educational activities for toddlers pdf

100+ Free Toddler Printables

ST PATRICK'S DAY FOR TODDLERS

Preschool Worksheets PDF FREE Printable

Here is a list of free preschool worksheets pdf you can download and print from Planes & Balloons. You’ll find activities and worksheets that strengthen fine motor skills, early literacy and math skills, thinking and reasoning skills, focus and attention, and so much more.

Coloring pages

Language arts

Preschool math

Cut and paste

Same or different

free preschool worksheets age 3-4 pdf

Pre-K to Kindergarten Review

Grab this book full of engaging activities to prepare your little one for kindergarten!

Or use them in your nursery or preschool lesson plans throughout the year.

Preschool Number worksheets

You can easily turn a bunch of these worksheets into a cute preschool workbook for teaching numbers!

Tracing the numbers 1-20

Number flashcards 1-20

Halloween counting 1-20

Spring color by number

Christmas count and match

Preschool alphabet worksheets.

Check out these fun and educational alphabet activities for your preschoolers!

Spot and dot uppercase alphabet

Alphabet tracing worksheets printable

Tracing lowercase letters

Hot chocolate letter matching

Alphabet coloring book

Preschool shapes worksheets.

Free printable preschool learning materials free download pdf for your 3-4 year olds and 4-5 year old preschoolers!

Do a dot shapes worksheets

Frog shapes cut and paste

My shape book free printablE

Free Printable Shapes Worksheets

Tracing shapes worksheets

Nursery worksheets pdf.

Let your preschoolers practice visual discrimination with these fun same and different worksheets in your home or daycare!

Spring same and different

Same and different worksheets for preschool

Visual discrimination practice

Ocean same and different

CActus same and different

Preschool tracing worksheets pdf.

Tracing is a great preschool pre-writing activity , especially when you need one quickly and without much prep work. There are many tracing activities for preschoolers here, including tracing shapes, horizontal and vertical lines, and tracing pictures.

Tracing lines spring worksheets

Tracing fall pictures for preschool

Valentine’s Day number tracing

Alphabet tracing worksheets.

Transportation tracing pages

Preschool cut and paste worksheets.

Preschool cut and paste worksheets to practice scissor skills and fine motor skills.

Cut and paste Apple Worksheets

Cut and paste Easter eggs

Cut and paste For preschool

Cut and paste hearts

HALLOWEEN CUT AND PASTE

Preschool mazes printable.

These printable mazes will be a fun addition to your preschool playgroup activities.

Christmas mazes

Back to school mazes

Easter mazes

Mazes for preschoolers

Number mazes

Coloring is popular with little ones, especially if the coloring pages are in sync with their favorite topics such as bugs, cars, fall, Christmas, and more.

Toddler Lesson Plans - Themed Toddler Activities

Toddler Lesson Plans

Toddler themes.

• All About Me
• Community Helpers
• Transportation
• Bugs, butterflies and insects
• Under the Sea
• Five Senses

What is included in the toddler lesson plans?

Each of the 20 activity ideas include:

What skills are covered in the toddler lesson plans?

• Social and Emotional Well Being
• Gross-Motor
• Number Sense
• Pre-writing
• and much more!

How do you implement these toddler lesson plan?

Who designed the toddler unit lesson plans .

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Printable Free Preschool Worksheets Age 3 – 5 (PDF)

Before we get down to our comprehensive list of Printable Free Preschool Worksheets Age 3 – 5 (PDF) format , let’s explore why are they important in the first place.

As a parent or educator, you might be looking for ways to help preschool children develop their skills and knowledge. One great way to do this is through the use of interactive worksheets.

Worksheets can be a fun and engaging way for children to learn and practice important concepts.

Overall, free downloadable educational worksheets, activity sheets & other digital resources that can be a valuable tool in a preschool classroom.

Why Use Worksheets in Preschool?

• Skill building: Worksheets help preschoolers develop and reinforce important skills such as hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, and handwriting.
• Learning reinforcement: Worksheets provide an opportunity for preschoolers to reinforce what they have learned through hands-on activities and games.
• Structure and routine: Worksheets can help establish a structured routine in the classroom, providing a clear start and finish to a task.
• Differentiation: Worksheets can be used to differentiate instruction and meet the needs of individual learners.
• Assessment: Worksheets can be used as a form of assessment to track progress and identify areas where additional support may be needed.
• Independence: Worksheets can promote independent learning as preschoolers can work on them individually or in small groups, allowing for self-directed learning.
• Preparation for kindergarten: Worksheets can help prepare preschoolers for the academic demands of kindergarten by introducing them to concepts such as letter and number recognition, counting, and basic math skills.

Related: 20 Quick Interactive Activities for Preschoolers & Toddlers (Age 3 – 5) Related: Easy Educational Activities for Preschoolers Related: Quick Hands-on Activities for Preschoolers

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150 Free Printable Preschool Worksheets for Preschoolers age 3,4 & 5

Here are 150 downloadable preschool worksheets for children aged 3,4 & 5 in PDF format:

• Tracing for sight words
• Dot-to-dot activities
• Shape sorting games
• Picture sequencing
• Sensory bin activities
• Story retelling activities
• Rhyming word memory games
• Counting with manipulatives
• Letter matching games
• Science experiments for kids
• Math games with dice
• Simple science investigations
• Art projects with recycled materials
• Pattern block activities
• Sensory writing trays
• Color mixing experiments
• Fine motor practice activities
• DIY board games
• Social-emotional learning activities
• Playdough shape making
• Cooking activities for kids
• Nature scavenger hunts
• Yoga for kids
• Dramatic play activities
• Music and movement activities
• Building block challenges
• Balance beam activities
• Gross motor obstacle courses
• Sensory bottles
• Texture exploration activities
• Pre-writing skill activities
• Number sense activities
• Reading comprehension activities
• Gross motor hopscotch games
• Sensory play with shaving cream
• Science experiments with water
• Sensory play with rice or beans
• Art activities with nature items
• Measurement activities
• Gross motor dancing games
• Sensory play with slime
• STEM activities for kids
• Cooking with science experiments
• Emotion recognition activities
• Building with recycled materials
• Paper plate crafts
• Science experiments with baking soda and vinegar
• Process art projects
• Sensory bins with different textures
• Shape recognition with food items.
• Tracing for letters and numbers
• Color by number
• Counting with pictures
• Matching for shapes and colors
• Cutting and pasting activities
• Pattern recognition
• Handwriting practice sheets
• Name tracing
• Picture addition
• Picture subtraction
• Sorting activities based on shapes and colors
• Alphabet and letter recognition
• Rhyming word
• Sight word recognition
• Simple math problems
• Writing practice
• Picture puzzles
• Memory matching games
• Odd one out
• Mazes for tracing practice
• Color recognition
• Picture graphing activities
• Word search puzzles
• Fill in the missing letters
• Animal recognition
• Basic geometry
• Weather recognition
• Basic science experiments
• Time-telling
• Science experiments
• Number recognition
• Shape recognition
• Size recognition
• Learning about money
• Sequencing activities
• Learning about seasons
• Learning about the human body
• Hand-eye coordination
• Coloring pages with simple shapes
• Learning about the five senses
• Learning about food groups
• Learning about community helpers
• Learning about transportation
• Learning about animals and their habitats
• Learning about musical instruments
• Learning about countries and cultures
• Learning about the environment
• Learning about emotions
• Learning about sports
• Learning about holidays and celebrations
• Playdough modeling and sculpting
• Cooking and baking simple recipes
• Dressing up and pretend play
• Building with blocks and Legos
• Sensory bins with rice, beans, or sand
• Water play with cups, containers, and funnels
• Outdoor scavenger hunt
• Indoor treasure hunt
• Making paper airplanes and testing them out
• Dancing and movement activities
• Singing nursery rhymes and children’s songs
• Reading and storytelling
• Puppet shows and finger plays
• Yoga and stretching exercises
• Painting with watercolors or finger paints
• Making collages with recycled materials
• Creating simple origami designs
• Balloon play and games
• Creating with play foam or kinetic sand
• Making and playing with homemade slime
• Nature walks and outdoor exploration
• Planting and caring for a small garden
• Making homemade bird feeders
• Science experiments with everyday materials
• Exploring magnets and magnetic materials
• Learning about colors through mixing paint
• Learning about shapes through building with tangram blocks
• Learning about textures through sensory exploration
• Learning about weight and balance through simple physics experiments
• Learning about the water cycle through hands-on activities
• Making and decorating paper masks
• Creating and decorating paper crowns
• Designing and making simple paper puppets
• Building and designing cardboard forts and castles
• Playing with toy cars and making simple race tracks
• Playing with toy trains and building simple tracks
• Making and playing with homemade musical instruments
• Learning about basic coding and programming with unplugged activities
• Playing simple card games like Go Fish or Memory
• Building and playing with simple board games
• Learning about basic addition and subtraction through dice games
• Making and flying kites
• Making and playing with homemade juggling balls
• Creating and playing with simple obstacle courses
• Making and decorating paper dolls and clothes
• Creating and playing with paper boats
• Learning about different cultures through cooking and eating international foods
• Making and playing with a simple marble run
• Learning about science and the natural world through virtual field trips and videos
• Learning about art and artists through virtual museum tours and art activities.
• Duncan, G. J., Dowsett, C. J., Claessens, A., Magnuson, K., Huston, A. C., Klebanov, P., & Japel, C. (2007) . School readiness and later achievement. Developmental psychology, 43(6), 1428-1446.
• Farley, D. L. (2018) . The Effects of a Worksheet-Based Early Mathematics Intervention on the Skills of Preschool Children. Early Childhood Education Journal, 46(1), 77-85.
• Flynn, R. M., & Richgels, D. J. (2006) . Using Worksheets in Preschool and Kindergarten: Benefits and Limitations. Early Childhood Education Journal, 34(3), 227-232.

Recommended:

• 100+ Free Printable Winter Worksheets for Preschoolers
• 50 Free Printable Preschool Number Worksheets 1-10 (PDF)
• What is a 3k School?

Sohaib Hasan Shah

Sohaib's journey includes 10+ years of teaching and counseling experience at BCSS School in elementary and middle schools, coupled with a BBA (Hons) with a minor in Educational Psychology from Curtin University (Australia) . In his free time, he cherishes quality moments with his family, reveling in the joys and challenges of parenthood. His three daughters have not only enriched his personal life but also deepened his understanding of the importance of effective education and communication, spurring him to make a meaningful impact in the world of education.

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Free Toddler and Preschool Printables

Inside: Looking for toddler and preschool printables ? Here is our free collection that builds a variety of skills throughout the year!

As a way of thanking you for visiting my website, I have created free printables that can be used in the classroom or at home. Make sure to check back, as I’m regularly adding more free printables!

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Easy Play to Learn Activities and Printables for Little Learners

Free Printable Toddler Worksheets

4 Year Olds , ACTIVITIES , Fine Motor Skills , FREE PRINTABLES , INDOOR PLAY , Math Learning Activities , Play to Learn Activities , Printables for Kids , TODDLER , TODDLER We use affiliate links and may earn commission from purchases made through those links.

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I love freebies. 

I think everyone does 🙂 , so, this is why i created a page with a few of our freebies. , this one , here are three other freebies of ours that you may like: , counting placemats printable, alphabet match free printable, number match free printable, if you’d like to get access to our resource library which contains all of our free printables for kids, sign up to our email list and you’ll receive the password to that private page. 🙂 , how do you sign up to the active littles resources library, scroll to the very bottom of this post and sign up 🙂 , by signing up you’ll get this freebie too 🙂 , total win-win , note: if you’d like to save over 70% on printables for kids, definitely check out our subscription , materials: .

This post contains affiliate links. 

Download the FREE printable (at the very bottom of this post)

Manipulatives such as pom poms , squishy toys for matching, a recycled box like we used to add the sheet on top of 🙂, there are so many fun ways you can go about trying and improvising a fun activity out with this free printable. , note: looking for a fun set of pre school printables to try at home or in a school setting check this one out right here , early learning printables, another fun way we like to use these are by cutting each of the color printables circles. , then, insert them into a muffin tin . , set aside a bowl of colorful pom poms that match to the colors of the circles you will be using and match away , learn colors in a fun way  , note: looking for a fun pre k games free download here’s one for ya 🙂 , free printable toddler worksheets video below.

Fine motor activities for Toddlers

In the example, i used a recycled box to add one of the color sheets to the very top of the box. , i then created holes within each colored circle so that my little can insert the pom poms to match the correct color. , this is a great way for toddlers to practice learning their colors while receiving the benfits of fine motor skills. , note: to learn more about fine motor benefits and some other fun activities that incorporate fine motor skills, check out this post  , here are the steps i took to create this learning box for kids: , tape your recycled box on all sides. , then, tape your printable sheet on the top of the box. , use a craft knife (adult only) to create holes on each of the circles on your printable sheet making sure the box is being cut as well so that the pom poms can go through the box too., once you have created holes on each of the colored circles and through the box, you are ready to play and learn. , use pom poms for matching by inserting them to its corresponding color. , note: looking for a super fun toddler printable check out our toddler busy book here. , color printable worksheets, this set comes with a set of color printables that contain both text and non text. , a fun way to learn the color printables for colors sheets is to practice writing the color names on a sheet of paper. , this is a more advanced approach and will allow for your little not only to learn by seeing the colors. , they will learn the color words by writing them also. , this is great for kindergarteners who are learning how to read and write basic words. , note: if you are looking for a kindergarten busy book that contains the basics of how i taught my oldest to read along with math and other fun learning activities, check out our k busy book , also, for even more activity printouts, visit out shop so many fun printable activities for kids to pick and choose from. , math printable worksheets, not only does this set of free printables for kids come with colors but it also comes with math worksheets , the math worksheets come as follows: , a set of numbers for matching, an addition sheet, a subtraction sheet, note: for more printable educational activities for kids, visit our membership page so many fun printables delivered each month, math printable games, you can add these number printouts to a muffin tin as mentioned above and practice counting with pom poms. , some of the math worksheets contain addition and subtraction. , you can also use pom poms to add and subtract with these math printables , how cool is that 🙂, learning through play i tell ya it’s the very best. , note: for more toddler printable activities be sure to visit our shop , abc and words, practice cvc words by using letter magnets and creating a word on the circles. , some words you can practice are words that contain three letters. , here are some examples: , these are just some of the ways you can practice sounding out letters as a more advanced approach and in turn practicing vowels (the middle letter) for kindergarteners. , the coolest thing about these preschool worksheets is that something so simple can be used in so many ways for a differentiated set of ages. , note: looking for a list of february lesson plans for toddlers check out our our shop and search in the “february” category 🙂 , cut and paste worksheets, does your lo love cutting and pasting , you can also use these printable kids activities sheets as a fun cutting activity , here are our favorite kid friendly scissors. , cut the circles and paste them with elmers glue onto a sheet of paper. , as you paste them onto the paper, call out the colors, note: free pre-k printables are a great next step to including in your lesson plans for the future check out some of our free fun printables for toddlers here. , sign up to our newsletter and get this printable as a gift – for free, related products, looking for free printables and activities.

