Hello Friends 

I want to share with you Indoor Activities for 2-Year-Olds today in my article. These pandemic days caused by Coronavirus, every one of us is staying at home to protect our kids and familiars. In the conditions, when the schools, daycare centers, and any other outdoor activities are restricted, spending a recreative indoors time with our kids is the best thing to do. I know very well that children like more to spend a lot of activities outside, like playing at the playground, walk and playing at the park, ride a bike, and many other things to do. 

But, there are funny, educative, learning and many other activities that a kid can and must do indoors. As parents, we have the opportunity these quarantine days to spend much time with our kids in our home. 

I hope that in your home, you are doing well with your kids, spending an amusing time. This period can’t be different from the other days, or weekends that we stay at home with our children. Let’s see the benefits, and don’t panic.  

My daughter is now 26 months, and she can not understand very well the reason why we are staying at home and why she can’t do her daily outside activities. But, on the other side, we are spending a great time all together in our family, doing many entertainment activities. In the end, time is precious, and the situation allows me to invest it in my family. I want to share with you one of our daily indoor activities, having fun, and learning new things together. If you have an interest, please keep reading. 

What must know about a 2-years-olds child?

If you have a child at my daughter’s age or have raised a child before, you may know that the second year of a child has more challenges for us parents and need more energy and commitment. The baby in the first year is more delicate, but her activities and routine concentrated most on feeding and sleeping while learning, and other activities increased by the second half of the first year. 

During the second year of his life, your child goes through several significant milestones for its development. So, a 2-year-old child develops motor, lingual skills, and he is more independent in his actions and interaction with other people.  

A Two years old child has these physical parameters:

• Weight: about 11–13 kg
• Height: about 80–92 cm
• Teeth: 12 temporary

A Thirty Months old toddler must have a full set of 20 temporary teeth.

Motor skills 

1. Your baby can walk by himself, run, overcomes small obstacles, and dance.
2. He/She can climb and come down from different objects like parents’ beds, chairs, etc. without your help.
3. Your child can climb the stairs holding on to a stand and can trash her toys or other objects while walking. 
4. She can drink from the glass and eat her food by herself. 
5. She can undress by herself or collaborate with you. 
6. She can copy simple shapes.

Hearing, sight, and language skills 

1. Any child is an individual in his development process. A child 2-years old pronounces a few words and can form simple phrases. Some start to speak earlier, and some others during the third year of life.   
2. At two years, a child understands the questions and answers in his way, even with body language, if he can not pronounces many words. 
3. She is attentive, understands the conversation that you do with her, and executes the simple commands, like to take or bring something, sit down, etc.

Personality and the relational environment 

1. She likes to do by herself very things, like eating, dressing, etc.
2. She asks for her things and can demonstrate what she wants.
3. She can demonstrate affection for her parents and the other familiars. 
4. She can play by herself for a while, imitating her parent’s actions, for example cooking like her mother.

What Indoor Activities for 2-year-olds can we do at our home?

In the second and third year, a baby is more interactive, like to know and learn many things, imitating and being curious about all around him. Her brain is like a sponge that absorbs and memorizes any detail and new learning. Referring to psychologists, the development of a child’s brain is very significant in the first year of life, especially from two to five years old. 

For this reason, we need to discipline our kids with love and to work every day with them for learning and development. At the age of two, a child-like most to play, or any activities considered by him as a game. So, we will play with our child, but completing our mission or task to do in our child stages. 

I have organized the activities with my daughter in these categories:

• Learning Activities 
• Educational Activities 
• Motor Skills Activities 
• Fun Activities
• Daily-Routine Activities 

Learning Activities 

As I mentioned upper, learning is one of the most important things that we need to develop and supervise our child. I know, that this part of the child development many time covered by the teacher or nursery governess if your child frequents a daycare center. But, when we spend time at home with our kids, learning should not miss in our to-do list activities. Even when you are a new parent, don’t panic, you can learn anything to educate and teach your child, step by step. 

The best of this is that learning is a wide specter and involves a lot of knowledge and milestones. With my daughter, I spend at least 10-15 min in different activities that help in learning. Any daily activity that we do together has learning or educative concepts. I will list some of the most significant for a 2-year-olds child. 

