1 and 3 year old. What do we doooo all day!?

A

ahead

New member
New SAHM here. I have this awesome list of tons of fun places we can go and things we can do. Turns out it’s really exhausting going out with a 1 and 3 year old. And especially with the weather turning I’m needing ideas for more things we can do at home. My oldest loves games and art but my littlest destroys games and eats art. I can sometimes kill time with sensory bins but need more at home ideas please!

ETA: thank you everyone for the wonderful suggestions!! My kids are actually almost 4 and 18 months. I’m hopeful we’re almost to the end of eating everything phase for my little one. And my big one goes to PreK 5 hours per day. Which is awesome but also makes getting out of the house extra weird since we can’t do it first thing. Going to respond to as many of you as I can directly!
 
@ahead I realize you’re asking for indoor ideas but noticed you said going out is exhausting - to which I agree.

When my kids were that age and I’d take them somewhere, library, zoo, park, wherever - I’d try to arrive around 9 or 10 am and leave by lunch. When we got home we would ear lunch and then they’d take naps. I rarerky went anywhere all day at that age.

Just my two cents - I picked up that routine from my in-laws and it made sense.

Another thought - anything at home, limit to really short periods of time. The three year old may be able to do a project for 10-20 mins max. The one year old, ha! Destroying their project is about all you may get, but they are learning about how the world works, cause and effect, etc.

This was an incredibly difficult stage for me…. I feel for you!
 
@blackswordsman I agree. It’s way easier to be out than at home. Most places don’t open until 9:30 or 10. We’ve been up since six, so it’s like mid day. 😆

Go out from 9:30-11:30. Do lunch and naps. Now you’re at 3 something. Home stretch til dad gets home!

Library, local museum, friends houses, heck take a trip to Home Depot and go run around the aisles. Or if you have a mall with ramps! My kids would just run up and down and it’s dead at the mall at 10 am. Mall children’s play area. Grocery store is an outing. See if the bakery gives out cookies to kids.
 
@brucepjr I wish we could go out first thing! My big kid has preK in the morning so we can’t all go out together until 2 or so. I love some of these ideas though like running around the mall and the bakery! Genius!
 
@blackswordsman This is what we would do as well. Mine were this age during the lockdown so we sought out things like ADA approved trails that were flat and stroller/wagon friendly. We would bring snacks, have a snack picnic and head home. Often they would fall asleep in the car on the way home.
 
@ahead I have a 1 and 4 year old. Being at home is hard in a different way than going out. There aren't many things that both of my kids will happily do together, but the few I have discovered are...
  • Musical instruments. We bought a box of little kid instruments and they both enjoy banging on the drums and playing the recorder.
  • Drag a bed mattress to the floor and put on music. They go nuts. The mattress adds a novelty. I usually do this when I am washing bedsheets.
  • We set up a safe spot for the 4 year old. We set up a baby play pen and instead of containing the 1 year old, we gave it to the 4 year old so she could build and play without worry of destruction.
And as a final note, I've realized that if I want to go out with my kids in the morning, I have to prep their lunches the night before. It allows us to be gone longer and it means no cranky crying kids while I try to cook.
 
@saltlamp Snacks, too!! Snacks in the car to the fun, snacks in the car from the fun. It's usually gram crackers or something easy leave in the car.

We also play outside in all weather as much as we can. Even if it means more laundry, I like knowing they ran around outside at least once.
 
@ahead Breakfast in the car looks like frozen smoothies in molds, yogurt in pouches, and whole fruit.

Lunch in the car is always crackers with cheese slices and pepperoni.

Snacks include gram crackers, vitamin C lolly pops, dried fruits like mango, goldfish, granola bars, fruit bars, and really whatever snacks are on sale haha. Honestly goldfish are probably my least favorite because the get everywhere but they do keep kids happy and that makes me a safer driver.
 
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@ahead I got you.

The key here is going to be pairings. Finding two activities that are easy to manage at the same time, that are each appropriate age wise. It’s important that the kids don’t care about each other’s stuff as well. So you have to find things 1 year olds don’t care about that 3 year olds love and vice versa.

This will take some trial and error, because your kids will just hate some stuff and it won’t work. Here’s a few examples:
  1. Chunky plastic stickers (target) for 3 year old who has his own sheet and pulls them himself to put on a paper, hand cheap stickers to 1 year old to put on high chair.
  2. Play dough for 3 year old, kinetic sand for 1 year old. 1 year old won’t eat the sand and let the 3 year old mix colors of play dough. Give them both every tool in your kitchen that is safe for kids to mess with their material. Tell them they need to “check out” one or two tools at a time and trade them.
  3. Dance parties, self explanatory.
  4. Geocaching. Look it up - wear the 1 year old and let the 3 year old look for stuff. Find it yourself without them noticing and then give them hints to find it.
  5. Mud pit. I swear this is the best thing we’ve ever done and I wish I did it sooner. Go get a real shovel from Home Depot and dig a hole 3” deep and about 3’ in a circle. Then loosen up some of the dirt. Put them in rain gear and let them play. Will it mess up your yard? Yes. Will there be mud everywhere? Yes. But they’ll do a solid hour in the mud pit literally every day.
Get every one of their plates, spoons, cups, kitchen tools, etc. and bring them out. Hose them all down afterwards together and then throw them into the dishwasher.
  1. Treasure map. Draw a map going from location to location in your house to collect things (example - draw the bed and have them jump on the bed) as a scavenger hunt. When you find everything make something with it. Following the bed example you would put like, a spoon in the bed, and eventually you’d have everything to make cookies.
Hope this helps - good luck out there.
 
@dcoders Damn. I’m really sad I didn’t have this list when I had a 1 year old and a 3 year old in the middle of the pandemic. I mean, I did figure out the pairings thing eventually, but it was nowhere near this sophisticated and took a WHILE to figure out. Fantastic list, sir.
 
@dcoders Keeping pairings in mind is so smart! I’ve been trying to pair activities that don’t pair - if that makes sense - like occupy the little one with Veggie paint while I play a game with the big one. But I like the idea of picking pairings that we can all do together so much more!
 
@ahead Aqua magic doodle mat was a big hit when my kids were younger, no mess too which was great. Also those pop up tent things are always fun, we've had ours for years and they still use them.

Busytoddler on jnstagram has a bunch of neat ideas too
 
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