Need a simple and effective set of hands-on, low prep printables? Here is one of my Early Learning Freebies just for you!

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September 9, 2020 at 6:21 am

Hi! I want to be part of your learning activities for children, to have on hand free printable activities which I will use for some kids. Thank you!

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400+ Free Printables and Activities for Kids

If you need free printables for kids in preschool and kindergarten, then I have you covered.

Find hundreds of free printable activities for literacy, math, science and more!

Free Printables

These free printables make it super easy to plan fun and engaging learning experiences for the kids.

All of them are interactive, and have hands-on components and fun themes that will excite and engage the kids.

Plus, you will save time searching for resources and prepping activities. Many of the printables we share here are low-prep and easy to utilize.

So grab some simple supplies and get ready to plan lots of fun and learning for the kids!

Free Printables for Most Preschool Themes

The free printables I share here cover  so many different themes! There are learning activities for most of the popular themes in preschool and early elementary.

There are printable learning activities for seasonal themes like apples, pumpkins, gingerbread, snowmen, snowflakes, flowers, insects, rainbows, ocean and much more!

And there are resources for many holidays as well.

In addition, there are lots of activities for themes that you can use any time of year like dinosaurs, farm, space, superheroes, unicorns and more.

Favorite Free Printables

These are some of the most popular free printables here on Fun Learning for Kids.

Check them out and then keep scrolling to find all of our free printables below.

These printable alphabet pencil puzzles will make learning letters and letter sounds so much fun.

This editable alphabet board game is one the most popular resources!

Use these alphabet letter formation cards to reinforce letter recognition, letter formation and introduce beginning letter sounds.

Grab some play dough and these alphabet play dough mats for lots of hands-on alphabet fun!

Reinforce number recognition and counting while developing fine motor skills with these number clip cards .

Letter sounds matching mats are super popular around here and can be used all year long.

These CVC word search sheets are a new favorite. Make learning to read and write CVC words lots of fun!

Grab these CVC word building strips and making learning to read and spell CVC words a hands-on and engaging experience.

These number formation cards give kids practice with number recognition, number formation and counting.

The kids will have a blast with this unicorn editable board game that you can use to teach letters, numbers, phonics skills, word work and more!

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Four Leaf Clover Find & Cover the Letter for St. Patrick’s Day

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Alphabet Worksheets

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Beginning Sounds Alphabet Puzzles Free Printable

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Syllable Counting Clip Cards Free Printable

Alphabet Play Dough Cards Activity

Compound Word Clip Cards Free Printable

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Missing Beginning Sound CVC Word Mats Free Printable

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Sun CVC Word Building Strips Free Printable

Ice Cream Beginning Sounds Clip Cards Free Printable

Beach Letter Sound Isolation Mats Free Printable

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Ocean Fish Rhyming Clip Strips Free Printable

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Dot Number Activity Mats Free Printable

Dot Letter Alphabet Mats Free Printable

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Frog CVC Word Building Strips Free Printable

Flower Comparing Sets Math Activity

Flower CVC Word Building Cards Free Printable

Flower Alphabet Mats – Roll, Build and Write

Easter Egg Roll and Cover the Number Free Printable

Editable Easter Bunny Word Work Mats

Phonics Games for Kids Who Are Learning to Read

Make Ten Math Activity Free Printable

Rainbow CVC Activity Roll, Build, Write Mats Free Printable

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Christmas Cookie Beginning Sounds Clip Cards Free Printable

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Gingerbread Roll and Cover the Number Mats Free Printable

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Beginning Sounds Matching Clip Cards Free Printable

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Pumpkin Numbers Spin & Build Mats Free Printable

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Apple 100 and 120 Chart Find and Cover the Number Game

Pumpkin Roll and Cover Number Mats Free Printable

Editable Apple Spin & Build Mats

Free Printable Apple Roll and Cover Number Mats

Number Formation Cards Free Printable

Free Printable Apple Fine Motor Tracing Strips for Pre-Writing Practice

Free Printable Back to School Spin and Build Word Work Mats

Editable Back to School Four in a Row Printable Game

Free Printable Back to School Alphabet Activity Mats

Free Printable Back to School Number Tower Mats

Free Printable Back to School Letter Sound Mats

Printable Beginning Sounds Phoneme Substitution Cards

Printable Uppercase Snap Cube Alphabet Mats

Printable Lowercase Snap Cube Alphabet Mats

Printable Alphabet Letter Formation Cards for Kids

Printable Ocean Animal Spin and Cover Pattern Block Mats

Sun CVC Word Clip Cards Free Printable

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Editable Feed the Fish Spin and Build Mats Printable

Fish CVC Word Clip Cards Free Printable

Fish Find and Cover Free Printable Beginning Sounds Letter Mats

Fish Roll and Cover Number Mats Free Printable

Insect Letter Sounds Mats for Preschool and Kindergarten

Free Printable Butterfly Find and Cover Beginning Sounds Mats

Editable Flower Bump Game Printable for Word Work

Flower Number Towers Free Printable Math Activity

Flower CVC Word Building Strips for Kindergarten

Free Printable Easter Egg Number Towers Math Activity

Editable Frog Spin and Build Mats Word Work Printable

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Editable Shamrock Spin and Build Mats Free Printable

Rainbow Number Towers Free Printable Math Activity

Free Printable Rainbow Beginning Sounds Mats

Editable Mailbox Spin and Build Mats Word Work Printable

Construction Number Towers Free Printable Math Activity

Community Helpers Printable CVC Word Building Strips

Community Helpers Free Printable Beginning Sounds Mats

Editable Valentine’s Day Spin and Build Word Work Mats

Valentine’s Day Beginning Sound Find and Cover Letter Mats

Editable Valentine’s Day Four in a Row Printable Literacy Game

Groundhog Day Free Printable Editable Board Game

Editable Groundhog Spin and Build Word Work Mats

Editable Winter Bump Game Printable for Word Work

Snowman Count the Room Free Printable Math Activity

Editable Snowman Write the Room Printable Activity

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Snowball Number Towers Free Printable Math Activity

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Editable Snowman Spin and Build Word Work Mats

Free Printable Snowman Comparing Sets Clip Cards

Gingerbread Number Towers Free Printable Math Activity

Editable Gingerbread Bump Game for Word Work Printable

Editable Gingerbread Spin and Build Word Work Mats Printable

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Free Printable Christmas Editable Board Game

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Turkey Find and Cover the Word Free Printable Mats

Editable Turkey Spin and Build Word Work Printable Mats

Fall Leaf Number Towers Free Printable Math Activity

Editable Scarecrow Spin and Build Word Work Printable Mats

Free Printable Fall Alphabet Activity Mats

Silly Monster CVC Clip Cards Free Printable

Silly Monster Number Towers Free Printable Math Activity

Spider Count the Room Free Printable Math Activity

Spider Find and Cover the Letter Free Printable Mats

Pumpkin Number Towers Free Printable Math Activity

Pumpkin Teen Numbers Bump Game Free Printable

Free Printable Pumpkin CVC Words Clip Cards

Pumpkin 100 & 120 Chart Printable Find and Cover Number Mats

Pumpkin Find and Cover the Letter Mats Free Printable

Pumpkin Comparing Sets Clip Cards for Preschool and Kindergarten

Editable Pumpkin Bump Game for Word Work in Kindergarten

Apple Tree Find and Cover the Blends Free Printable Mats

Apple CVC Matching Clip Cards Printable for Kindergarten

Apple Teen Numbers Bump Game Free Printable

Apple Number Towers Free Printable Math Activity

Apple Tree Find and Cover the Letter Printable Mats

Apple Tree Sight Word Find and Cover Printable for Kindergarten

Editable Apple Bump Game for Word Work in Kindergarten

Blend Words Free Printable Board Game for Kindergarten

Back to School Count the Room Free Printable Math Activity

Editable Back to School Write the Room Free Printable

Editable Pencil Bump Game for Word Work Printable

Free printables by category.

Right now you can find our free printables separated by 4 different catergories. There are alphabet printables, numbers and counting printables, general literacy printables which include sight words, phonics skills, CVC words and more, and finally there are addition and subtraction printables as well.

Click the images below to check out the free printables by category.

I hope your kids have lots of fun learning with these free printable activities for kids!

• April 29, 2022

Play Activities for 12 to 24 Months

Whether you’re looking for games to build your toddler’s language skills, or games to keep the young ones busy, here are some great play ideas for your infant or toddler., action-oriented activities, squishy sponges.

Give the child some soaking wet sponges to play with outside. Let him wash his trike, the mailbox, or even stamp wet sponge-shapes onto the sidewalk. Show him how he can squeeze the sponge to make the water come out—this builds physical skills in his hands and fingers. “Important” jobs like washing a tricycle or baby doll help toddlers feel like confident and helpful members of the family. As with all water activities, it is critical to supervise children carefully as they play.

Leaf Collector

Give the child a small basket and take her on a walk around your neighborhood or a local park or school. See if she wants to pick up leaves and other “treasures” and put them in her basket. You might be surprised by how long your toddler will be happy to walk, snapping up leaf after leaf for her collection. This activity builds gross motor (large muscle) and fine motor (small muscle) skills as children walk, squat, and pick up their discoveries.

Freeze! Toddlers love freeze dancing

Play music and encourage the child to dance or move in whatever way he likes. Then instruct him to stop when the music ends. This kind of activity encourages listening skills and self-regulation as he practices stopping and starting. (This is a very useful skill for when he goes to school and has to follow a lot of directions!)

Pop Some Popcorn

Take a receiving blanket and have the child hold one side while you hold the other. Place some foam balls (“popcorn”) on the blanket and then shake the blanket so the balls bounce (or pop!) off. Your little one might like singing “POPCORN! POPCORN! POP, POP, POP!” while you shake. Once all the balls have “popped,” have your grandchild race to grab them and put them on the blanket to do it again.

Quiet Play Activities

Shadow play.

In a darkened room, shine a flashlight at your hand so that the shadow is reflected on the wall. Wave to the child and make silly shadow shapes with your hand. Does the child want to try to wave with his shadow hand too? He may also enjoy shining the flashlight on the wall all by himself.

Fill and Dump

Make 5-10 homemade balls (wad up waxed paper or newspaper and cover with masking tape). Put the balls in a shoebox or basket. Give the child another box and show her how she can move each ball from one box to the other. If the child is walking, place the baskets a few steps apart so they can toddle from one to the other. Games like this encourage toddlers to move their hands across their bodies as they transfer the balls, which helps them later on with many skills from athletics to handwriting. ##Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear Starting at about 18 months, children are just beginning to play pretend. A good way to build these skills is by playing with a doll or stuffed animal. You might say, “Oh, Teddy fell down and got a boo-boo. He needs a hug.” Then give it a cuddle. See if the child also wants to give Teddy a hug. Next, you might use a “prop”—like a cup or a blanket—and suggest that the child “give Teddy a drink” or “put Teddy to sleep.”

Make a Homemade “Wagon”

Attach a 12–18 inch length of string or ribbon to a shoebox using sturdy tape. Show the child how she can pull the string to make the box move. If she is walking, give her a job to do using her “wagon,” such as pulling some clean dishtowels into the kitchen or delivering mail in another room. This kind of activity builds physical and problem-solving skills as the child learns how to use an object as a “tool” (pulling the string to move the box.) Be sure to supervise closely and put this toy away when you are done playing.

Activities That Build Thinking Skills

How does your garden grow.

Plant some seeds that grow in summer, such as grass or flower seeds, in a patch of dirt outside or in a pot to keep inside. This is a fun project for toddlers who love to shovel, pour water, and get messy! At the same time they’re building fine motor skills (as they use their fingers and hands) and learning important science concepts as they watch their plants grow.

Try the Classic Shell Game

You’ll need a plastic cup and a small toy. Show the child the toy, then set it down and cover it slowly with the cup. See if he picks up the cup to find the toy. Once the child has mastered this game with one cup, try it with two cups and later, with three cups. This is a very challenging concept for toddlers to master so it’s important to be patient. Soon enough, the child will have no trouble at all locating the toy. This kind of activity builds thinking skills and hand-eye coordination.

Take Out Some Tubes

Put those empty wrapping paper tubes to work. String a scarf through the tube and let your toddler pull it out. Or, show your toddler how to drop a ball or foam block down the tube and watch it fall on the floor. Roll the tube and race across the room to get it. Make music by banging the tube on the floor. Games like this build the child’s thinking and imaginative play skills.

