Throughout the winter months we plan to bring you ‘Toddler Tuesdays’. Each week we will post an indoor, rainy day activity you can do with your toddler. Many of us have experienced how busy ex-NICU toddlers can be and we thought you might appreciate some activity suggestions. This weeks activity is garden art.

You will need -

A print out of our free garden clip art which can be found here (you’ll need to cut out the pictures or an older child may do this for themselves), or pictures of trees, flowers, insects, birds, grass etc cut from magazines or drawn.
A large sheet of paper, A3, scrapbook page or newspaper.
Gluestick - if your child has an aversion to glue you may find more success with double sided tape or ‘blue glue’.
Optional - crayons or coloured pencils.

Instructions -

Set out the things you will need at the kitchen table or toddler table so that everything is ready for your child. Encourage them to stick the larger items first and work their way down to the smaller items. They may not want to stick all of the items which is fine. You might need to hand the cut outs, out individually rather than letting the child pic for themselves, that will come down to your comfort level and the particular child. Encourage the child to use the gluestick to glue the pieces on for themselves if age/ability appropriate. Once all of the sticking is completed the child might like to use the crayons or coloured pencils to add grass to the bottom of the picture, the sun, clouds or rain to the sky etc.

Focus -

This activity promotes fine motor skills and is a great opportunity for language development. You may use key phrases like, ‘stick it’, ‘turn over’, ‘more?‘ Also name the items that they are sticking, ‘tree’, ‘leaf’, flower‘ etc. Remember that even when your child isn’t responding to your comments you are imprinting that language and correct grammar on their brain for retrieval when they developmentally get to that stage. If your child is already using some of those key words themselves add an additional word to your phrase like, ‘big tree’, ‘green leaf’ etc.

If you try out one of our activities please let us know what your toddler (and you) thought. Feel free to leave a comment here or post an image or comment to our Facebook page. If you enjoy the activity we would encourage you to share this post with your friends.