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1. Learning colors – we learn colors using various activities and games. Kids like very much drawing and painting. You can make this process fun, and at the same time, learning colors. Working every day, your child can identify and separate colors. Important is to highlight any time that you use a color, the name of the color. Except for the drawing, colors are everywhere in our home. Your baby toys have many colors, dresses, etc. even your silicone cups in your kitchen have colors. So, anytime you can use this thing to learn colors for your child. 
2. Learning shapes – During the second year, your child can understand the geometric shapes and can copy by himself some of them, like a circle, a square, or a triangle. Like colors, we have many objects that fit with geometric shapes in our homes, or you can use a piece of card, and create some of the geometric shapes. Ask your child to find a similar geometric at his toys. My daughter has a puzzle rubber carpet with shapes, numbers, and different animals. She likes to build it by herself. Doing this can develop her motor skills, learning colors, shapes, and numbers.
3. Learning numbers – There are many manners of learning numbers that you can practice without any other helping tool- our fingers are great helpers in this learning experience. Start by teaching your child to know her age, and to count at least up to 5. My daughter for the moment counts up to three, or better can pronounce three first numbers. There are a lot of learning songs that can help you to teach your child numbers. All you need to do is to have fun singing your preferred song together with your child, create your song personages using your fingers, and teach numbers to your child.  
4. Learning letters and reading – Many parents like to teach the child to know letters and to learn reading. There are various tested methods or approved toys that you can use for this. For any other learning activity, you need to work with your child for 10-15 minutes per day for learning reading. Many parents are testimony of the fact that a 2-years old child can learn to read. If you agree with this learning category, you can buy an approved and tested method and start to apply with your child. 
5. Learning musical notes– Our kids are smart and talented, and we need to introduce to them primary knowledge of various art disciplines, from the first year of life, and music is one of them. You can start with the first three music notes, using toy instruments, which design for your child. Your child may have a perfect musical ear. You need to encourage him and develop his talent.
6. Learning the Animals – At two years old, a child must know the animals and how each of them says. How many animals must know? Any child is individual, and it all depends on how much time you will invest in this learning part. There are many books, toys, or youtube videos, and songs that can help you with this. You can intertwine the books with outdoor activities. The Best manner is to present your child with the animals from near, going to a farm or a zoo.
7. Learning to know the human body– A baby can start to identify some of his body parts when he is one-year-old. So, your child can show you, where is his mouth, nose, eyes, or ears. At two years, your child must know or learn if he didn’t know the human body parts.
8. Learning fruits and vegetables– Staying home, grows the love for food. Our baby should know the fruits and vegetables they eat every day. 
9. Senses Development Activities–The stimulation of the development of the five sensors, sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, begins in the first year and should continue by passing on the child’s knowledge about them in the following years as well. In our home, we have many things helpful for this process. You can apply your child to smell a flower in your garden or species in your kitchen, give to taste a variety of food, knowing sweet, salted, sour, cold, or hot. In everything we do at home, there are always things to learn from our child.
10. Learning the opposite concept– Each day, through communication, we can lean to our child, various things. One of the things that a child must know is opposites. When we play or do other activities together, we can explain to our child the big and small, cold and hot, up and down, etc. 

There are many other things that your child can learn in his daily activity, but I consider the categories above, necessary for the better education and development of the child. 

 Educational Activities

Although education resembles learning, I prefer to treat them as two separate processes in my child’s activities. We need to educate children and learn good habits day after day. There are various training and educative process to do during the second and the third year of our child. 

Some of them, by my experiences, are: 

1. Feeding Rules– A 2-year-old child can eat by himself, so it is an added value to educate him about the good manners of eating. Our child must know to wash his hands before and after eating, how to use the spoon and the fork, the meal must consume at the table, etc.  
2.  Potty training – Some parents apply for potty training after 18 month-old, but between two and three years old is a good time to do potty training. If you don’t know how and where to start, you can read my article about it, or buy other books that explain all the process. There are potty training games that encourage your child to train faster. 
3. Hygena Rules – morning and evening routines are substantial to educate the child about good manners for keeping his hygiene. I don’t pretend that a child to do all by himself, but with the parent’s supervision, your child can wash his hand, brush the teeth, and wash body parts while taking a bath in the evening. 
4. Learning magic words – When a child is two years old, we need to learn to him to know Please and Thank You, Sorry and Excuse me. Even if the children still do not talk, they communicate with us. During our daily routine, we must repeat these polite words to the child. One day, you will be glad to hear that your child uses any of these words in his vocabulary. 
5. Reading and vocabulary – Reading is a process that must accompany the baby raising from birth. Daily, we must read to our children. In the second year, the interest of the child increases in books and reading. Reading helps in speaking, thinking, development, etc.

Physical and Motor Skills Activities 

Motor skills development is substantial in every stage of the child. For the best result, we need to interweave the outdoors and indoor activities, but on these quarantine days, we need to do everything at home. To replace the daily outdoor activity, I practice these mini activities with my daughter. 