Practice Pouring

Wash out an empty plastic spice container and show the child how you can drop a few pieces of cereal inside. Offer it to the child and watch as she tries to figure out how to get the cereal out. She may shake it or drop it, but eventually, she will pour them out onto the high chair tray, a plate, or her hand. This type of activity builds problem-solving skills.

Activities That Build the Senses

Take a peek.

Remove the label from several small water bottles. Fill each bottle with interesting objects—one might contain small shells, another can be filled with sparkly glitter, water, and mineral oil, and another with a few pennies. Securely glue the lid on each bottle. Give them to the child to look at, shake, and explore.

Water, Water Everywhere

Fill a dishpan with water and place it on a towel on the floor (or better, outside). Give the child plastic cups, spoons, bowls, and a funnel. Watch her pour, splash, and more. Add some food coloring to the water for a new twist on water play. As with any water activity, supervise carefully and pour all water out when you are done.

Band Together

Gather several objects that make different noises—rattles, bells, tambourines, etc. Start singing a song and pick up an instrument—offer one to the child too—and make some music together. Games like this nurture a child’s language, physical, and thinking skills.

Make a Bubble “Mound”

Fill a small bowl with some bubble liquid and then use a straw to blow a mound of bubbles. Let the child explore the bubbles with his hands—but watch to make sure he doesn’t eat any. He may also enjoy watching you blow bubbles for him to catch.

Activities That Build Language Skills

During diaper changes, take a moment to play “what’s this?” Lift up her foot and say, “What’s this? It’s a foot. And what are these? They are toes.” You can name belly, belly button, knee, leg, parts of the face, and more. Through repetition, young toddlers learn new words.

Picture This

Snap photos of the child during an activity with you, such as making cookies. Take a picture of the beginning of the activity (getting the ingredients), the middle (adding ingredients, stirring), and the end (eating cookies). Glue each photo to an index card. Show the photos to the child and talk about the steps you took for each activity. Activities like this help develop the child’s thinking and language skills.

Point It Out

As you read books with the child, ask him to “point to the cat” or “show me the moon” in his favorite stories. He may not be able to follow through yet (so you should go ahead and do the pointing), but as the child approaches 2 years, you may be surprised by how many words he seems to know. Reading activities like this help children understand the connection between words and pictures and build their vocabulary.

Hello, Good-Bye

Make a tunnel from a large cardboard box by opening both ends. The child can be at one end of the tunnel. You sit at the opposite end. Peek your face in the tunnel and say, “Hi!” Then lean away from the tunnel (so the child can’t see you) and say, “Bye!” Does the child try to communicate with you by crawling to find you, or by making sounds to copy your “hi” and “bye?” This activity encourages language, problem-solving, and physical skills as a child figures out how to locate you.

Browse our full suite of resources on early childhood development.

20 Best Learning Activities for Toddlers to Get Them Ready for Kindergarten

Have fun with letters, numbers, and shapes using these educational activities for toddlers.

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A word of caution though: Even though toddlers and preschoolers seem so big compared to the babies they once were, they still have no common sense at all, so any activity still has to be closely supervised. This is especially true for counting activities or projects that involve small pieces, which may present choking hazards, or anything involving water, which could be a drowning risk (even if it's just a small bucket of water). But with you guiding them through, they'll love these projects so much, the'll forget all about those buzzing, blinking toys in the toy bin.

Clothespin Color Match

Not only does this activity help toddlers shore up their knowledge of colors, it works on their fine motor coordination, since they have to pinch, pull, and place the clothespins.

Get the tutorial at Chalk Academy »

RELATED: 20 Learning Activities for Kids to Entertain Students While Boosting Their Brains

Paper Building Blocks

Paper can't be as strong as a wooden block — can it? For this engineering activity, you can show kids how even a flexible material like paper can become sturdy enough to hold up a weight (like a couple of Oreos!) if you shape it a certain way.

Get the tutorial at Babble Dabble Do »

Water Walking Experiment

A super-easy way to bring a bit of the science lab home, the "water walking" experiment illuminates two concepts: First, the water "walks" over the paper towel bridges (demonstrating capillarity), and then the colors mix to make new ones (the yellow water and the blue water "walk" into the same cup to make green). All you need is cups, food coloring, and paper towels.

Get the tutorial at Fun Learning for Kids »

RELATED: 23 Easy Science Experiments for Kids You Can Do at Home With Everyday Items

Number Pom Pom Challenge

Another activity that uses hand-eye coordination as well as number recognition, this cardboard tube maze is an exciting challenge for little counters. The object is to tilt the box so that the pom pom rolls through the tubes in number order.

Get the tutorial at Raising Dragons »

Shape Scavenger Hunt

Sure, your tot can recognize shapes in block form, but can they find the same shapes out in the wild? Send them on a scavenger hunt to see how shapes are used in everyday life.

Get the tutorial at The Many Little Joys »

RELATED : 22 Fun Scavenger Hunt Ideas to Keep Your Kids Guessing

Adding Boxes

What's 2 + 4? This simple machine will help kids figure it out. Put two poms in one tube, four in the other, and count the total in the box at the end.

Get the tutorial at The Best Ideas for Kids »

Word Family Houses

For preschoolers who are learning to read, "word families" show how one group of sounds can form different words. Spin the wheel to show how the "-un" word ending can turn from "run" into "fun" or "bun."

Get the tutorial at The Measured Mom »

RELATED: The 20 Best Toddler Activities

Muffin Tin Counting

Muffin tins are perfect for sorting and counting activities, because the whole point is keeping all the pieces neat and tidy. In addition to sorting by number, you can also use them to match colors if you line the tins with different shades of construction paper instead of the numbered circles.

Get the tutorial at Early Learning Ideas »

Craft Stick Names

Teach them to spell the most important words ever: their names. This easy matching activity lets kids practice the order of the letters in their names; if you don't have craft sticks on-hand, clothespins would also work.

Get the tutorial at Play-to-Learn Preschool »

RELATED: 20 Fun Activities for 1-Year-Olds You Can Make With Items You Already Have

Sink or Float

It's an introduction to the Scientific Method: Kids can make a hypothesis about whether or not an object will sink or float in a tub of water, test out their theories, and record their results.

Get the tutorial at the Stay-at-Home Mom Survival Guide »

Feed the Monster

The monster is hungry! But what does he want to eat? Move the strip of paper below him to reveal his lettery cravings, then have your tot find a block to match.

Get the tutorial at Happy Tot Shelf »

Missing Number Match

If they're counting from 1 to 10, give them a little challenge: Write a number line on a craft stick, but leave a blank space that needs to be filled by one of the numbered clothespins. Once they've mastered the matching game, move on and do 10–20!

Get the tutorial at Planning Playtime »

Felt Board Shapes

Remember Colorforms? Felt shapes can offer the same kind of pleasure, and kids can combine and re-combine the shapes to make different pictures. It's a learning activity and wall art in one.

Get the tutorial at Wait 'Til Your Father Gets Home »

Rhyming Dominoes

Traditional dominoes are good for practicing numbers, but with a few tweaks you can also make the game a way to practice rhymes, too. For kids who can't read yet, you can use pictures instead of words and still match up word sounds.

Get the tutorial at No Time for Flash Cards »

Counting Carrots

Part-craft, part-counting practice, this activity gives kids a chance to put the correct number of sprouts on top of a construction-paper carrot. The geometry of this craft is so simple, too, you can also use it as a shape refresher for triangle and rectangles.

Get the tutorial at Housing a Forest »

Shape Match Game

A twist on the classic memory game: Instead of flipping over cards, kids can make matches by pulling craft sticks out of an old egg carton. The great thing about this game is that it's so easy to pack up, it's the perfect activity to bring to Grandma's house.

Get the tutorial at Days With Grey »

"Bear Hunt" Map

Plot out the route that the characters take in the We're Going on a Bear Hunt book (or song ), and teach kids how certain geographical features (water, landmarks) are represented by certain symbols on a map. If they're excited by maps, show them how to make one of their rooms, their backyard, or even their neighborhood.

Get the tutorial at Buggy and Buddy »

DIY Musical Instruments

It's easy to make different percussive instruments out out household items. Experiment to see how different fillers (beans, rice, pebbles) make different sounds, then try using them in different rhythms to sharpen those counting skills, too.

Get the tutorial at Team Cartwright »

Monster Craft

This craft ties in multiple subject areas: After reading the book Love Monster , kids can design and create their own creatures, then count the number of eyes, teeth, ears, and feet.

Get the tutorial at Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds »

Tape Shape Sorting

Combine shape sorting with a scavenger hunt, and use painter's tape to make different outlines all over the house. Then, kids have to take their construction-paper shapes and search high and low to find a match.

Get the tutorial at Toddler Approved »

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Inspired by Montessori Curriculum for Toddlers PDF (225 pages)

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Let’s be completely honest for a minute, guys, in regards to the best Montessori curriculum for toddlers PDF.

I think we can all agree that homeschooling a toddler or having a toddler at home while we homeschool our older kids can be as easy or as daunting as you want it to be.

Regardless on what your situation is, what is absolutely important is to keep the delicate balance between independence and a little bit of hand-holding.

And this is exactly why many parents look for wonderful list of resources like this one! Come and take a look!

Inspired by Montessori Curriculum for Toddlers PDF

First off, don’t get misguided by the Montessori name.

Most of the activities are inspired by Montessori toddler curriculum ideas, but you do not have to know much about Montessori or homeschool using the Montessori method to know how to use these!

In my very humble, yet experienced opinion, you don’t need to have a homeschool toddler curriculum to teach your little one, especially because they don’t have the need to learn to read and write yet.

Even though this set isn’t officially a curriculum, it is 225 pages FULL of fun educational activities.

They are not just busy work to keep them busy.

They are learning while they play. You’ll love that all activities ideas are both fun AND educational.

What do you need for this setup to be successful? Very little, to be honest!

All you need is a printable set like this one and a few minutes to assemble the activities.

This is such an amazing printable set for toddlers! Young children will, at this early age, learn many helpful life-long skills with this bundle.

They will enjoy every single one of these activities over and over again!

This set of 60 activities includes alphabet printables to learn about the letters, numbers, colors and more!

You will love to sit back and watch your toddler learn with this SUPER MEGA BUNDLE!

All you have to do is download it, print it out in color, let them pick a favorite and get it ready for them. It is 225 pages of non-stop learning and fun!

This Toddler Printable SUPER MEGA bundle set includes 60 activities (225 pages total)

What does it include? Do you think 60 activities is a lot? It isn’t.

I have made sure that they include little preparation time and a big yield in terms of full learning fun.

Come and find out all of the details about all of the sets and everything that they include. You can make this as fancy or as simple as you prefer.

You can also keep it as frugal as you want to. I have included a mix of color as well as great black and white printable activities.

For some printers, color ink is more expensive.

No problem! Simple pick and choose to only print the black and white activities and let your toddler color and beautify them on their own!

There are 4 sets in this super mega bundle with the Montessori curriculum for toddlers PDF, so be sure to read about all four of them!

1   Toddler Printable MEGA Bundle (20 Sets ~ 125 Pages) – Read more about it HERE .

It includes an inspired on montessori toddler curriculum PDF with awesome toddler and preschool activities. Some of them go so well with great read aloud books.

There is toddler and preschool Math, a set of Botany chart for kids to match with tabs and some great black and white printables for them to color.

2   Toddler Printable MEGA Bundle #2 (25 Activities) – Read about it HERE .

As a homeschooling mom, you are going to love these great activities that you can set up in a handful of minutes for your toddler!

Older children can have a great time sitting down with your toddler to go through some of these until your toddler will do them independently.

It can be a great bonding time for older siblings and toddlers.

3   12 Printable Chore Charts Pictures and Practical Activities – Read about it HERE .

It includes toddler chore chart printable with pictures and many more! Teach kids responsibility for life skills! These chore charts for kids are amazing!

Kids chores will be a lot easier and a lot more fun with these chore cards and other activities.

They can be done with older siblings too, in the hopes that they pick up great habits as well!

4    Toddler Kitchen Chore Charts Printable Set (3 variations) – Read about it HERE .  

These chore charts for toddlers are a lot of fun! They will help your toddler feel productive, while learning to help around the house. 

I noticed that when I started to teach these kids of responsibilities to my toddler, like cleaning his area after eating, he made less messes.

These chore charts really do work! My kids are 7 and almost 10 now and we STILL use them!

Granted, their responsibilities have changed over the years, but they still have chore charts to complete.

Get the set now!

Toddler Printable SUPER MEGA BUNDLE (60 Activities)

$ 70.00 $ 32.99

This Toddler Printable SUPER MEGA bundle set includes 60 activities (225 pages total):

• Toddler Printable MEGA Bundle (20 Sets ~ 125 Pages) – Read more about it HERE .
• Toddler Printable MEGA Bundle #2 (25 Activities) – Read about it HERE .
• 12 Printable Chore Charts Pictures and Practical Activities – Read about it HERE .
• Toddler Kitchen Chore Charts Printable Set (3 variations) – Read about it HERE .

EU buyers, GO HERE !

Come get this wonderful Montessori curriculum for toddlers PDF today!

Love montessori.

Check out our new Montessori home! MasterTheMontessoriLife.com and Shop.MasterTheMontessoriLife.com have everything you need to be successful in your Montessori journey, no matter where you are. If you just heard about it and are curious, have just started or are a seasoned Montessori veteran, you will LOVE what we have going over there!

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It will be recorded and the link will be sent via email within 24 hours for further review.

Once you purchase the coaching session HERE , I will contact you to set up a time that works for both of us.

2 An email prior to coaching call  detailing what questions, concerns, issues need to be addressed.

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Hands On As We Grow®

Hands on kids activities for hands on moms. Focusing on kids activities perfect for toddlers and preschoolers.

50+ Simple Activities for Toddlers

Activities Art Projects Crafts Popular Sensory Toddlers My Favorites Resources 173 Comments

Make playtime with toddlers so much simpler with 50+ simply perfect toddler activities!

