10 Ways to Keep Kids Busy While You Make Dinner

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If lowering the burner to simmer, so you can rush off to identify a bang, is part of your late afternoon routine then your routine needs a makeover. Planning this time of day may prevent burned dinners and frazzled nerves. Here are some kitchen table activities to keep your little ones engaged. I recommend placing some items in a box only to be brought out during this time. Keeping items "special" by doing this will increase the longevity of the items.

TIP: Cover your table with wax paper or dollar store plastic table covers for an easy and fast clean up.

1. Coloring. Simple ideas are often the most effective. A stack of dollar store coloring books and a box of crayons will keep little hands busy. You may want to provide blank paper and assign your child to draw something such as her favorite food, what she wants for her birthday, or her favorite animal. Consider providing markers, colored pencils, and other coloring mediums to add variety. Do A Dots are also a great choice.

2. Make Cookie Dough. Here is a recipe that is easy and fun for little children:

• 3 c. oatmeal
• 1 1/2 c. flour
• 1 1/2 c. brown sugar
• 1 1/2 c. butter
• 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1. Children can do all the measuring since accuracy is not essential. Dump all ingredients into a large bowl. Mix thoroughly. Children can use their hands for this. The more you squeeze, punch, roll, and pound the dough the better the cookies will taste.
2. Finally, roll the dough into small balls and bake on an ungreased cookie sheet at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

3. Silly Putty. You can find silly putty at your local dollar store. Children love to work with their hands and silly putty will provide plenty of play time squeezing, stretching, and squishing.

4. Play Doh. Provide a few cans if Play Doh and plenty of cookie cutters and tools. Old egg cartons make nice muffin trays for pretend Play Doh treats. Your child may want to pretend to make dinner, play restaurant, or cut out Play Doh cookies. Any Play Doh activity will keep little hands busy.

5. Measuring Cups. Provide a few bowls, different sized measuring cups, and beads, rice or oatmeal. Anything that can be scooped will work. This is messy so keep your table well covered. Have your children scoop from bowl to another. Simple, yet toddlers and preschoolers love it!

6. Building Toys. You can have the kids do this at the table or on the floor. Provide building toys and challenge the kids to create a house, a car, or even a city.

7. Drawing Game. You will need blank paper, pencils, die, and a cube template. There are a few ways to play. For my girls, I draw princess items on the cube such as a dress, tiara, shoes, hair, etc. The girls draw a girl and roll the cube. They add whatever item the cube shows to their princess. For a gingerbread man, your cube can have a body, eyes, buttons, mouth, nose, arms and legs. Whatever is rolled is what the child draws. Now, you can add in the die by rolling the die and cube. So if you roll a six and eyes, your child makes six eyes. This gets a bit crazy but they always have fun with it. You can do monsters or creatures as well. For the princesses, they roll to add the number of diamonds on the tiara or items on the dress such as flowers, sparkles, or ruffles. The original idea came from a monster math game where the children rolled two dice and added the numbers together to come up with the number of eyes, arms, noses, etc. to add.

8. Water Coloring. Give your children a real treat by bringing out watercolors. To cut down on a mess you can supply watercolor pencils or watercolor books that only require water and a paint brush.

9. Magnets. Magnets are fun and easy to clean up. Provide magnets of different sizes and magnetic items such as paper clips, book rings, brads, and other magnets. This activity is NOT for children under the age of three or too young to understand that these items do not belong in her mouth. There are plenty of science magnet kits you can purchase for this activity.

10. Tangrams and Puzzles. Tangrams are expand a child's creative instincts while teaching math concepts. They can also be used to create images such as houses, cats, and people. Provide paper or plastic tangrams and allow your child to simply create. However, you can find templates to keep your child busy as well. In this same vain, you can provide puzzles to keep hands and minds busy.

Richele