1. Dancing– At least 15-30 min a day, I practice to dance various kid’s songs that encourage the movement of all body parts, and at the same time are educative, and funny. Watching TV is not recommended for the children, but if they do, the programs must be educative and a way to not keep them nailed but to be interactive and learn about it.
2. Playing with the ball or ballon– There are many games that you can play at home, even in small areas. We play basketball. If you don’t have a basketball hoop, you can buy a hoop toy, or make by yourself with wire or similar material that you have at home. The child will have fun, and the arms muscles will develop. If you have a long corridor, like us, you can play football. To not be misunderstood, you can choose any other game, by the areas and the opportunity that you may have, at your home.  
3. Learning to ride a bike– Driving a car or riding a bike, are more for outdoors, but in our conditions, we use our free spaces at home to take some minutes of riding. 
4. Running and playing other games – At this age, the children are very energetic and doesn’t like to play only sitting in one place. So, we try various games, just running or a car race, imitate an animal, etc. 

Funny activities 

Everything that I listed above, and any other activities that I do, with my daughter, must be funny. Otherwise, the child’s interest and the collaboration will miss. Some other fun things that we made are:

1. Cooking– As I said above, a 2-years-old imitates and copies his parent’s actions. In this part, we must care that our children don’t hurt trying to do adult actions, but there are many funny to do in cooking. Any time that I cook cookies or pie, I give my daughter a piece of dough to play and learn. When I make a cake, she likes to broke eggs and to mix the ingredients. You can choose any other no risky activity in cooking to do with your child.
2. Playing Hide and Seek– It is one of the preferred games for my daughter, and I think for all the children at this age. They like to explore new places for hiding, making the game interactive and not boring. One other thing that you must know is that a two years old child will like to hide various objects in his secret place at home. If you miss something, search after the head frame of your bed or after other furniture in your home. 🙂
3. Play with stickers – There are many books with stickers that you can buy and play with your child. They are educative, learning, and fun. You can prepare similar games, for example, draw a cat, paint it together and prepare some stickers to attach to the cat, eyes, tail, etc. To make it more fun, you can play blindfolded, to stick in the right place.
4. Play with plasticine– You can buy plasticine and a variety of shapes, for learning and having fun, creating many objects like fruits, veggies, animals, etc. 
5. Play with blocks or Puzzles– Blocks and Puzzle help learn colors, shapes, numbers, develop imagination, and above all, children like blocks and have fun playing within. 

Daily-Routine Activities- A 2-year-olds Child schedule 

The schedule of a child, I think that is individual, especially a few months after giving birth, the baby creates its routine and program, which changes as the stages progress and the baby grows. I want to share my daughter’s schedule if you like to compare or refer to any change in your child’s routine.

From 6 a.m-7 a.m, my daughter wakes up. She likes to wake up earlier, most of the days at 6.30 a.m. 

From 7 a.m – 7.30 a.m, we do the morning routine, go to the toilet, brush teeth, wash face, and dress up. 

From 7.30 a.m- to 8 a.m, we do some exercise or dance to any song that helps in the movement of the body limb.

From 8 a.m – 9 a.m, it is breakfast time. 

From 9 a.m – 10 a.m, we focus on learning activities, like building with blocks, painting, counting, etc. 

From 10.a.m- 10.30 am, it is snack time.

From 10.30 a.m-11.30 a.m, we play and do other interactive activities, physical and funny activities.   

From 11.30 a.m – 12.a.m, time to prepare for lunch, washing hands, and take a seat at the table. 

From noon to – 1.p.m, it is lunchtime and after lunch preparing for nap time. Before nap time, I read to my daughter.

From 1 p.m to 2.30 p.m, it is my daughter’s nap time. 

From 2.30 p.m – 3 p.m, it is time to wake up and dressed.

From 3 p.m-4 p.m, it is snack time again. 

From 4.p.m- 6.p.m, we have various learning activities.

From 6.p.m – 7 p.m, it is dinner time.

From 7.30p.m – 8 p.m – Bath time

From 8 p.m to 9.pm preparing for sleep, reading before sleep, and having quiet activities before bedtime.

At 9.30 p.m – my daughter falls asleep. 

Conclusions 

In our daily, there are many other activities that we do, but these are most preferred. I believe that you and your child have your preferred games and indoor activities, too. I listed and focused on this article, the most indoor activities that we do at our home, and I think they are helpful for child development and education. 

Would do you like to share with us the indoor activities that you do together with your 2-years- old child? If you prefer, you can leave your comments, share your experiences, or any questions in the form below. I will back to you in less than 48 hours.

I hope that this article about Indoor Activities for 2-Year-Olds is helpful for you and the other parents. If you think so, please share in your network to help other parents, informing them about the various opportunities that have to spend their time with their kiddos in these quarantine days. 

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