Category Archives: Toddler Date

Cheap Dates for Toddlers: Indoor Playgrounds

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[This series features “toddler date” ideas for something fun and simple to do with your toddler. My general rules are: The big picture ideas apply to any locale, but the specific examples will be for the Eastside of Seattle. Hopefully these programs exist in  your area!]

Indoor playgrounds (also called Open Gym, or Toddler Play Time, or… ) are held at almost all community centers, from September through May. They are open play sessions, where you can drop in anytime during the session, and you can leave whenever your child is tired. They’re a great opportunity for rambunctious, loud, energy-burning large-motor play on cold, wet days.

The community center staff sets out: balls, hula hoops, toy cars and other ride-upons, slides, and more big motor play options in the gym. The equipment ranges a little from site to site, as does the typical number of attendees, and the typical noise level. Our favorite site is Issaquah Community Center because they’re open Wednesdays and Fridays 7 – 11:30 am and I like having somewhere to go early in the day. But, on Jazzercise days, it gets really loud, as the Jazzercise class happens in another part of the gym right next to indoor play.

Attendance varies by site, but also varies a lot day by day, since these are all drop-in groups. I would say typical attendance on the Eastside is 5 – 10 families. Some weeks you’ll find yourself at a very busy playtime with 15 to twenty families running around, I’ve been to one that had only one other family, and one where my son and I were the only ones in attendance, but we had a fabulous time with the basketball, and he ran off lots of energy before we headed off to library story time.

Indoor playgrounds typically cost $2 – 4. If you’re there at the end of the session, the staff generally asks parents to help with clean up.(And sometimes the staff hasn’t set up at the beginning, and they just encourage you to pull out any toys your child wants to play with.)

For more info:

Cheap Dates for Toddlers: Counting Cars

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[This series includes lots of ideas for a “toddler date” –  something fun and simple to do with your toddler. The big picture ideas apply to any locale. The specific examples are from the Eastside of Seattle.]

Maybe it’s a boy thing… but… my toddler son LOVES to just stand at the street corner watching cars go by, saying “Car! Car! Truck! Car! Bus!” as they pass. When we are waiting for his sister outside a class, he can do this for 20 minutes at a time.

This gets old for me much faster than that, but I liven it up a bit, and start giving more details about the cars I use it as a chance to teach him new words: “red car”, “big bus”, “loud motorcycle,” “delivery truck”, and so on. It’s a great way to teach categories and adjectives.

If your child is a car fanatic, check out my Transportation Theme with recommended crafts, books and songs and lots of hands-on STEM activities related to cars.

Cheap Dates with Toddlers: Library story times

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[I have a large collection of “toddler date” ideas. The big picture ideas apply to any locale, but the specific examples are from the Eastside of Seattle.]

Story times are fabulous for so many reasons.

I like them so much, I wrote an article about them for a PEPS newsletter, which you can find here: https://www.peps.org/ParentResources/by-topic/early-learning/why-story-time-rocks

If your child has a hard time sitting still for library times, pick one that is at a time of day when they’re calm (i.e. it isn’t close to their naptime), take your child somewhere before story time where she can run off lots of physical energy (The park, an indoor playground, and swimming all work well for my son), and feed her a snack on the way there so she’s as settled as can be. You can also try different libraries. My son loves the Kirkland Wednesday story time, but the librarian there does expect kids to mostly sit and generally be quiet and pay attention, which another parent told me doesn’t work for her child. She said they love the Redmond story time for toddlers where her child can move around more – the one time I went there I found it crowded and too loud. So, shop around to find the right match for you.

For those in King County, learn more about all the great resources our library system offers, including links to the story-time calendar here: Using the King County Library.

Cheap Dates with Toddlers: Hardware stores, grocery stores, Target, IKEA!

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parent-shopper

[This series features “toddler date” ideas for something fun and simple to do with your toddler. The big picture ideas apply to any locale. Specific examples are on the Eastside of Seattle.]

If you have an early riser, like my third child, your day sometimes starts at 5:30 am. Sometimes by 8:00 a.m. you’re desperate for something to do, and it’s still hours till all the “toddler-friendly” activities are scheduled. That’s one reason to love big stores. You can head to a store at almost any hour, load your child in a cart, and start your exploration.

Grocery shopping may seem like a mundane task to you, but remember that every store is full of new sights and exciting things for a toddler to explore. Talk about what you see, smell, touch, and taste (if you’re lucky enough to be at a store on food sample days).

Children learn through experience and through real-world applications of information. Think about what all there is to learn in a hardware store:

  • talk about colors at the racks of paint chips
  • explore textures in the sandpaper aisle
  • discover on and off in the light switch display
  • talk about different sizes of objects in the nail and screw bins
  • learn about numbers and letters by checking out the house numbers and ‘garage sale’ signs
  • and for sheer entertainment value: run a paint roller back and forth across your toddler’s belly

An etiquette note: if you’re ‘hanging out’ in a retail establishment where your focus is more on entertaining your child than on buying stuff, make sure to never get in the way of the real customers, and make sure you put everything back as you found it, or even better, help tidy up a bit as you go along!

Cheap Dates with Toddlers: Rock Shops and Plant Nurseries

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[This series includes lots of “toddler date” ideas for something fun and simple to do with your toddler. The big picture ideas apply to any locale. Specific examples are from the Eastside of Seattle.]

When we were having a house built years ago, I went to look at slate for the patio, and discovered a great toddler activity. Kids LOVE rock yards! You can wander around amongst all the huge boulders, and piles of slate rock, and bins of river rocks, looking at all the colors and forms of rocks. We went many times over the years, and each time I would let them pick just a few bits of broken rock from the ground to take home as a souvenir. I have always had a fondness for Marenako’s in Preston, what my daughters called the “Rock Shop”. You can also check out Rock Mountain outside Redmond. They’re also a plant nursery and aquatic nursery supply.

Plant nurseries are also nice places to go walking and exploring. Many have koi ponds where you can watch the “fishies” swimming. You can pick a packet of seeds to take home as a souvenir of that trip, and then you have a rainy day project and the on-going interest of a growing plant to enjoy. Check out Wells Medina Nursery, just northeast of downtown Bellevue.

Find more fun rock-themed activities for kids.