What activities can I do with toddlers?

What is the best activity for a toddler?

What activities should a 2 year old be doing?

What should I be doing with my 2 year old?

What do you do with a 2 year old at home?

I’ve heard it all from readers over the years.

Activities for toddlers are the number one hardest thing to come up with to do.

This is a hard age because they often want to put stuff in their mouths. Toddlers also have a tough time understanding direction with the extra fun of super-short attention spans.

For our purposes, toddlers are kids between ages 1 and 3, but it’s pretty fluid. This age group starts when kids start to walk and ends roughly when they can generalize new knowledge.

After years of doing activities with and for toddlers, I’ve found that simplicity is best!

Keep this list for a rainy day, or a day you’re stuck inside and wondering what to do (these make great indoor activities), or just keep this handy for anytime you find a bored moment and looking for something to get through your day.

We created The Activity Room for that purpose! To help you get through your day at home with your kids. Learn more here.

50+ Perfectly Simple Activities for Toddlers to Try at Home

I’ve started keeping track of some of my favorite toddler activities – both my own and ideas from other websites. And this is my giant master go-to list that every hands-on parent needs to keep handy.

Download the FREE Week of Toddler Activities Here!

These activities are separated into sensory activities , art and craft ideas, material explorations, and other fun toddler activities.

Everything has been specifically chosen just for toddlers!

4 Tips to Make Toddler Activities Easier

Before we dive right into my favorite 50+ toddler activities, I wanted to share some hard-earned tips I’ve picked up over the years.

How do you do activities with toddlers?

• Allow your toddler to explore whatever it is that you give them.
• Don’t do an activity with an intentional plan, it never works out with this age range.
• Expect a toddler to be interested, leave it out for them to come back to later, or even the next day.
• Plan for them to put it in their mouth if you have a mouther.

I also highly recommend the The Toddler’s Busy Book  ( affiliate link ), by Trish Kuffner and PLAY: Activities Plans for your Two-Year-Old . These two resources always have an activity idea that my kids love!

Simple Sensory Play Activities for Toddlers

What are sensory activities for toddlers?

Activities that let your toddler explore materials with their fingers, nose, mouth…really, let them do what feels good!

How does it feel? What does it taste like? 

These sensory bins are wonderful ways to learn and very hands-on.

• Soapy jars, fun to shake up and watch settle!
• This is a blast! And a way to get the kids to clean, with  dish soap foam .
• Cook up some spaghetti (or even better, use leftovers), add some color to it to make  spaghetti potion .
• A  slimy gel bag  is a squishy sensory delight for toddlers!
• Just flour. Let your toddler explore flour freely .
• Add water to the flour and put in a baggy for some  flour & water piping .
• Explore ice cubes!
• Jello!  A sensory activity from Learning 4 Kids.
• Playing with and exploring pasta, from Fun at Home with Kids.
• Oooo. Add water to paper , idea from Tinkerlab.
• Bubbles!  Simple sensory activity at MamaSmiles.
• Spray basic shaving cream onto a baking sheet or a highchair tray, add a few drops of food coloring and swirl!

Easy Peasy Arts & Crafts for Toddlers

This is the area I struggle with the most: getting creative with toddlers. But it can be done if you’re a little creative, too! 

Find some toddler proven strategies to arts and crafts with these activities!

What are art and craft activities for toddlers?

• Make a simple  egg carton train  with pipe cleaners.
• Use a baggy and paint and add a dowel, small toys or toy cars of some sort and do some  roller painting .
• Contact paper window decor . The best toddler art activity there is, I think!
• Using a toilet paper tube or cardboard tubes,  stamp a heart !
• Use yogurt to paint.
• Make your own edible finger paint and create  tape resist art . (Or use store-bought washable fingerpaints , affiliate link!)
• Foam shapes art on the window .
• Sticker art  is a perfect toddler art activity from The Artful Parent.
• Spray paint art  using water and watercolors with squirt bottles, toddlers will love this idea from Adventure in a Box!
• Shaken ball art  (from Toddler Approved) is fun for your toddler to get moving and create art in the process.
• Create fruity art with fingerprints , with an idea from Penny Pinchin Mom!
• Turn potatoes into cool stamps , just like Glued to My Crafts!

Find many physical activities for toddlers to burn off some energy!

Free Play for Toddlers Made Easy

Free play is often the simplest of all the activities for toddlers!

It’s just a material by itself. Then, let them play and explore with it.

What will they come up to do with the object?

You’d be surprised at the fine motor skills and learning that can happen from every day play from 2 and 3 year olds. And they’re having so much fun, they don’t even know it!

What are appropriate activities for toddlers?

• Explore  ribbons , add a bottle to the mix for some fine motor practice.
• Pom poms  are perfect for toddlers and they love putting them in other objects!
• Pipe cleaners are not only fun to touch, but you can stick them through small holes (such as a colander), too!
• Let your toddler play with a cardboard box . Easy enough.
• Corn kernels , just keep an eye that they don’t put them in their mouths, and they’ll haul them around or pour them into containers!
• Tissue paper  can be thrown, scrunched up, or torn into small pieces!
• Give toddlers your  fabric scraps to play with!
• Use your leftover  baby food jars  as busy toddler play! Screw and unscrew them, stick little objects inside for prizes!
• The good old  pots and pans  never get old to a toddler!
• Water  never gets old for kids! Add color to it for added fun. Let them play with cups and spoons for hours!
• Play with lights and mirrors for a free play science activity from My Mundane and Miraculous Life.
• Ripping magazines ! From Confidence Meets Parenting.
• Stacking cups  could be a great busy play activity for toddlers! Idea from The Imagination Tree.
• Stabbing foam plates , from Bounceback Parenting, could be lots and lots of fun with recyclables!
• Build a block city with taped up streets!

Other Activities for Toddlers

Sometimes you just need stuff for toddlers to do – more than exploring, arts and crafts, or an activity with an intended purpose. 

Just an activity that a toddler can definitely do and do well.

• Chop up some  pipe cleaners for sprinkles  for fine motor practice or pretend play!
• Get the balloon out and play  balloon badminton  with your hands or with paddles.
• Leftover shipping packaging makes for a great  bubble pop runway .
• Hammer golf tees  into Styrofoam for some great hand-eye coordination.
• Bust out your  ABC Mat and make roads to drive along – or a ton of other activities! Don’t have an ABC Mat ? ( affiliate link ) Get one! They can be used for all sort of activities and learning!
• Go on a  heart hunt or any kind of hunt. Hide some like items around the house like you would Easter eggs!
• Pop a spaghetti noodle into some  Play Dough and thread other noodles  onto the spaghetti for some fine motor practice.
• Throw newspapers  in the house.
• Roll down hills .
• Make a  balance beam  from boards inside or outside and practice walking along them.
• Stack up blocks  with your toddler and let him try, or let him knock them down. (Have a builder? Make sure you have these top ten block toys !)
• Make doodles in the carpet with cookie cutters and other kitchen utensils.
• Set out random ingredients from your pantry and let your toddler  stir and mix  them up in their own concoctions.
• Make some  pom pom drops!
• A  homemade lacing activity , from What do We Do All Day?, is an excellent toddler fine motor activity! You can also buy lacing cards too!

My Go-To Toddler Activities Toys

These toddler toys make are versatile to use in many activities and worth having! These affiliate links are to products to help make the toddler years easier and more fun.

• Wooden blocks
• Knobby Balls
• Crayola Washable Paint

What are your go-to toddler activities? We’d love to try new ideas!

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About Jamie Reimer

Jamie learned to be a hands on mom by creating activities, crafts and art projects for her three boys to do. Jamie needed the creative outlet that activities provided to get through the early years of parenting with a smile! Follow Jamie on Pinterest and Instagram !

More Hands on Kids Activities to Try

Reader Interactions

173 comments.

July 30, 2023 at 12:59 pm

Love all of these ideas especially the edible ones lol! We’ve really been enjoying the science activities from Play Connect (Website: https://www.playconnect.org ) lately – fairy tale foam and balloon inflation have been our fav!

Karem troche says

September 14, 2022 at 8:00 pm

Realy imagination and very much patience ^•^

Syed Saleem says

April 21, 2021 at 1:03 pm

amazing post thanks for share it

April 21, 2021 at 1:01 pm

this list is amazing. My kids love to paint with fingers. I’ll also show them a few activities that you mentioned here

April 21, 2021 at 12:57 pm

thnks for share it

April 21, 2021 at 12:56 pm

Thanks for share it.

April 21, 2021 at 12:54 pm

I am very thankful to you that you have shared this information with us. I got some different kind of knowledge from your web page, and it is really helpful for everyone. Thanks for share it.

Taylor Hansen says

October 5, 2020 at 10:47 am

I like how you mentioned doing spray paint art using squirt bottles with your toddler. I’m trying to find more activities for my 3-year-old daughter since we don’t go out as much since the pandemic. Thanks for the list and I might have to come back to this as we do more fun things together.

Siannon says

July 20, 2020 at 10:12 am

The bubble wrap killed me, guys! This is amazing.

Nilda J Stanley says

March 6, 2020 at 12:37 pm

I am daycare teacher for 1 to 2 year olds…would like more ideas for groups in this age range….

Michelle says

September 10, 2019 at 6:08 am

This list is amazing. My kids love to paint with fingers. I’ll also show them a few activities that you mentioned here.

Thanks for sharing!

Hand and Hand says

September 10, 2019 at 1:20 am

Really thanks for sharing this useful post !! This post is very informative and i have got very good information about toddler activities. keep sharing !!

April 23, 2019 at 2:57 am

I’m always looking for inspiration for great activities my toddler will love – thanks for all the tips! love to read this posts….

Gordon Myers says

December 12, 2018 at 4:29 am

This is a treasure chest of activities! I love it. I plan to make a weekly schedule of these activities that we can then loosely follow. It will help me have a great idea when my little one needs entertainment and I’m brain-dead.

November 29, 2018 at 7:42 am

I’m always looking for inspiration for great activities my toddler will love – thanks for all the tips!

Agnes Electra Chlebinska says

July 17, 2018 at 3:00 am

Young children need the opportunity to use their whole body and develop their gross motor skills. It’s only when they have mastered these that they will be able to control their fine motor skills, such as using a knife and fork or holding a pencil, for instance. As a result, children playing outside can have a positive impact.

Sachin Shah says

July 13, 2018 at 6:08 am

Growing toddlers need to be kept active all the time. This can mean a lot of time and effort. Most often, the first-time parents are confused how to go about this ordeal. That is where posts like this one come as a great blessing, help and guidance. Thanks for sharing this information.

June 2, 2018 at 4:46 am

Great post. You have to give your child a lot of attention and channel whatever they are learning in the right way to boost their emotional, social, mental and cognitive development.

C.tillotson says

February 27, 2018 at 7:11 am

We are not allowed to use empty toilet rolls. It’s an health & Safety plus hygiene.

October 18, 2017 at 5:49 am

Pls I need more simple and cheapest activities for toddler thanks

Sharon Forbes says

October 10, 2017 at 10:41 am

I can’t wait to do some of the projects with my 13 month old grandson that I keep once a week. Thanks for some great ideas.

Live in Nannies says

September 25, 2017 at 12:43 am

Great post. All toddler activities are very impressive and creative too. Surely I will implement to kids. Thanks for sharing.

Meena joshi says

August 16, 2017 at 9:54 am

I always get impressed with all the activities i get to know and actually it fulfills me with a energy to explore a new world to them help them to move in their dream land.

Child Care Services Manchester says

July 25, 2017 at 11:24 pm

Best ideas for toddlers. I like that we don’t need to buy expensive/talking toys. These activities will keep her busy and help in personal growth. Thanks for sharing!!

Rashmi says

June 16, 2017 at 1:05 am

some more innovative physical, cognitive and fine motor development is needed.

Heather B. Larson says

October 15, 2016 at 6:31 am

I also have available plastic measuring spoons and cups (each a different color), tiny pitchers, large rugatoni,various sized balls and beads. They will ‘pour’ beads, walk with ball atop measuring cup/spoon to balance the ball (or not LOL), put a rigatoni on each finger, string beads/pipe cleaners through the rigatoni, etc!

Dr.Shahana says

October 6, 2016 at 2:53 am

Great ideas! My son is into a lot of cartoons since this week! and would like to make him do these activities.Thanks for sharing.

Mrs Ruth Pereira says

September 25, 2016 at 2:50 pm

Fantastic website

July 18, 2016 at 1:08 pm

My two year old Granddaughter loves a cubby house made with with sheets or blankets in the room, keeps her busy for ages.

July 18, 2016 at 12:52 pm

As a Grandfather exploring my 2 yr old Granddaughters world I find she loves interacting with her many dolls, I provide a voice for each one and we play act out shopping expeditions and ‘mummies busy’ routines which keep her occupied for hours, I’m fortunate that I’m retired as this kind of activity is very time consuming on your behalf.

Cornelius C. Porter says

May 11, 2016 at 4:25 am

Great ideas for activities for toddlers! I like that you don’t have to buy any expensive toys too, it’s all just stuff you’d have around the house!

Val Manchuk says

April 17, 2016 at 11:42 am

Hello Jaime,

These will be a great resource for me. We have our first grandchild on the way!

Jessica Fitzgerald says

April 5, 2016 at 2:42 am

Really helpful ideas . thank you

Natalie Jubiar says

March 15, 2016 at 2:27 pm

All Of These Sound Amazing I Should Try All of Them When My Little Monster Grows up!

Foam Products says

February 1, 2016 at 1:21 pm

Very interesting! Thank you :)

January 3, 2016 at 11:19 am

Hi those are very good ideas but my baby sister is 2 1/2 and she acts like a 7 year old! I would like a little bit more of better ideas but good job I still enjoyed it.?

