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Forum -> Parenting our children -> Preschoolers
Help...need ideas to keep my 4 and half year old son busy



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amother
Crimson


 

Post Tue, Jan 10 2017, 11:01 am
Any ideas? He has magnatiles, kitchen set with lots of fake food, cars, trucks, mitzvah kinder, playmobil, lego, etc but he has no siblings so he gets bored of playing by himself but when I need to get things done, all he wants to do is watch videos which I really don't want. Most of the time, he'll only play if I join him or he has a friend over but I can't play with him all the time and I can't have friends over every day for various reasons. Any suggestions to keep him occupied other than videos? That's all he wants to do now that it's very cold outside, he can't really get out all that much. I feel guilty when he watches videos for long periods of time and I know it's not that great for him. Anyone else have this issue? Where can I take him that's inexpensive if I want to get out of the house with him? TIA
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mha3484




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Jan 10 2017, 11:08 am
When my son was that age, I put on music and let him help me do things around the house.
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yamz




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Jan 10 2017, 11:32 am
If you want to get out of the house without spending money, how about taking him to the library? He can choose books for you to read later, and some of them have toys for the kids to play with while they are there. Someone else's toys are always more exiciting, so he might enjoy playing with those. Also, many libraries have storytime, just check the schedule.

Try to do the work where you need to remain undisturbed while he is at school/playgroup and leave errands like grocery shopping for when he is home with you. It will take you longer to get your errands done, but errands are still interesting for children his age, so he will be happy.

What about arts and crafts or coloring? You can buy him a bunch of crayons and cheap stickers and pom poms or bits of felt to glue on to paper with a glue stick. You'd be surprised how long this can keep kids busy. It can be a little bit messy though.

Also, if you really need to get something done, just put on the video and stop feeling guilty. There are a lot worse things you can do to your child than giving him too much screen time. (Do you ever feed him too much sugar and junk food? Do you ever yell at him?) It's not all bad anyway. Children who watch quality programming tend to have larger vocabularies than those who don't.
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amother
Honeydew


 

Post Tue, Jan 10 2017, 12:45 pm
Arts and crafts is a good idea. I cover the table with a table cloth and put out a large piece of paper or some pictures from a coloring book. I give him scissors glue some color paper he could cut up and paste markers crayons, a few stamps, dot art (that cost a little but lasts awhile and is not as messy as paint) sometime some other scraps like cotton balls and ect... (I try to vary it a little each time to make it interesting) aside from the dot art its all really cheap and keeps my son really bz. I try though to limit it to twice a week so its always exciting

Don't remember what its called but he also likes the beads that u put on a bord creating a picture which then gets iorned together. It keeps him bz for a while. I only do this once a week so he doesn't get bored of it. It also comes in big beads which is good if ur son finds the small ones frustrating

.
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MyUsername




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Jan 10 2017, 4:59 pm
Play dough or kinetic sand are good.
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behappy2




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Jan 10 2017, 7:36 pm
My son was an only child till he was six years old. If I could do anything over it would be to have sat in the floor and played with him more. Every child is different but some things my son liked at that age was dress up (police. Fire. Worker man hat. Astrounat) duplo fire station set. Someone's old piano we had. Delivery boxes. He still loves. Puts things inside. He goes inside them. We make it into a train. He may be interested in stuffed animals if he has an imagination. He played with plastic animals and made zoos. Train tracks. Shtender torah tallis hat-played shul. Lots of trucks. Some with batteries. Tools tons. Books and books. You can introduce some games at this age and help him along. Car mat and cars. Lots of bath time. Bath toys. Try to make play dates if you are up to it. I found him really hard to entertain at this age. Only now that he turned six is he able to play by himself for longer periods. Lots of luck. Enjoy him.
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imeinu




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Jan 10 2017, 11:21 pm
amother wrote:


Don't remember what its called but he also likes the beads that u put on a bord creating a picture which then gets iorned together. It keeps him bz for a while. I only do this once a week so he doesn't get bored of it. It also comes in big beads which is good if ur son finds the small ones frustrating

.


perler beads.

age appropriate story tapes such as simcha train, the boruch series etc, are great for this age.
also books with lots of pictures like comics books can really keep their attention.
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thunderstorm




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Jan 11 2017, 8:04 pm
behappy2 wrote:
My son was an only child till he was six years old. If I could do anything over it would be to have sat in the floor and played with him more. Every child is different but some things my son liked at that age was dress up (police. Fire. Worker man hat. Astrounat) duplo fire station set. Someone's old piano we had. Delivery boxes. He still loves. Puts things inside. He goes inside them. We make it into a train. He may be interested in stuffed animals if he has an imagination. He played with plastic animals and made zoos. Train tracks. Shtender torah tallis hat-played shul. Lots of trucks. Some with batteries. Tools tons. Books and books. You can introduce some games at this age and help him along. Car mat and cars. Lots of bath time. Bath toys. Try to make play dates if you are up to it. I found him really hard to entertain at this age. Only now that he turned six is he able to play by himself for longer periods. Lots of luck. Enjoy him.


I was going to say delivery boxes,but I was beaten too it. My son creates houses for his play mobile characters, he made the boxes into a shtender to practice his aleph bais, he uses it as a truck, as a cave, you name it he imagines it. He also loves dress up, listening to story tapes such as Shmuel Kunda, Yitzy Erps etc. , play dough with lots of play dough toys and coloring in coloring books, drawing in sketch pads.
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