Diaper Distraction: 10 ideas to keep a toddler busy

Looking for ways to keep a toddler busy while homeschooling or working from home? Keep reading for 10 tried and true tips.

Let’s face it, homeschooling or working from home can be challenging enough all by itself. Keeping children focused and on some sort of a routine or schedule is like trying to roll marbles in a straight line. Throw a toddler into the mix and it becomes similar to a game of Jack in the Box. You are cranking the handle at a nice pace and just moseying along peacefully when all of the sudden Jack jumps out of the box i.e. your diaper wearing distractor has a tantrum, walks up to you with lipstick all over their face or is simply in a toddler mood. Whatever the case it is a disruption to you and your other children. A study done at the University of California Irvine concluded that once a person is distracted it takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the previous level of focus. This means that if your toddler is disrupting you and your other children once every half hour or so in a 4-hour school day your children are actually accomplishing about 2.5 hours of focused school work, the same goes for your work day. Not cool right? Of course we all realize that we cannot just stop a toddler from doing what toddlers do but you can minimize the amount of times they do it – hopefully anyway. Having worked from home for many a moon and homeschooling for the past six years I can assure you that I have tried just about everything to keep toddlers and kids occupied for decent stretches of time. Below I have compiled a list of tried and true ideas that will encourage your toddler to learn and play independently for longer spans of time. These ideas are geared toward a younger child but I guarantee if I set out most of these things for my 5th grader she would be excited to do them! Keep in mind that rotating these ideas or changing certain aspects will make the experience “new and interesting” to the child.

Ideas for Uninterrupted Blocks of Time with a Toddler

1. Roll out on the floor a large sheet of brown paper and give her a box of crayons . I promise you this will keep her distracted for quite a while. If your toddler peels the paper off of crayons and eats it or leaves it everywhere I highly recommend these paper free beeswax crayons. They are small and chubby, perfect for little hands.
2. Roll out said brown paper onto the floor and draw a racetrack on it. Give him/her a few hot wheels and you will hear “vroom vroom” for some time.
3. Tape together a good size box leaving one side open to make a doll house or action figure lair out of. Let your toddler decorate the “house” with washable Crayola markers or these Dot Markers which my daughter still loves! Once they have decorated their house pull out some small dolls or action figures they haven’t seen in a while to play with.
4. Fill an empty plastic soda bottle with pom poms or cotton balls and give the child some plastic tweezers to pull them out. I don’t know why but this one really works, the kids love it. You can also put a wrapped treat at the bottom of the bottle before you put the pom poms in so that there is a surprise waiting for them.
5. Pipe Cleaner is one of those items that everyone plays with. Seriously, anyone who picks one up is compelled to bend and twist it. Heck my cats even play with the stuff. You can give your child a handful of pipe cleaner and they will make all kinds of stuff. You can also give them a colander or strainer to thread the pipe cleaner through.
6. String and Colored noodles: this is definitely a tried and true toddler pastime. Now you can use any noodle that a string can be strung through but my favorite are the craft noodles because they have a variety of colors and shapes. I also like the stretchy bracelet string because it is less flimsy than fabric string so it is easier for small hands to hold and put the noodles on.
7. In desperate times I have dump boxes of paper clips on the floor and let my kids hook them together. Believe it or not they love doing this and seeing how long they can make it.
8. Legos: now this one is obvious but there are more uses for Legos than just building. You can set out bowls or boxes and have the child sort the Legos by color or shape. The child can measure different things around the house like a bookcase or table by stacking Legos. The favorite by far is what I call Lego soup LOL. Simply fill a large pot or bin with water, dump in some Legos and give the child a few different utensils such as a ladle, whisk, or tongs.
9. Stickers are an all-time kid favorite. My choice for toddlers is foam stickers or puffy stickers as they are easier to handle. There are so many things you can do with stickers but a few that encourage learning are:
   • create print outs with shape patterns and let the child fill in the patterns with matching shaped stickers.
   • practice counting numbers: this can be done by creating a printout listing numbers for the child to match number stickers to or create columns and number them so that the child can put the correct amount of any sticker they want in each column. Animal stickers or food stickers are good for this one.
   • Create a print out of the alphabet and let the child sing the ABC song as he or she places letter stickers over each letter of the alphabet.
   • Though not a self-directed activity it is worth mentioning toddler sticker books. There are a variety of these sticker learning books and my kids really enjoyed them when they were young. There is just something about stickers and books that kids and adults alike love.
10. Clothes Pins: Use a marker to label the clothes pins with either numbers or letters and do the same on a paper plate or piece of cardboard. Have the child match the clothes pins to the paper plate or cardboard. You can also use colored clothes pins and do the same with teaching colors.

Toddlers are always going to be a challenge when it comes to self-directed play and giving mom or dad a little break but hopefully these ideas will help. One thing I know for sure is that the more of your time you give your toddler the more secure they are and that in turn will lead them to longer independent play in itself.

Diaper Distraction

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