Siyana says

December 26, 2015 at 4:54 am

Really helpful

Debra Moses says

December 8, 2015 at 3:13 am

I have enjoyed reading your ideas for toddlers. I am concerned by some that are amongst the choking list for this age group, such as balloons, the loose corn. The golf tees very sharp, and soap in case of rubbing eyes. What are your thoughts?

Jamie Reimer says

December 8, 2015 at 8:37 am

I think you need to use your own judgement of your supervision and your kid. Every kid is different.

Carroll says

February 11, 2016 at 10:36 am

What would you do with toddlers ages 2,3, &4 these projects are for little babies who have about nothing to do.

Kimberly says

October 7, 2016 at 9:55 pm

I have a 3 year old brother that would not apply to any of these activities either. One thing that helps him is watching nick jr’s shows. Also teaching colors is fun. tell them a color and do an i spy like game. For numbers, grabs his/hers favorite toys, cars barbies, etc…(at least ten) and show him/her how many are each along with a card or piece of paper with the number. My brother also loves playing and learning, ex. playing with dogs while learning about dogs. making fun videos for the alphabet is also fun.

Kimberly (11)

October 8, 2016 at 5:13 pm

Hey Carroll – these are perfect for 1-3 year olds. If you’re looking for more advanced activities, check out our preschooler recommendations: https://handsonaswegrow.com/activities/preschool-activities/

April 17, 2016 at 11:40 am

Hello Debra,

Maybe run the sharp tip across an emery board, or a sanding block? I’m sure it would still go through the styrofoam.

madame butterfly says

May 20, 2015 at 1:11 am

great ideas! this activities are really awesome! i have a 3 year old son and i want to have this kind of activities at his early age. for him to improve his mental and physical ability.. They say that many parents now a days are considering their child to go to a fun activities like this with their kids in an early age where they can learn and help the child development as they grow. This ideas are really great! You might want to include this idea on your list. When my baby finally came out until now that he is 3 years old already i have already reading him books , many different kinds of books. Like this one http://www.amazon.com/Butterfly-Coloring-Pages-Butterflies-Adults/dp/1500501255 , My doctor says that,”Reading a book to your newborn is a one-on-one activity that you can really turn into a special time with your baby,” reading at them as early as possible helps your baby develop.

YoungDad says

April 15, 2015 at 2:13 am

Some of these are really cool. A lot are just letting them make a mess with different objects. Granted it’s fun and good for sensory development, but without some kind of structure (putting them in a box or cup, maybe moving them from one place to another) they’re really not as good for learning as they could be

April 15, 2015 at 7:11 am

Not all activities, especially for toddlers, need to be about learning something. They “learn” a lot just by exploring and seeing how things work in their environment.

Tiffanie says

March 6, 2015 at 9:29 am

I have a picky eater, alot of these ideas i was able to use to get her to eat more. Thanks!

Dona Smith says

February 24, 2015 at 9:24 am

Great activities for toddlers

February 11, 2015 at 3:41 am

Some AMAZING ideas and thanks so much. Working in a nursery with toddlers we sometimes run out of ideas, so now i have a few more which may give me more brownie points at work ha ha… oh heres an idea that i did with the children the other day and loved it! Fill latex gloves with water and different items. I used pasta, toy train, food colouring, glitter and a peppermint filled one. Once frozen, run under warm water for a second to losen glove and take glove off to reveal ice hand. Children loved it! I have smelly hands in freezer now which have herbs, coffee, lemon zest, mint and a few other smells… cant wait to see if they like them too! Hope this idea comes in use :) email me.any more ideas if you have any… :D

January 30, 2015 at 1:30 pm

Thanks for the inspiration! My 15-month-old has really enjoyed exploring cotton balls this week. They clump together, pull apart into long strands, squish, and stick to her clothes. She put a bunch in an empty laundry hamper yesterday and sat in them like a bath. Amazing what fun you can have with everyday items.

November 3, 2014 at 12:27 pm

My 20 mo’s favorite non-toy toy is the salad spinner. She loves to fill it with different objects (mardi gras beads, ping pong balls, magnetic letters, etc . . .) and see how they spin. This activity holds her attention longer than most “toys”.

October 30, 2014 at 2:16 am

I don”t know how to describe my feel about all these stuffs you have give Jamie! I do really..really inspired with all these activities. You are really kind mom. Very nice to know you…

try this site says

August 23, 2014 at 2:06 am

At this moment I am going to do my breakfast, after having my breakfast coming yet again to read additional news.

Amparo Abrego says

August 18, 2014 at 6:36 am

Interested on projects for toddlers.

August 11, 2014 at 11:34 pm

So excited for updates!

August 10, 2014 at 6:20 am

Mother toddler is best

Oriel Dixon says

July 15, 2014 at 6:22 pm

I have 16 month old boy/girl twins and want some fun things I can do.with them during the summer that they will actually like doing and not eating or crying

Ms Natasha Byndon says

July 14, 2014 at 5:53 pm

What a amazing website for educators to educate young children.

July 12, 2014 at 9:33 pm

I love the balloon badminton idea for young kids. I have a similar free website with kids activity ides being http://www.excitedkids.com and will add a link given I hadn’t thought of a lot of these ones. Well done.

Jennel says

June 22, 2014 at 12:28 am

Egg cartons are unsanitary and dangerous and should not be used for play of any kind.

” A type of bacterium, Salmonella, can be on both the outside and inside of eggs that appear to be normal, and if the eggs are eaten raw or lightly cooked, the bacterium can cause illness.” http://www.cdc.gov/features/salmonellaeggs/

September 23, 2014 at 3:09 pm

Wow fun killer much, sounds like a response from a germaphobe. Pretty sure the cartons wouldn’t be clean before handing them to your child. Lots of kids play with egg cartons they are a staple in many kindergarten classes for art activities.

Bronya says

September 2, 2015 at 3:36 am

My kids live on raw eggs and are always playing with egg cartons…we have been doing so for years with no problems.

evelyn says

May 9, 2014 at 6:03 pm

Thanks for all the wonderful ideas. I am using some of the your ideas for my toddler at my nursery.

May 9, 2014 at 8:28 pm

So great to hear Evelyn! Got anything specific you’re looking for?

April 15, 2014 at 12:30 pm

Only mylar balloons are appropriate for young children–never latex balloons. This website doe not make this clear. Latex balloons can pop very quickly in a child’s face, startle a child, and the deflated balloon goes into the mouth. This is not a scare tactic; this is real life.

Vanessa yepiz says

January 15, 2015 at 3:47 pm

This is true! As a little girl I watched my friends sister choke and die because she put a large piece in her mouth.

Cristi Boddy says

September 7, 2016 at 7:28 am

Balloon play is safe with latex as well. Supervised! Supervised! Get on the floor with your toddler stop them from pinching the balloon if you are fearful of them being startled and clean away any broken balloon pieces at once. It’s common sense. A crayon can choke a toddler too are they forbidden? These are many interactive activities if you need unsupervised busy time use those that are appropriate.

December 3, 2013 at 7:13 pm

Love this list… Can’t wait to do some of these with my little one!!!

November 14, 2013 at 3:48 pm

My toddler son love to play lego duplo bricks, it’s also a very interesting activity, but it is very hard to find some easy building examples, lately I found this site very useful It has many easy to build examples specificly for toddlers.

July 24, 2013 at 11:16 pm

These ideas are great. My 2yr old loves popping the balloon back and forth.

July 31, 2013 at 10:41 pm

Balloons are great! Have you seen our balloon collection too? https://handsonaswegrow.com/28-ways-to-play-with-balloons/

Mukesh Rajpal says

July 19, 2013 at 12:16 am

Thanks for the lovely ideas to keep kids busy in fun activities, I can use some of them in my school.

May 5, 2013 at 12:14 pm

actualy great tips. many thanks

loveghost003 says

April 15, 2013 at 2:57 pm

Really really nice post, thank you for the collection.

April 15, 2013 at 10:01 pm

March 22, 2013 at 3:10 pm

Right now the toddlers t my preschool are loving uncooked oatmeal and cinnamon, with cups & scoops.

Duncan Faber says

March 18, 2013 at 6:33 pm

We spice up all our indoor activities by having an audiobook play in the background. We have them on when the kids are playing, cooking, relaxing… whatever. There’s lots of great sites to get them, but we use this site a lot because all the stories are free and original.

Gina Carter says

March 18, 2013 at 3:13 pm

We useand get boxes of activities sent to our house every month. It is very affordable and gives you insight to your child’s behavior as well.

parvitas says

March 16, 2013 at 3:15 am

so great ideas! thanks for inspirations :)

diaane says

March 6, 2013 at 3:33 pm

Some great ideas. BUT. shaving cream is pure soap or so the parmedics told my neighbor when they had to take her 2 year old in the ambulance because he got some in his eyes and was sensitive to it. his face swelled up .

At a first aid class a parmedic told us that two of the hardest things to get out of a childs throat when they are choking is a GOLF TEE and PEN cap. great ideas but probably not for 1-3 year olds.

February 19, 2013 at 9:44 pm

My grandson loves playing with a beachball. He’s 11 months old now but we’ve been playing with it for awhile. Big smiles and giggles!

February 16, 2013 at 11:32 am

My two year old daughter absolutely loved to play in the dirt! I set out shovels and spoons and sticks and she practices digging differently with each tool. She draws in the sand with her fingers, uncovers hidden objects like rocks, discovered mud (ack!) and has even taste tested it. I say, they’re only little once!

Gramma RN says

January 7, 2013 at 7:33 pm

Some activities should be always ith adult supervision. The balloon idea, for example. A popped balloon piece in the toddler’s mouth poses a real danger for choking. Have fun with your toddler, but with anything that could fit through a toilet paper tube, don’t take your eyes off the child.

February 26, 2013 at 3:08 pm

Put a balloon in a stocking and if it pops the pieces will stay inside. :) *My son LOVES balloons so this is at least a once a month activity.

January 7, 2013 at 7:32 pm

Some activities should be always ith adult supervision. The balloon idea, for example. A pooped balloon piece in the toddler’s mouth poses a real danger for choking. Have fun with your toddler, but with anything that could fit through a toilet paper tube, don’t take your eyes off the child.

January 4, 2013 at 8:45 pm

Thank you for this. I’ve been trying to find activities for my 18 month old. By far, the best round up I have seen. :)

Dolores Castillo says

March 24, 2013 at 8:16 pm

Toddler’s activities

October 30, 2012 at 11:17 am

hi people i need your ideas of wot sessions i could run in a children centre from 0-5 i would be greatfull

October 18, 2012 at 1:55 pm

Just a suggestion for those allergic to flour: we love to explore rice, too!

October 4, 2012 at 8:36 pm

Love all of these! I have 18 month old twins and they will love to do all of these (and so will their big sister!).

October 1, 2012 at 6:38 pm

What a great list of activities. The golf tee’s and styrofoam is just brilliant. My son will be busy for hours with that one. Love your website.

Sue Beth says

September 25, 2012 at 3:52 pm

Good list! one activity our kids liked was real paint brushes and water in a bucket or bowl and painting outside….anything…the house, the cement, the deck, the deck chairs….

September 17, 2012 at 11:42 am

Hey hun. Just wanted to let you know that I featured this on my blog today. I would love it if you could check it out :)

http://mammymade.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/mint-stuff-ive-seen-23.html

– Adele @ Mammy Made

September 14, 2012 at 10:26 am

Great ideas! Ive been through, what seems like, thousands of web sites to get ideas for my busy smart little 19 month old daughter. She is bored with practically everything that we own, have done or she has seen, so I am on the look out for some creative ideas to keep her little mind expanding. Thank you for this! It was/is very helpful!

Mel@TheDizzyMom says

September 5, 2012 at 12:28 am

Perfect! I am trying some of these tomorrow. We are getting so bored around here. I am a new SAHM and trying to keep my 2 year old entertained is so hard!

Jess (aka Seamama) says

August 22, 2012 at 2:59 pm

I find myself returning again and again to this post to peruse the ideas. Especially on days where I am low energy and need something easy to do with Little A. Thanks for such a comprehensive post.

August 22, 2012 at 1:21 pm

Thanks for all the great ideas! I babysit an 18 month old and 2 1/2 year old at my house and have been in need of some toddler activities. I can’t wait to try these out!

leanne says

May 28, 2012 at 3:28 am

Great ideas, can’t wait to use some!

Candice says

May 17, 2012 at 6:04 pm

Our favorite thing right now is flour but we mix in baby oil do it can be molded. Lots of fun but a mess afterward but it’s worth all the fun and smiles

Melanie says

May 10, 2012 at 11:20 pm

Right now my daughter loves playing with plastic Easter eggs and an egg carton. I put a different coloured item in each egg (pom pom, pipe cleaner, scarp of material), and she’s just delighted every time she opens them up! This is how she learned her colours too!

May 11, 2012 at 7:47 am

That’s brilliant! We did something similar with the baby food jars – just opening them up is a delight, but to find something in it is even better! Love that idea Melanie!

Emilia says

May 9, 2012 at 12:32 am

What a great comprehensive list for the kiddos! Love it.

crystal@growingajeweledrose says

May 2, 2012 at 9:21 pm

I was just looking at traffic sources, an realized you linked me onto this. I somehow missed that the other times I looked through the list. Just wanted to thank you for including Growing A Jeweled Rose in such a fantastic round up!

May 2, 2012 at 9:36 pm

haha! Yep! You’re welcome and thanks!

May 1, 2012 at 3:54 pm

Based on your criteria I have 3 toddlers. A one year old, a two year old and a three year old!! Thanks for some great ideas

April 24, 2012 at 9:48 pm

These are really good ideas!!! You do have to be careful with some of these ideas and what age you do them with. If you do it with young toddlers you need to have a watchful eye because there are chocking hazards in some of these ideas. I have been a 2 year old teacher for many years now.

