I am the queen of letting my toddler watch T.V. when I need to get something done! I blame it on having overly clingy kids (truth) and being too tired to do everything at the end of the day (mostly true lol).
Once my youngest dropped her morning nap I found it a lot easier to keep the T.V. off, but now I had an hour long gap that needed to fill the attention span of two increasingly active and easily bored toddlers.
It was definitely an adjustment, since my kids unfortunately don’t enjoy Target runs and Goodwill hunting as much as I do, but we’ve come up with some ideas over the last couple of weeks that I thought I’d share with you! 
- Go on a treasure hunt – make a list of items to “find” and go on a treasure hunt walk to find them! Items could be different colors of leaves, rocks that are certain shapes, even trash to pick up and throw away when you get home! You can make a little list with pictures for non-readers to cross off as go around finding their treasures.
- Color – set out different colors of paper and different types of crayons, colored pencils, markers and chalk. Let your toddler pick a couple items from each group to color with, then change things up when they get bored! You can also add different sticker books to the mix!
- Stickers – speaking of stickers, I love this sticker book from Melissa and Doug! Each page is a different theme, so your toddler can create different scenes from each page. Reagan’s favorite is the dress up page, she loves picking out different shirts, pants, and shoes for each girl to wear!
- Make something to eat – my toddler LOVES cooking! We have this cookbook of different princess recipes and we love making meals from it. Our favorites are the muffins, cookies, and fruit smoothies! It’s fun to teach her the basics of cooking and prepping meals and the reward of eating something delicious at the end.
- Let them do chores – washing windows is a fan favorite! Also unloading the dishwasher, sweeping, and picking up toys in patterns (all the green toys first!)
- Make a splash zone – it is hot as heck for a few months here, and I was struggling to find things for my kids to do outside of the house. Before we bought a blow up pool, I’d fill up some mixing bowls and plastic storage boxes with water and let my kids splash in them outside! It’s extra fun to include tupperware cups or measuring spoons to play with, or even to dye the water with food coloring!
- Build a fort – or even better, blow one up! We’ve been loving this Air Fort because it sets up and takes down in seconds and is huge inside. We like piling books, blankets, and pillows inside and hanging out together.
- Play a sorting game – I picked up a $1 bag of pom poms at Target a couple weeks ago that have provided so much entertainment in our house! I mix all the colors together and give my toddler different bowls to sort the colors into. Then my youngest picks them all up and puts them back into the mixing bowl. They literally did this for an hour before bedtime the other day!
- Paint something – I love doing DIY house projects, so it seems like I’m always painting furniture or building something in the garage. It’s fun to let my toddler help paint or hand me different tools when I’m building something. She feels extra special because she get one-on-one time and gets to help me with a big project.
- Dance party – when in doubt dance it out! We have an Amazon Echo Dot in our kitchen that is always playing music, one of our favorite stations is Tot Time because my kids recognize a lot of the Disney songs and will sing along and dance to them. They have a lot of nursery rhymes too that my baby likes to do the hand motions too. Take things up a notch and dress up in princess dresses to dance to the movie soundtracks! Your kids will love it!
The next time your toddlers are crazy and it’s 3pm and you reach for the T.V. remote, pull up this list and see if there’s something that your kids would rather do instead! And hang in there mama, it’s almost bedtime 😉