Everything you need to find on keeping little hands busy!

Educational Activities:
12-18 Months

• Water play-one of my daughter's favourite activities!
• Playing in the mud - help them to make mud cakes, or cover themselves in mud!
• Pouring water using different containers
  
• pretend washing dishes (give them a bowl with some dish washing liquid, or Acorn Kids famous Surfs Up(especially if they love bubbles) and let them wash their play tea set, or favourite plastic toys. Or let them do it at the sink if it's cold outside, just make sure you have a towel under them to avoid the messy floor.
• Posting activities- use a box or used ice cream tub, juice cup with a lid, cut holes in the lid and let your child post something e.g. plastic lids, straws, spaghetti
  
• Pouring (using different sensory textures - ideas are split peas, lentils, samp mealies). Give your little one a plastic spoon with other empty plastic bowl. Watch how they love to pour and spoon the items into the various bowls.
• Writing outside with chalk: if you have a paved area or precast wall outside that you don't mind getting 'dirty'

Bath Time: (for more bath time fun please see my Acorn page)
Use bath pops(see my acorn kids page) to tell your children a story, or let them tell you a story or make one up. Eg. Jack and the beanstalk, Cinderella.
Teaching colours:  Transform your bath into a kaleidoscope of colours using Angel Powder. This powder comes in the 3 primary colours (red, yellow, blue) and you can teach your children about mixing colours. Which colours make green? Blue and Yellow (tonight they have a Shrek bath)  Which colours make purple? Blue and Red (Barney Bath)

Main Skills to Focus on:

• Colour recognition
  
• Shape recognition
• Building vocabulary (by talking about everything you are doing and by reading to your children everyday)
• Hand control
• Gross motor skills: crawling, walking, jumping, running, tumbling

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Educational activities (from 3 years to 5 years)

I started homeschooling my four year old last year.  From this experience I have seen the most important tasks or skills for children to learn are written below.  This isn't a final list....just what I had time to write!

Literacy:
Exposure to the different letters of the alphabet 
Letter recognition
Name of the letter and sound
Words starting with the particular sound

Numeracy:
Counting
Number recognition
Sequence of numbers
Sorting
Difference and same activities

Other:
Imaginary play
Cutting skills
Gross motor - balance, ball skills, and so much more!
Visual perception

If you are looking for more information on this, please look at my home schooling page, I have a list of the blogs that I follow and they have lovely activities!

Please have a look at my pintrest board for more on this :) (see the icon at the top of the page).