Toddler creative learning and development: ideas and activities

Encourage creativity by following your child’s lead, providing time and space for play, and praising your child. You can use household items, recycled objects and natural materials to spark your child’s creative play. Creative play can be part of everyday activities – for example, sing as you give your child a bath.

Encouraging your toddler’s creative play

For toddlers, creative play is about creating, imagining and expressing themselves. There is no right and wrong in how toddlers create and respond to art.

By taking a step back from your child’s play, you can encourage your toddler to explore his world in his own way. This is important for learning and development.

You can also encourage your toddler’s creative play by giving your toddler lots of free time for creative play. Some days your toddler might want five minutes. Other days it could be all morning, moving from one activity to another. When your child has enough time, she can come up with lots of creative ideas.

Make sure to give your child lots of praise, whatever he ends up creating. This helps him feel good about himself and encourages him to keep creating.

Creative activities: visual art and crafts

Your child can use everyday objects and recycled items for art and craft. Here are some ideas to get your child started:

  • Use empty kitchen paper rolls or small plastic bottles to make a puppet person or animal. Your child can decorate it with markers, stickers, scrap papers, fabric and other crafty bits.
  • Use natural material. For example, go on a nature walk to collect fallen leaves. Your child can use these to draw, paste onto paper, or dip into paint.
  • Find a very large cardboard box and let your child decorate it using crayons, paints and other decorations. It could be a house, boat, cave and so on. You could help your child cut out windows or doors.
  • Make binoculars by taping two empty toilet rolls together. Tape on a strap on either side. Then your child can explore the garden with her new binoculars.
  • Thread small plastic lids, large wooden beads or pasta tubes onto string to make jewellery. This might be a good activity for older toddlers.

Keep a resource box of recycled objects and materials for homemade toys and creative play – for example, crayons, stickers, empty food containers, paper plates, bottle lids, wrapping paper scraps, egg cartons and ribbons. Just make sure that all the items are safe; it is very important that all the items for your toddler are not choking hazards and suffocation or strangulation hazards. Small beads and plastic bags are dangerous for young children.  Keep them out of reach.

Creative activities: movement and dance

These creative play ideas can help your toddler express himself through movement and dance:

  • Put on some music that will get your child moving. You could try different styles of music or music from other cultures.
  • Join your toddler for a ‘warm-up’. For example, you could crawl, roll, jump, skip or spin around together. Gradually take a step back and let your child lead the dance.
  • Give your child some props for dancing. These could be ribbons on sticks, a spoon and a box to beat, a toy guitar, a rattle or a home-made puppet  – whatever your child enjoys.

Dramatic play ideas

Toddlers love dramatic play. You can use simple props like old clothes, bags, dolls, toys, buckets and balls to help your child get started. Your child might:

  • pat the ‘baby’ to sleep
  • change ‘nappies’ on toys
  • dress up like a mum, dad, teacher, doctor or truck driver
  • pack some bags to go shopping, camping or to work
  • drive an imaginary train
  • wash a car or favourite toy.

Music and sound play

You can make music play part of other routines. You can also combine music, drama and dance.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

  • Sing simple nursery rhymes or silly made-up songs while you are changing nappies, looking after children in the bath, travelling in the car and so on.
  • Encourage your child to sing along with you, but do not expect her to sing in tune or in time. You could sing the first line of a nursery rhyme and pause to let your child sing the rest.
  • Let your child play, make noise and create music with homemade and bought instruments. Name the instruments you are using and talk about the differences in sound and how they are played.
  • Try traditional nursery rhymes and songs that involve simple, repeated, rhythmical actions.
  • Make a drum out of a plastic container and a wooden spoon, or put rice into a well-sealed plastic bottle to make a shaker. Put on some music and bang or shake fast or slow to match the music.