Lyn Armstrong says

April 24, 2012 at 4:29 pm

Thank you for painting on an easel instead of a flat table! Doing things on a slanted surface (like the desks of 1900’s) or an upright surface (like an easel) helps pull the hand into a grip that you want your child to use holding a marker, crayon, pencil. In this position the wrist muscles help which makes it easier for your child. Wonder if you could attach the styrofoam for hammering onto such a surface? Hm…..You have wonderful ideas!

Heather says

April 24, 2012 at 12:24 pm

These are awesome!!!

April 23, 2012 at 10:36 pm

Watch out for the flour activity…I am highly allergic to the dust off flour.

April 24, 2012 at 1:34 pm

Oh man! And flour is so fun!

Brooke says

April 23, 2012 at 7:57 am

This is terrific!!! Some great ideas we haven’t tried before!! Thanks for the inspiration. :) Brooke

Jessica says

April 21, 2012 at 10:33 pm

I love the extra ideas, my favorite is mashed potatoes! Left over, homemade, or instant they all are awesome for kids to play with of all ages.

April 22, 2012 at 12:36 pm

Ooooh! Mashed potatoes would be great sensory play!

April 20, 2012 at 12:43 pm

These are such great ideas. Love them.

momandkiddo says

April 20, 2012 at 4:57 am

A great collection. Thanks for including my post in it.

Andrea says

April 19, 2012 at 4:22 pm

My kids love to play with ramps. I usually lean an extra table leaf on the couch and they slide everything they can down the ramp (especially themselves!)

April 22, 2012 at 12:46 pm

This sounds so tempting, I just don’t know if I can bring myself to let the kids use my table leaf! I may have to snag something at a garage sale just for this…. I know the kids would have a hay day with it!

Anna @ The Imagination Tree says

April 19, 2012 at 4:12 pm

Lovely list Jamie! Thanks for including one from me!

Denise Hardin says

April 19, 2012 at 1:39 pm

I loved your list. I have a small in-home day care with toddlers. I use a lot of your ideas, but have added some more of them. I wanted to give you one idea that my toddlers LOVE. I put food coloring, a little cooking oil, and fill with water a water bottle *plastic* and tape the lid around it. I sometimes put small things like little glittering glass balls, glitter, etc. in them for them to roll around and watch. Just a little idea

April 22, 2012 at 12:48 pm

I’ve tried the bottle sensory thing once, we didn’t have luck with it. I may have to do that one again. Its such a great idea.

Srishti@ProlificCooking says

April 19, 2012 at 4:03 am

Amazing collection! I always get short of ideas for my 1 and a half year old. Thanks for sharing!

Mommy to the Max says

April 19, 2012 at 12:16 am

It is amazing how such simple things can entertain and fascinate your little ones. I remember doing pots and pans, balloons and bubbles when my kids were younger.

Surprisingly, those same items work with my older kids, too. Of course, they play with them differently now but my 11, 8 and 4 year olds still love muffin tins (we use these in various games such as catch the penny), balloons (we have assorted contests with these) and bubbles – well they’re just fun no matter what age.

Rachelle | TinkerLab says

April 18, 2012 at 11:40 pm

fabulous list, jamie! i love toddler activities, and find that following a child’s lead helps me come up with things that work well. thanks very much for including us with all these toddler super-stars.

April 18, 2012 at 8:43 pm

I love the golf tee idea. I will be doing many of these with my 2 year old twins. They love to “paint” the house. I give them water and paint brushes and the water changes the color of the bricks.

April 18, 2012 at 7:28 pm

Wow, awesome list. Thanks! I love lists :) Lori @ Cachey Mama’s Classroom

April 18, 2012 at 6:41 pm

Great list thanks Jamie! My twins are only young toddlers so we do a lot of messy play outside where i don’t need to stress! We do many of these ideas too but have found lots of inspiration through your list! They are definitely a harder age to plan successfully for!

April 18, 2012 at 5:37 pm

Shaving foam is definitely a great one! I usually keep it contained by giving each child their own oven tray to smoosh it around in and draw pictures with their fingers. Adding tools helps maintain interest aswell – pop sticks, craft matchsticks, paint brushes/old tooth brushes, rubber stamps, anything really. A little note: if you do a long session of this, a bit of moisturiser after the clean up helps those with dry or sensitive skin. Another one is egg cartons. Go on a nature walk or treasure hunt and collect little things then either play with them in an egg carton, putting them in and out and opening/closing the lid, or glue one thing in each hole. PS. I love the hammering golf tees idea! Can’t wait to try it out! The woodwork table was always may favourite thing at kindy so this is a great way for younger children to get the same thrill.

Trisha @ Inspiration Laboratories says

April 18, 2012 at 2:55 pm

Great list, Jamie! My son’s favorites are anything to do with water or paint or trains.

Shannon says

April 18, 2012 at 1:47 pm

I have two little ones in this age range now and these ideas are fantastic. I love the sensory section, that is where I fall short so I will be implementing these. Thanks!

April 18, 2012 at 12:41 pm

Fantastic round-up! I found the toddler stage the most difficult as well. Pinning this for future reference (just in case…)

The Iowa Farmer's Wife says

April 18, 2012 at 9:28 am

What a great list of activities!! Thanks for sharing these!! :)

April 18, 2012 at 9:11 am

That is an amazing list of activities!! Shaving cream was one thing that my daughter loved then and even now. But may not be apt for <2yrs. Thanks for including our 'Foam art on window'.

April 23, 2012 at 11:27 pm

the shaving cream is hard, at the daycare i work at we use spray whip cream they love it and its safe to eat

April 24, 2012 at 1:33 pm

Great suggestion!

JDaniel4's Mom says

April 18, 2012 at 8:57 am

Wow! I can do many of these with my preschooler.

maryanne @ mama smiles says

April 18, 2012 at 6:42 am

Such a fantastic round-up of activities!!! Thanks for the new ideas to try!

Kylie @ Octavia and Vicky says

April 17, 2012 at 11:29 pm

Wow, what an amazing list! You’ve been so busy, that’s for putting all your great ideas together in one spot.

April 17, 2012 at 10:56 pm

Fantastic round up!

Toddler Approved says

April 17, 2012 at 9:15 pm

Awesome post! I am excited to now have even more ideas to do with my 16 month old daughter! Thanks for including our heart ball art in your post.

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Free Easter Bible Word Search Printable PDF

As we approach the beautiful season of Easter, a time of reflection and celebration, I’m thrilled to share a special gift with all of you – a Free Easter Bible Word Search Printable PDF . This isn’t just any ordinary word search; it’s a journey through the heart of the Bible, designed to bring the stories and teachings of our faith into the hands of both young and old alike.

Download the NIV version below or get the ESV or KJV version of this Easter Bible Verse Word Find printable at the Sunday School Store.

Click here to download the 21-page PDF

Why a Bible Word Search?

Word searches have a unique charm, offering a blend of challenge and discovery that captivates the mind. When those puzzles are woven with the profound words of the Bible, they become more than just a game; they become a tool for meditation, learning, and spiritual growth. Whether you’re looking for a Bible word search for kids to integrate into your Sunday school curriculum or a free printable Bible word search puzzle for adults to challenge your own scriptural knowledge, this PDF is designed to meet you where you are in your faith journey.

What’s Inside the PDF?

This carefully curated word search book, a PDF free download, includes a variety of puzzles that cater to different age groups and skill levels, from simple Bible word searches for children to more complex puzzles that adults will find both challenging and rewarding. Each puzzle is centered around key Bible verses, stories, and themes, making it a perfect tool for anyone sharpening their sword of the spirit.

• Bible Spelling Bee Word List PDF : Enhance your spelling and scriptural knowledge with a list designed for fun and learning.
• Sunday School Word Search Free Printable : Engage your Sunday school class with puzzles that complement your lessons and help children remember important Bible truths.
• Free Printable Word Searches for Adults PDF : Challenge yourself or your adult Bible study group with puzzles that delve deeper into the Word.
• Christian Word Search Printable : Explore themes of faith, hope, and love through puzzles that celebrate our Christian heritage.

For Everyone in the Family

Whether you’re a parent looking for a meaningful activity to do with your children, a Sunday school teacher searching for engaging materials, or an adult seeking a refreshing way to connect with the Bible, this free printable large print Bible word search is for you. It’s not just an activity sheet; it’s a gateway to exploring the Bible in a new and exciting way.

How to Get Your Free Download

Getting your hands on this Bible word search printable free is easy. Simply click on the link to download your copy today. Print it out for your family, your Sunday school class, or keep it on your digital device for a quick puzzle break anytime.

A Personal Invitation

I invite you to dive into these puzzles, let the words of the Bible fill your heart as you search, and discover the joy of God’s Word in a fresh, new way. Whether you’re solving a puzzle from our Bible trivia word quiz game answers or pondering the big Bible words in our spelling bee list, each moment spent in this activity is an opportunity to grow closer to God.

This Easter, let’s celebrate the resurrection of Jesus not just in our hearts but in our minds as well. Download your free printable children’s Bible word search puzzles and word search Christian printable today, and let the words of life enrich your soul.

Happy searching, and may you find not just words, but His Word, in every puzzle.

Christmas Bible Word Search Puzzles

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End the Phone-Based Childhood Now

The environment in which kids grow up today is hostile to human development.

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S omething went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. By now you’ve likely seen the statistics : Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States—fairly stable in the 2000s—rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent.

The problem was not limited to the U.S.: Similar patterns emerged around the same time in Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand , the Nordic countries , and beyond . By a variety of measures and in a variety of countries, the members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and related disorders at levels higher than any other generation for which we have data.

The decline in mental health is just one of many signs that something went awry. Loneliness and friendlessness among American teens began to surge around 2012. Academic achievement went down, too. According to “The Nation’s Report Card,” scores in reading and math began to decline for U.S. students after 2012, reversing decades of slow but generally steady increase. PISA, the major international measure of educational trends, shows that declines in math, reading, and science happened globally, also beginning in the early 2010s.

Read: It sure looks like phones are making students dumber

As the oldest members of Gen Z reach their late 20s, their troubles are carrying over into adulthood. Young adults are dating less , having less sex, and showing less interest in ever having children than prior generations. They are more likely to live with their parents. They were less likely to get jobs as teens , and managers say they are harder to work with. Many of these trends began with earlier generations, but most of them accelerated with Gen Z.

Surveys show that members of Gen Z are shyer and more risk averse than previous generations, too, and risk aversion may make them less ambitious. In an interview last May , OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman and Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison noted that, for the first time since the 1970s, none of Silicon Valley’s preeminent entrepreneurs are under 30. “Something has really gone wrong,” Altman said. In a famously young industry, he was baffled by the sudden absence of great founders in their 20s.

Generations are not monolithic, of course. Many young people are flourishing. Taken as a whole, however, Gen Z is in poor mental health and is lagging behind previous generations on many important metrics. And if a generation is doing poorly––if it is more anxious and depressed and is starting families, careers, and important companies at a substantially lower rate than previous generations––then the sociological and economic consequences will be profound for the entire society.

What happened in the early 2010s that altered adolescent development and worsened mental health? Theories abound , but the fact that similar trends are found in many countries worldwide means that events and trends that are specific to the United States cannot be the main story.

I think the answer can be stated simply, although the underlying psychology is complex: Those were the years when adolescents in rich countries traded in their flip phones for smartphones and moved much more of their social lives online—particularly onto social-media platforms designed for virality and addiction . Once young people began carrying the entire internet in their pockets, available to them day and night, it altered their daily experiences and developmental pathways across the board. Friendship, dating, sexuality, exercise, sleep, academics, politics, family dynamics, identity—all were affected. Life changed rapidly for younger children, too, as they began to get access to their parents’ smartphones and, later, got their own iPads, laptops, and even smartphones during elementary school.

Jonathan Haidt: Get phones out of schools now

As a social psychologist who has long studied social and moral development, I have been involved in debates about the effects of digital technology for years. Typically, the scientific questions have been framed somewhat narrowly, to make them easier to address with data. For example, do adolescents who consume more social media have higher levels of depression? Does using a smartphone just before bedtime interfere with sleep? The answer to these questions is usually found to be yes, although the size of the relationship is often statistically small, which has led some researchers to conclude that these new technologies are not responsible for the gigantic increases in mental illness that began in the early 2010s.

But before we can evaluate the evidence on any one potential avenue of harm, we need to step back and ask a broader question: What is childhood––including adolescence––and how did it change when smartphones moved to the center of it? If we take a more holistic view of what childhood is and what young children, tweens, and teens need to do to mature into competent adults, the picture becomes much clearer. Smartphone-based life, it turns out, alters or interferes with a great number of developmental processes.

The intrusion of smartphones and social media are not the only changes that have deformed childhood. There’s an important backstory, beginning as long ago as the 1980s, when we started systematically depriving children and adolescents of freedom, unsupervised play, responsibility, and opportunities for risk taking, all of which promote competence, maturity, and mental health. But the change in childhood accelerated in the early 2010s, when an already independence-deprived generation was lured into a new virtual universe that seemed safe to parents but in fact is more dangerous, in many respects, than the physical world.

My claim is that the new phone-based childhood that took shape roughly 12 years ago is making young people sick and blocking their progress to flourishing in adulthood. We need a dramatic cultural correction, and we need it now.

Brain development is sometimes said to be “experience-expectant,” because specific parts of the brain show increased plasticity during periods of life when an animal’s brain can “expect” to have certain kinds of experiences. You can see this with baby geese, who will imprint on whatever mother-sized object moves in their vicinity just after they hatch. You can see it with human children, who are able to learn languages quickly and take on the local accent, but only through early puberty; after that, it’s hard to learn a language and sound like a native speaker. There is also some evidence of a sensitive period for cultural learning more generally. Japanese children who spent a few years in California in the 1970s came to feel “American” in their identity and ways of interacting only if they attended American schools for a few years between ages 9 and 15. If they left before age 9, there was no lasting impact. If they didn’t arrive until they were 15, it was too late; they didn’t come to feel American.

