I’ve found that pretend games of any sort work. Be kittens. Crawl around meowing. They’re interpretation will no doubt be amusing to you, and it will keep them occupied for awhile.

Toddlers love things that move, make noise, are shiny or colorful. The trouble is that they don’t love anything for more than a few minutes. In terms of crafts, you will want to have crayons instead of markers because markers are hard to clean up. Cutting snowflakes is fun,as long as you use safety scissors.

Doing dances is great, or playing simon says….anything that involves moving will be a big hit! Lots of kids will enjoy being read to just as much as watching TV or playing on the internet.

All sorts of things will be fun for a toddler as long as you seem to be having fun doing it too. Good luck!

will do. thank you.

I had one who liked cars that I babysat for. We would go out to my car and I’d sit in the passenger seat and watch while buttons were pressed. Eventually the emergency flashers would get turned on and it was time to run around the car making sure all the lights were still flashing… and around and around and around and… yeah. I didn’t come up with this, but it worked for me!

This works if you’re in a quiet neighborhood or something and have a place where a toddler can run around a car safely. Things that spark their interest are things that will keep them entertained for hours easily!

I can only tell you what my own toddler likes, as most of my babysitting experience has been with infants under 1. Some of his top favorite activities are Legos, Sesame Street videos, playing catch, singing along with music (he likes Weezer), hiding and seeking his stuffed animals, reading books, Play Doh, drawing with Crayons, Google image searching pictures of different animals, and playing with his train set and Tonka cars and trucks.

One thing I would advise is to keep many activities on hand. If she gets bored with one, you can try another. Try to keep them hidden in a closet and only bring out one activity at a time. Also, snacks can be a life saver. Try Goldfish crackers, fruit snacks, granola bites, apples, bananas, graham crackers, cheese…

My kids loved music when they were toddlers. It kept them happy forever and it was highly amusing for me to watch them dance.

Something that worked well w/my kids as toddlers is to give them stuff like measuring cups, spoons, etc. to play with. Anything like that, as long as they can’t hurt themselves… funnels, small containers w/lids, wooden spoons… basically anything safe that the toddler knows isn’t a toy.

I babysit toddlers under age two every week at church. We generally have about 8 possible hands-on activities in a two-hour period, generally one at a time. We build towers with blocks and knock them down, we have a large number of plastic animals we can dump on the floor and sort, we play “cooking” and pretend to eat what we made, we have cars and trucks to push around, we have a toy that makes noise and spins when you press a button and also includes ramps to roll balls down, we have a plastic slide and a bunch of floor pillows, we do some “scribble-scrabble” coloring, we have baby dolls who have clothing we can remove and put back on, and we have lots of board books.

We also offer snack (Goldfish, Cheerios, graham crackers, plus apple juice), and sometimes we look out the window and talk about what we see (“Do you see the car?” “Car!” “Car goes honk!” until interest evaporates.) We sometimes play music and dance. And periodically, we do lap sitting in the rocking chairs.

And don’t forget bubbles! The kids love it when people blow bubbles. Just be careful when you let them do it that the floor doesn’t get too slippery – it is a good thing to do outside.

Generally, you need to have one activity out at a time, be prepared to switch gears rapidly, and just have fun.

Two things that are important are they want to play with you, not alone, and they need a lot of variety. My 2½ year old grandson like to run, run, run. He runs races, and kicks balls then runs after them. He also likes to throw things, such as balls, rocks, and empty 1 liter water bottles.

Today, I gave him a bunch of different size food containers from the cupboard. He experimented with pouring beans back and forth. When he started sticking the beans in his mouth, I took them away and he then experimented with stacking the smaller containers on top of the others, and then nesting them. He was sitting in his “activity” chair (high chair) during all this.

He loves to sort things by color and size, so I made a lot of cloth covered foam blocks for him to play with. He also loves the streets and houses play pad I have. My teen nephew drew a similar car play mat on a several sheets of printer paper taped together.

Today we threw differently shaped blocks until it dawned on us that they could fit through various holes in the top of a box, then when all the blocks were in boxes we threw balls until we discovered there was music, danced until we discovered there were crayons, drew (and tried to eat the different colors) until we discovered there were crackers, and then ate crackers until we discovered they go down better with a drink. Then we picked up crumbs and tried to eat them before the big kids tried to throw them away.

That took two hours almost exactly.

@Darwin That sounds exactly what we do during the day, with the exception of the crumbs. Zander discovers that throwing big crumbs on the floor and then letting the dog in from the back yard is a great way to have fun.

Unfortunately, no dogs attend our church so that is not an option. Don’t think I haven’t considered asking one of my pups if they have found Jesus, though. It would save a lot of wear-and-tear on my back.