Activities to keep a Toddler entertained....

Since James is so busy with school and our finances are a bit tight right now, I'm spending a lot of time with Annie at home trying to find ways to stay busy and entertained during this time.  Thank goodness for Pinterest and friends with toddlers of their own to give me great ideas for keeping Annie occupied and hopefully learning.  Here are a couple of the activities we've done this past week.

A couple of years ago I purchased some water beads that enlarge when soaked in water overnight.  I put purple food coloring in the water to tint the water beads and make them a little more fun.  Annie loves them!!  They're a little messy when squished and they bounce all over the place so I only let her play with them out on our balcony.  This morning I caught her purposely bouncing them over the balcony so I had to put a stop to that.  :)

This next activity used our almost expired plain greek yogurt we had in the back of the fridge (that I'm sure I purchased a while ago for a recipe but have long forgotten which recipe I intended to make).  I divided it up, added some food coloring and then taped up some paper on the balcony for Annie to "paint" with.  Like most toddler's would do in this situation, Annie eventually ditched the paintbrush and used her fingers to finger paint.  :)

It got pretty messy after a while, and I didn't want her to step into the house so I carried her straight to the bathtub and let her continue her fun for a while longer.  Thanks to Jeanette for that great idea!  I saw on her blog that she let her daughter "paint" in their tub/shower with colored shaving cream.  Annie enjoyed that as well.  And the cleanup was easy for us and fun for her.  Once the yogurt was rinsed I filled the tub with clean water and washed her clean. Everyone was happy! :)