When you are cooking, cleaning or doing other household chores in the kitchen, toddlers will follow. It can be helpful – and cute – to have them nearby while you are working to cook or clean. Keeping an eye on the littles ones at this age is so important! Learn more about that in my crash course in child development toddler edition.
Creatively placing toddler-friendly activities on the front of your fridge helps you in a couple of ways. 1It keeps your toddler close so you can complete a task. 2Your toddler will be learning and playing in a way that makes hardly any mess and uses a normally unused space as an activity area.
Previously I shared this fridge felt board idea that uses the same idea in a different way. My kiddos had a lot of fun playing and using their imagination with it. And, they learned a lot from the front of fridge idea I will share with you here.
Turn the Fridge into A Toddler Play Space
My inspiration for this activity is the book Toddler Lesson Plans. I reviewed it in this toddler learning article.
You can also use many of the toddler activities I shared on the blog.
Instead of the number and counting game for toddlers being placed on a table, I pulled the page out of the book and put it on the fridge so my toddler could use magnets to match the numbers.
It got so much more use this way. Plus, the more playtime a toddler spends with a DIY game the more they learn. (That’s the idea behind my toddler curriculum, Play and Grow for Toddlers!)
All you do to prep this toddler play space activity on the fridge is carefully remove the octopus number matching page from the book. Then slide it into a plastic page protector or laminate it.
Use a magnet or two to stick the play mat to the fridge.
Add some dollar store number magnets (an essential learning item in a house of toddlers and preschooler) and let the play time begin.
You can show your toddler how they can match each number to the octopus tentacle with the matching number. Start at “1” and count each number in order and then let your child place the magnets on each tentacle.
It’s okay to gently correct them if they place a magnet in the wrong place (like in the earlier photo). Learning takes time.
This helped me get so much more done in the kitchen when my kids were little. I love thinking back to how simple these toddler learning activities were to create and how much they really did teach my kids strong academic concepts that carried forward to later learning.
If you love doing activities like this with your child, be sure to get a copy of our exclusive Toddler Play and Grow learning guide and curriculum. Start your toddler out on the right foot and soak up all the quality time you will get together.