Human childhood is an extended cultural apprenticeship with different tasks at different ages all the way through puberty. Once we see it this way, we can identify factors that promote or impede the right kinds of learning at each age. For children of all ages, one of the most powerful drivers of learning is the strong motivation to play. Play is the work of childhood, and all young mammals have the same job: to wire up their brains by playing vigorously and often, practicing the moves and skills they’ll need as adults. Kittens will play-pounce on anything that looks like a mouse tail. Human children will play games such as tag and sharks and minnows, which let them practice both their predator skills and their escaping-from-predator skills. Adolescents will play sports with greater intensity, and will incorporate playfulness into their social interactions—flirting, teasing, and developing inside jokes that bond friends together. Hundreds of studies on young rats, monkeys, and humans show that young mammals want to play, need to play, and end up socially, cognitively, and emotionally impaired when they are deprived of play .

One crucial aspect of play is physical risk taking. Children and adolescents must take risks and fail—often—in environments in which failure is not very costly. This is how they extend their abilities, overcome their fears, learn to estimate risk, and learn to cooperate in order to take on larger challenges later. The ever-present possibility of getting hurt while running around, exploring, play-fighting, or getting into a real conflict with another group adds an element of thrill, and thrilling play appears to be the most effective kind for overcoming childhood anxieties and building social, emotional, and physical competence. The desire for risk and thrill increases in the teen years, when failure might carry more serious consequences. Children of all ages need to choose the risk they are ready for at a given moment. Young people who are deprived of opportunities for risk taking and independent exploration will, on average, develop into more anxious and risk-averse adults .

From the April 2014 issue: The overprotected kid

Human childhood and adolescence evolved outdoors, in a physical world full of dangers and opportunities. Its central activities––play, exploration, and intense socializing––were largely unsupervised by adults, allowing children to make their own choices, resolve their own conflicts, and take care of one another. Shared adventures and shared adversity bound young people together into strong friendship clusters within which they mastered the social dynamics of small groups, which prepared them to master bigger challenges and larger groups later on.

And then we changed childhood.

The changes started slowly in the late 1970s and ’80s, before the arrival of the internet, as many parents in the U.S. grew fearful that their children would be harmed or abducted if left unsupervised. Such crimes have always been extremely rare, but they loomed larger in parents’ minds thanks in part to rising levels of street crime combined with the arrival of cable TV, which enabled round-the-clock coverage of missing-children cases. A general decline in social capital ––the degree to which people knew and trusted their neighbors and institutions–– exacerbated parental fears . Meanwhile, rising competition for college admissions encouraged more intensive forms of parenting . In the 1990s, American parents began pulling their children indoors or insisting that afternoons be spent in adult-run enrichment activities. Free play, independent exploration, and teen-hangout time declined.

In recent decades, seeing unchaperoned children outdoors has become so novel that when one is spotted in the wild, some adults feel it is their duty to call the police. In 2015, the Pew Research Center found that parents, on average, believed that children should be at least 10 years old to play unsupervised in front of their house, and that kids should be 14 before being allowed to go unsupervised to a public park. Most of these same parents had enjoyed joyous and unsupervised outdoor play by the age of 7 or 8.

But overprotection is only part of the story. The transition away from a more independent childhood was facilitated by steady improvements in digital technology, which made it easier and more inviting for young people to spend a lot more time at home, indoors, and alone in their rooms. Eventually, tech companies got access to children 24/7. They developed exciting virtual activities, engineered for “engagement,” that are nothing like the real-world experiences young brains evolved to expect.

The first wave came ashore in the 1990s with the arrival of dial-up internet access, which made personal computers good for something beyond word processing and basic games. By 2003, 55 percent of American households had a computer with (slow) internet access. Rates of adolescent depression, loneliness, and other measures of poor mental health did not rise in this first wave. If anything, they went down a bit. Millennial teens (born 1981 through 1995), who were the first to go through puberty with access to the internet, were psychologically healthier and happier, on average, than their older siblings or parents in Generation X (born 1965 through 1980).

The second wave began to rise in the 2000s, though its full force didn’t hit until the early 2010s. It began rather innocently with the introduction of social-media platforms that helped people connect with their friends. Posting and sharing content became much easier with sites such as Friendster (launched in 2003), Myspace (2003), and Facebook (2004).

Teens embraced social media soon after it came out, but the time they could spend on these sites was limited in those early years because the sites could only be accessed from a computer, often the family computer in the living room. Young people couldn’t access social media (and the rest of the internet) from the school bus, during class time, or while hanging out with friends outdoors. Many teens in the early-to-mid-2000s had cellphones, but these were basic phones (many of them flip phones) that had no internet access. Typing on them was difficult––they had only number keys. Basic phones were tools that helped Millennials meet up with one another in person or talk with each other one-on-one. I have seen no evidence to suggest that basic cellphones harmed the mental health of Millennials.

It was not until the introduction of the iPhone (2007), the App Store (2008), and high-speed internet (which reached 50 percent of American homes in 2007 )—and the corresponding pivot to mobile made by many providers of social media, video games, and porn—that it became possible for adolescents to spend nearly every waking moment online. The extraordinary synergy among these innovations was what powered the second technological wave. In 2011, only 23 percent of teens had a smartphone. By 2015, that number had risen to 73 percent , and a quarter of teens said they were online “almost constantly.” Their younger siblings in elementary school didn’t usually have their own smartphones, but after its release in 2010, the iPad quickly became a staple of young children’s daily lives. It was in this brief period, from 2010 to 2015, that childhood in America (and many other countries) was rewired into a form that was more sedentary, solitary, virtual, and incompatible with healthy human development.

In the 2000s, Silicon Valley and its world-changing inventions were a source of pride and excitement in America. Smart and ambitious young people around the world wanted to move to the West Coast to be part of the digital revolution. Tech-company founders such as Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin were lauded as gods, or at least as modern Prometheans, bringing humans godlike powers. The Arab Spring bloomed in 2011 with the help of decentralized social platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. When pundits and entrepreneurs talked about the power of social media to transform society, it didn’t sound like a dark prophecy.

You have to put yourself back in this heady time to understand why adults acquiesced so readily to the rapid transformation of childhood. Many parents had concerns , even then, about what their children were doing online, especially because of the internet’s ability to put children in contact with strangers. But there was also a lot of excitement about the upsides of this new digital world. If computers and the internet were the vanguards of progress, and if young people––widely referred to as “digital natives”––were going to live their lives entwined with these technologies, then why not give them a head start? I remember how exciting it was to see my 2-year-old son master the touch-and-swipe interface of my first iPhone in 2008. I thought I could see his neurons being woven together faster as a result of the stimulation it brought to his brain, compared to the passivity of watching television or the slowness of building a block tower. I thought I could see his future job prospects improving.

Touchscreen devices were also a godsend for harried parents. Many of us discovered that we could have peace at a restaurant, on a long car trip, or at home while making dinner or replying to emails if we just gave our children what they most wanted: our smartphones and tablets. We saw that everyone else was doing it and figured it must be okay.

It was the same for older children, desperate to join their friends on social-media platforms, where the minimum age to open an account was set by law to 13, even though no research had been done to establish the safety of these products for minors. Because the platforms did nothing (and still do nothing) to verify the stated age of new-account applicants, any 10-year-old could open multiple accounts without parental permission or knowledge, and many did. Facebook and later Instagram became places where many sixth and seventh graders were hanging out and socializing. If parents did find out about these accounts, it was too late. Nobody wanted their child to be isolated and alone, so parents rarely forced their children to shut down their accounts.

We had no idea what we were doing.

The numbers are hard to believe. The most recent Gallup data show that American teens spend about five hours a day just on social-media platforms (including watching videos on TikTok and YouTube). Add in all the other phone- and screen-based activities, and the number rises to somewhere between seven and nine hours a day, on average . The numbers are even higher in single-parent and low-income families, and among Black, Hispanic, and Native American families.

These very high numbers do not include time spent in front of screens for school or homework, nor do they include all the time adolescents spend paying only partial attention to events in the real world while thinking about what they’re missing on social media or waiting for their phones to ping. Pew reports that in 2022, one-third of teens said they were on one of the major social-media sites “almost constantly,” and nearly half said the same of the internet in general. For these heavy users, nearly every waking hour is an hour absorbed, in full or in part, by their devices.

In Thoreau’s terms, how much of life is exchanged for all this screen time? Arguably, most of it. Everything else in an adolescent’s day must get squeezed down or eliminated entirely to make room for the vast amount of content that is consumed, and for the hundreds of “friends,” “followers,” and other network connections that must be serviced with texts, posts, comments, likes, snaps, and direct messages. I recently surveyed my students at NYU, and most of them reported that the very first thing they do when they open their eyes in the morning is check their texts, direct messages, and social-media feeds. It’s also the last thing they do before they close their eyes at night. And it’s a lot of what they do in between.

The amount of time that adolescents spend sleeping declined in the early 2010s , and many studies tie sleep loss directly to the use of devices around bedtime, particularly when they’re used to scroll through social media . Exercise declined , too, which is unfortunate because exercise, like sleep, improves both mental and physical health. Book reading has been declining for decades, pushed aside by digital alternatives, but the decline, like so much else, sped up in the early 2010 s. With passive entertainment always available, adolescent minds likely wander less than they used to; contemplation and imagination might be placed on the list of things winnowed down or crowded out.

But perhaps the most devastating cost of the new phone-based childhood was the collapse of time spent interacting with other people face-to-face. A study of how Americans spend their time found that, before 2010, young people (ages 15 to 24) reported spending far more time with their friends (about two hours a day, on average, not counting time together at school) than did older people (who spent just 30 to 60 minutes with friends). Time with friends began decreasing for young people in the 2000s, but the drop accelerated in the 2010s, while it barely changed for older people. By 2019, young people’s time with friends had dropped to just 67 minutes a day. It turns out that Gen Z had been socially distancing for many years and had mostly completed the project by the time COVID-19 struck.

Read: What happens when kids don’t see their peers for months

You might question the importance of this decline. After all, isn’t much of this online time spent interacting with friends through texting, social media, and multiplayer video games? Isn’t that just as good?

Some of it surely is, and virtual interactions offer unique benefits too, especially for young people who are geographically or socially isolated. But in general, the virtual world lacks many of the features that make human interactions in the real world nutritious, as we might say, for physical, social, and emotional development. In particular, real-world relationships and social interactions are characterized by four features—typical for hundreds of thousands of years—that online interactions either distort or erase.

First, real-world interactions are embodied , meaning that we use our hands and facial expressions to communicate, and we learn to respond to the body language of others. Virtual interactions, in contrast, mostly rely on language alone. No matter how many emojis are offered as compensation, the elimination of communication channels for which we have eons of evolutionary programming is likely to produce adults who are less comfortable and less skilled at interacting in person.

Second, real-world interactions are synchronous ; they happen at the same time. As a result, we learn subtle cues about timing and conversational turn taking. Synchronous interactions make us feel closer to the other person because that’s what getting “in sync” does. Texts, posts, and many other virtual interactions lack synchrony. There is less real laughter, more room for misinterpretation, and more stress after a comment that gets no immediate response.

Third, real-world interactions primarily involve one‐to‐one communication , or sometimes one-to-several. But many virtual communications are broadcast to a potentially huge audience. Online, each person can engage in dozens of asynchronous interactions in parallel, which interferes with the depth achieved in all of them. The sender’s motivations are different, too: With a large audience, one’s reputation is always on the line; an error or poor performance can damage social standing with large numbers of peers. These communications thus tend to be more performative and anxiety-inducing than one-to-one conversations.

Finally, real-world interactions usually take place within communities that have a high bar for entry and exit , so people are strongly motivated to invest in relationships and repair rifts when they happen. But in many virtual networks, people can easily block others or quit when they are displeased. Relationships within such networks are usually more disposable.

From the September 2015 issue: The coddling of the American mind

These unsatisfying and anxiety-producing features of life online should be recognizable to most adults. Online interactions can bring out antisocial behavior that people would never display in their offline communities. But if life online takes a toll on adults, just imagine what it does to adolescents in the early years of puberty, when their “experience expectant” brains are rewiring based on feedback from their social interactions.

Kids going through puberty online are likely to experience far more social comparison, self-consciousness, public shaming, and chronic anxiety than adolescents in previous generations, which could potentially set developing brains into a habitual state of defensiveness. The brain contains systems that are specialized for approach (when opportunities beckon) and withdrawal (when threats appear or seem likely). People can be in what we might call “discover mode” or “defend mode” at any moment, but generally not both. The two systems together form a mechanism for quickly adapting to changing conditions, like a thermostat that can activate either a heating system or a cooling system as the temperature fluctuates. Some people’s internal thermostats are generally set to discover mode, and they flip into defend mode only when clear threats arise. These people tend to see the world as full of opportunities. They are happier and less anxious. Other people’s internal thermostats are generally set to defend mode, and they flip into discover mode only when they feel unusually safe. They tend to see the world as full of threats and are more prone to anxiety and depressive disorders.

A simple way to understand the differences between Gen Z and previous generations is that people born in and after 1996 have internal thermostats that were shifted toward defend mode. This is why life on college campuses changed so suddenly when Gen Z arrived, beginning around 2014. Students began requesting “safe spaces” and trigger warnings. They were highly sensitive to “microaggressions” and sometimes claimed that words were “violence.” These trends mystified those of us in older generations at the time, but in hindsight, it all makes sense. Gen Z students found words, ideas, and ambiguous social encounters more threatening than had previous generations of students because we had fundamentally altered their psychological development.

