Oh man. Am I becoming one of those moms?
I don’t even know what that means any more, really, but before I had kids, I would look at those moms who planned activities for their kids every day of the week, who did art projects, who made everything educational and I would scoff.
Maybe not out loud. It was an internal scoff.
But now that I am a mom, I have discovered two important facts: 1) toddlers get bored and boredom leads to whinging, and 2) I don’t really want to plunk mine down in front of the TV every time she does get bored with her toys, nor do I have the ability to just drop everything and come up with some sort of heretofore unplanned activity.
Used to be that I could just take the little one outside into the yard for a while and that would alleviate the boredom (and accompanying whining). But here in Colorado, we’ve just had our first major cold snap of the year, giving me a preview of the winter months to come—and 30 or 40-degree temps don’t make for long, lazy afternoons in the yard.
So, I started brainstorming little age-appropriate activities we could do. And because I am totally type-A, I started to put them into themed weeks. And because I am a total nut-ball, I put them all into a calendar.
And then I decided, “Well, if I’m going to be this crazy, I might as well share the wealth.”
Therefore, I give you:
A calendar of themed toddler activities for October
A few notes:
- I tried to keep the projects fairly simple and age-appropriate for my 18-month-old.
- I made a list of supplies at the bottom so that you and I can make just ONE trip to the craft store.
- Some of the projects link to other wonderful blog posts that explain how to do them; most of them I found on Pinterest. 😉
- We go to story time at the library on Tuesdays; hence, every Tuesday is library day. I also put in some activities that we’re planning to do, like going to a farm and a pumpkin patch. Your mileage will vary with those, of course.
- I’m providing this as a Word document (you can open it with Google Docs if you don’t have Word) so it’s totally editable and customizable.
What do you think? Is this something you would use? Let me know! (Because I may or may not have already started putting one together for November. Please don’t mock me!)
