types of activities:
- Sensory Play Activities
- Fine Motor Activities
- Seasonal Activities
You can also download printables from Etsy, which are fun for fall. Printables can include having your child’s favorite character and having them color it in using fall colors, or you can make your own easy printable at home.
You can also find an excellent color math game that toddlers will love since, at this age, they yell out colors, numbers, and letters randomly.
Awesome Fall Activities
With the changing seasons, you want the best way to engage with your 2 year old that will make you feel like you are getting a handle on how they will start to learn.
Brain development for children ranges between 80% – 90% before age 3, so taking this opportunity to introduce fun ideas to them now that they can do more things is so important.
As a fellow toddler mom, this will be an exciting turning point in our parenting journey. This is the time we can make a real impact on how our children will be shaped and it’s exciting to know that fall has the best of the seasons combined for many fun activities to do with your children.
Balance Beam
There is so many excellent balance beam for toddlers’ benefits that it might become a toddler favorite. This is important because it allows kids to be challenged while improving balance and coordination, which is crucial for their age.
Challenging 2 year olds can be challenging, but this is also a great fine motor activity that even older kids will enjoy.
Reading your favorite books
Little kids love bedtime stories, so this would be a great time to engage them. The stories don’t have to be traditional either.
Sometimes it’s simple activities that have the most significant impact. You can pick a book and have your 2 year old read it (even if they don’t know how to read). It will be fun and an excellent activity for the whole family.
Craft Activities
To expand your toddlers’ creativity, doing crafts is a fantastic way to get some “fall lesson plans” in for them. Some simple ways to make crafts don’t require much mess. Some of these items you can get from your local grocery store.
Crafts don’t have to be complicated. You want to ensure that it’s something you can do easily and won’t frustrate your toddler in the process. Remember that their longer attention spans still require a certain level of stimulation to feel like it’s something your toddler will want to join.
Outdoor Activities
There are so many fun things to do that your toddler might not want to grow up. In most places, early fall means the weather is still mild, and you have enough time to get some outdoor activities before the weather breaks.
You can check out my blog post fall crafts for 2 year olds which has lots of additional ideas for toddler fun. If you are looking for specific holiday-themed activities, my blog post on Thanksgiving crafts for toddlers age 2 is an excellent resource.
Pumpkin Activities
One of the most iconic activities in the fall is going to a pumpkin patch. You can also take the pumpkin home, take the pumpkin slime from it and create a simple game out of who can pull the slime from the pumpkin the fastest. This experience is no longer fun, but your toddler can learn much from going there.
Other autumn activities
If pumpkins aren’t your thing, you can also do apple orchards. Having your child look at apple trees and see them in different colors is a great learning experience.
It will help with gross motor skills by having them pick the apples from the tree, pull them off, and put them in the baskets to take home. Corn farms and mazes offer incredible experiences for toddlers and fun for the whole family.
Fall Favorite Ideas
Traditionally, when fall comes around, outside of taking your toddler to a pumpkin patch, there are other activities that you can do in the fall that make it one of the favorite seasons of many.
Another option is to make your child a leaf maze. These are super easy to do and super fun. Instead of throwing away your leaf piles, takes those leaves and make a maze in the back year. Have your toddler help.
The maze doesn’t have to be in any particular order. By using real leaves, you can have your 2 year old talk about the colors and textures, which are great ways to incorporate structured learning and fun in one place. What’s great about this is that it doesn’t take long to create, and you can do it in more weather conditions.
Sensory Activities
Sensory play is so important for 2 year olds. If you don’t know what sensory play is, it’s all about our five senses: touch, smell, taste, movement, balance, sight, and hearing. Sensory activities tackle the fine motor skills that are important to children’s development to implement them as early as possible.
Investing in sensory activities helps the exploration and naturally encourages children to use scientific processes. This is while playing, creating, investigating, and exploring.
Making sensory toys and activities are easy to do. You can take any household items and create a sensory experience. Below are some sensory play ideas that you can incorporate for your toddlers at home this fall.
Sensory play in general is a great activity to engage with toddlers and people of all ages. You can play these games for a long time and everyone will benefit from this type of playtime. Read my fall outdoor activities for toddlers blog post for more sensory ideas.
Sensory Ideas For Parents
- Create a sensory bin. This is one of the most accessible items to make. A sensory bin’s goal is to ensure that you have items with different textures, colors, and functions in the bin. If you have a younger child, here is an excellent option for sensory bins. The best part about these bins is that you can make them about anything you want. It’s also one of the toddler activities that daycare makes sure they focus on up to 3 years old.
- Make your own sensory bottle. If your child is really into fun activities, this will be great for them. All you need are water bottles, cooking or baby oil, food coloring, and some glitter. You can do this as an afternoon project, or you can do this just before their morning nap. If you want more details on making this at home, check out this blog post by Preschool Inspirations.
- Play with food or play dough. Need a sensory activity idea that also feels like the wrong thing to do? Playing with food or play dough is an excellent idea for this. Not only does it allow them to discover the different textures of food, but t also allows them to play with understanding how to use different tools to do things like pull, cut, push, etc.
Best Fall Activities
Using fall leaves to make crafts is the best part of educational activities. It allows your toddler to have real-life items to use, which helps with learning and application. Lots of time, all you need is a large piece of paper. You can paste the leaves on there for an adorable craft.
Fall-themed craft ideas are so fun. Have you ever thought about taking some painter’s tape or bubble wrap and using a fall tree as the backdrop to a craft?
You can take the loose parts of the sticks, tree bark, and more to make unique crafts that your toddler will love and enjoy. It’s a much better way of teaching them about the seasons.
Fall educational activities for 2 year olds at home don’t have to be all work and no play. Last year, the fall season (at least in the Mid-Atlantic) was mild. So looking forward to the new season this fall will hopefully provide you and your family more time to enjoy the weather.
And get together. If you are looking for fall clothing ideas for your toddler, here is my post on 24 month old clothing deals that you will find helpful (especially for boy parents).
This post was about fall educational activities for 2 year olds at home.
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