Staying on task while sitting at a computer is hard enough for an adult with a fully developed prefrontal cortex. It is far more difficult for adolescents in front of their laptop trying to do homework. They are probably less intrinsically motivated to stay on task. They’re certainly less able, given their undeveloped prefrontal cortex, and hence it’s easy for any company with an app to lure them away with an offer of social validation or entertainment. Their phones are pinging constantly— one study found that the typical adolescent now gets 237 notifications a day, roughly 15 every waking hour. Sustained attention is essential for doing almost anything big, creative, or valuable, yet young people find their attention chopped up into little bits by notifications offering the possibility of high-pleasure, low-effort digital experiences.

It even happens in the classroom. Studies confirm that when students have access to their phones during class time, they use them, especially for texting and checking social media, and their grades and learning suffer . This might explain why benchmark test scores began to decline in the U.S. and around the world in the early 2010s—well before the pandemic hit.

The neural basis of behavioral addiction to social media or video games is not exactly the same as chemical addiction to cocaine or opioids. Nonetheless, they all involve abnormally heavy and sustained activation of dopamine neurons and reward pathways. Over time, the brain adapts to these high levels of dopamine; when the child is not engaged in digital activity, their brain doesn’t have enough dopamine, and the child experiences withdrawal symptoms. These generally include anxiety, insomnia, and intense irritability. Kids with these kinds of behavioral addictions often become surly and aggressive, and withdraw from their families into their bedrooms and devices.

Social-media and gaming platforms were designed to hook users. How successful are they? How many kids suffer from digital addictions?

The main addiction risks for boys seem to be video games and porn. “ Internet gaming disorder ,” which was added to the main diagnosis manual of psychiatry in 2013 as a condition for further study, describes “significant impairment or distress” in several aspects of life, along with many hallmarks of addiction, including an inability to reduce usage despite attempts to do so. Estimates for the prevalence of IGD range from 7 to 15 percent among adolescent boys and young men. As for porn, a nationally representative survey of American adults published in 2019 found that 7 percent of American men agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I am addicted to pornography”—and the rates were higher for the youngest men.

Girls have much lower rates of addiction to video games and porn, but they use social media more intensely than boys do. A study of teens in 29 nations found that between 5 and 15 percent of adolescents engage in what is called “problematic social media use,” which includes symptoms such as preoccupation, withdrawal symptoms, neglect of other areas of life, and lying to parents and friends about time spent on social media. That study did not break down results by gender, but many others have found that rates of “problematic use” are higher for girls.

Jonathan Haidt: The dangerous experiment on teen girls

I don’t want to overstate the risks: Most teens do not become addicted to their phones and video games. But across multiple studies and across genders, rates of problematic use come out in the ballpark of 5 to 15 percent. Is there any other consumer product that parents would let their children use relatively freely if they knew that something like one in 10 kids would end up with a pattern of habitual and compulsive use that disrupted various domains of life and looked a lot like an addiction?

During that crucial sensitive period for cultural learning, from roughly ages 9 through 15, we should be especially thoughtful about who is socializing our children for adulthood. Instead, that’s when most kids get their first smartphone and sign themselves up (with or without parental permission) to consume rivers of content from random strangers. Much of that content is produced by other adolescents, in blocks of a few minutes or a few seconds.

This rerouting of enculturating content has created a generation that is largely cut off from older generations and, to some extent, from the accumulated wisdom of humankind, including knowledge about how to live a flourishing life. Adolescents spend less time steeped in their local or national culture. They are coming of age in a confusing, placeless, ahistorical maelstrom of 30-second stories curated by algorithms designed to mesmerize them. Without solid knowledge of the past and the filtering of good ideas from bad––a process that plays out over many generations––young people will be more prone to believe whatever terrible ideas become popular around them, which might explain why v ideos showing young people reacting positively to Osama bin Laden’s thoughts about America were trending on TikTok last fall.

All this is made worse by the fact that so much of digital public life is an unending supply of micro dramas about somebody somewhere in our country of 340 million people who did something that can fuel an outrage cycle, only to be pushed aside by the next. It doesn’t add up to anything and leaves behind only a distorted sense of human nature and affairs.

When our public life becomes fragmented, ephemeral, and incomprehensible, it is a recipe for anomie, or normlessness. The great French sociologist Émile Durkheim showed long ago that a society that fails to bind its people together with some shared sense of sacredness and common respect for rules and norms is not a society of great individual freedom; it is, rather, a place where disoriented individuals have difficulty setting goals and exerting themselves to achieve them. Durkheim argued that anomie was a major driver of suicide rates in European countries. Modern scholars continue to draw on his work to understand suicide rates today.

Durkheim’s observations are crucial for understanding what happened in the early 2010s. A long-running survey of American teens found that , from 1990 to 2010, high-school seniors became slightly less likely to agree with statements such as “Life often feels meaningless.” But as soon as they adopted a phone-based life and many began to live in the whirlpool of social media, where no stability can be found, every measure of despair increased. From 2010 to 2019, the number who agreed that their lives felt “meaningless” increased by about 70 percent, to more than one in five.

An additional source of evidence comes from Gen Z itself. With all the talk of regulating social media, raising age limits, and getting phones out of schools, you might expect to find many members of Gen Z writing and speaking out in opposition. I’ve looked for such arguments and found hardly any. In contrast, many young adults tell stories of devastation.

Freya India, a 24-year-old British essayist who writes about girls, explains how social-media sites carry girls off to unhealthy places: “It seems like your child is simply watching some makeup tutorials, following some mental health influencers, or experimenting with their identity. But let me tell you: they are on a conveyor belt to someplace bad. Whatever insecurity or vulnerability they are struggling with, they will be pushed further and further into it.” She continues:

Gen Z were the guinea pigs in this uncontrolled global social experiment. We were the first to have our vulnerabilities and insecurities fed into a machine that magnified and refracted them back at us, all the time, before we had any sense of who we were. We didn’t just grow up with algorithms. They raised us. They rearranged our faces. Shaped our identities. Convinced us we were sick.

Rikki Schlott, a 23-year-old American journalist and co-author of The Canceling of the American Mind , writes ,

The day-to-day life of a typical teen or tween today would be unrecognizable to someone who came of age before the smartphone arrived. Zoomers are spending an average of 9 hours daily in this screen-time doom loop—desperate to forget the gaping holes they’re bleeding out of, even if just for … 9 hours a day. Uncomfortable silence could be time to ponder why they’re so miserable in the first place. Drowning it out with algorithmic white noise is far easier.

A 27-year-old man who spent his adolescent years addicted (his word) to video games and pornography sent me this reflection on what that did to him:

I missed out on a lot of stuff in life—a lot of socialization. I feel the effects now: meeting new people, talking to people. I feel that my interactions are not as smooth and fluid as I want. My knowledge of the world (geography, politics, etc.) is lacking. I didn’t spend time having conversations or learning about sports. I often feel like a hollow operating system.

Or consider what Facebook found in a research project involving focus groups of young people, revealed in 2021 by the whistleblower Frances Haugen: “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rates of anxiety and depression among teens,” an internal document said. “This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”

How can it be that an entire generation is hooked on consumer products that so few praise and so many ultimately regret using? Because smartphones and especially social media have put members of Gen Z and their parents into a series of collective-action traps. Once you understand the dynamics of these traps, the escape routes become clear.

Social media, in contrast, applies a lot more pressure on nonusers, at a much younger age and in a more insidious way. Once a few students in any middle school lie about their age and open accounts at age 11 or 12, they start posting photos and comments about themselves and other students. Drama ensues. The pressure on everyone else to join becomes intense. Even a girl who knows, consciously, that Instagram can foster beauty obsession, anxiety, and eating disorders might sooner take those risks than accept the seeming certainty of being out of the loop, clueless, and excluded. And indeed, if she resists while most of her classmates do not, she might, in fact, be marginalized, which puts her at risk for anxiety and depression, though via a different pathway than the one taken by those who use social media heavily. In this way, social media accomplishes a remarkable feat: It even harms adolescents who do not use it.

From the May 2022 issue: Jonathan Haidt on why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

A recent study led by the University of Chicago economist Leonardo Bursztyn captured the dynamics of the social-media trap precisely. The researchers recruited more than 1,000 college students and asked them how much they’d need to be paid to deactivate their accounts on either Instagram or TikTok for four weeks. That’s a standard economist’s question to try to compute the net value of a product to society. On average, students said they’d need to be paid roughly $50 ($59 for TikTok, $47 for Instagram) to deactivate whichever platform they were asked about. Then the experimenters told the students that they were going to try to get most of the others in their school to deactivate that same platform, offering to pay them to do so as well, and asked, Now how much would you have to be paid to deactivate, if most others did so? The answer, on average, was less than zero. In each case, most students were willing to pay to have that happen.

Social media is all about network effects. Most students are only on it because everyone else is too. Most of them would prefer that nobody be on these platforms. Later in the study, students were asked directly, “Would you prefer to live in a world without Instagram [or TikTok]?” A majority of students said yes––58 percent for each app.

This is the textbook definition of what social scientists call a collective-action problem . It’s what happens when a group would be better off if everyone in the group took a particular action, but each actor is deterred from acting, because unless the others do the same, the personal cost outweighs the benefit. Fishermen considering limiting their catch to avoid wiping out the local fish population are caught in this same kind of trap. If no one else does it too, they just lose profit.

Cigarettes trapped individual smokers with a biological addiction. Social media has trapped an entire generation in a collective-action problem. Early app developers deliberately and knowingly exploited the psychological weaknesses and insecurities of young people to pressure them to consume a product that, upon reflection, many wish they could use less, or not at all.

The trap here is that each child thinks they need a smartphone because “everyone else” has one, and many parents give in because they don’t want their child to feel excluded. But if no one else had a smartphone—or even if, say, only half of the child’s sixth-grade class had one—parents would feel more comfortable providing a basic flip phone (or no phone at all). Delaying round-the-clock internet access until ninth grade (around age 14) as a national or community norm would help to protect adolescents during the very vulnerable first few years of puberty. According to a 2022 British study , these are the years when social-media use is most correlated with poor mental health. Family policies about tablets, laptops, and video-game consoles should be aligned with smartphone restrictions to prevent overuse of other screen activities.

The trap here, as with smartphones, is that each adolescent feels a strong need to open accounts on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and other platforms primarily because that’s where most of their peers are posting and gossiping. But if the majority of adolescents were not on these accounts until they were 16, families and adolescents could more easily resist the pressure to sign up. The delay would not mean that kids younger than 16 could never watch videos on TikTok or YouTube—only that they could not open accounts, give away their data, post their own content, and let algorithms get to know them and their preferences.

Most schools claim that they ban phones, but this usually just means that students aren’t supposed to take their phone out of their pocket during class. Research shows that most students do use their phones during class time. They also use them during lunchtime, free periods, and breaks between classes––times when students could and should be interacting with their classmates face-to-face. The only way to get students’ minds off their phones during the school day is to require all students to put their phones (and other devices that can send or receive texts) into a phone locker or locked pouch at the start of the day. Schools that have gone phone-free always seem to report that it has improved the culture, making students more attentive in class and more interactive with one another. Published studies back them up .

Many parents are afraid to give their children the level of independence and responsibility they themselves enjoyed when they were young, even though rates of homicide, drunk driving, and other physical threats to children are way down in recent decades. Part of the fear comes from the fact that parents look at each other to determine what is normal and therefore safe, and they see few examples of families acting as if a 9-year-old can be trusted to walk to a store without a chaperone. But if many parents started sending their children out to play or run errands, then the norms of what is safe and accepted would change quickly. So would ideas about what constitutes “good parenting.” And if more parents trusted their children with more responsibility––for example, by asking their kids to do more to help out, or to care for others––then the pervasive sense of uselessness now found in surveys of high-school students might begin to dissipate.

It would be a mistake to overlook this fourth norm. If parents don’t replace screen time with real-world experiences involving friends and independent activity, then banning devices will feel like deprivation, not the opening up of a world of opportunities.

The main reason why the phone-based childhood is so harmful is because it pushes aside everything else. Smartphones are experience blockers. Our ultimate goal should not be to remove screens entirely, nor should it be to return childhood to exactly the way it was in 1960. Rather, it should be to create a version of childhood and adolescence that keeps young people anchored in the real world while flourishing in the digital age.

In recent decades, however, Congress has not been good at addressing public concerns when the solutions would displease a powerful and deep-pocketed industry. Governors and state legislators have been much more effective, and their successes might let us evaluate how well various reforms work. But the bottom line is that to change norms, we’re going to need to do most of the work ourselves, in neighborhood groups, schools, and other communities.

Read: Why Congress keeps failing to protect kids online

There are now hundreds of organizations––most of them started by mothers who saw what smartphones had done to their children––that are working to roll back the phone-based childhood or promote a more independent, real-world childhood. (I have assembled a list of many of them.) One that I co-founded, at LetGrow.org , suggests a variety of simple programs for parents or schools, such as play club (schools keep the playground open at least one day a week before or after school, and kids sign up for phone-free, mixed-age, unstructured play as a regular weekly activity) and the Let Grow Experience (a series of homework assignments in which students––with their parents’ consent––choose something to do on their own that they’ve never done before, such as walk the dog, climb a tree, walk to a store, or cook dinner).

Even without the help of organizations, parents could break their families out of collective-action traps if they coordinated with the parents of their children’s friends. Together they could create common smartphone rules and organize unsupervised play sessions or encourage hangouts at a home, park, or shopping mall.

P arents are fed up with what childhood has become. Many are tired of having daily arguments about technologies that were designed to grab hold of their children’s attention and not let go. But the phone-based childhood is not inevitable.

We didn’t know what we were doing in the early 2010s. Now we do. It’s time to end the phone-based childhood.

This article is adapted from Jonathan Haidt’s forthcoming book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness .

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