Raid the Recycling: Lids! Activities for Toddlers

ByChristie Burnett Updated on

Regular readers know how much I like to create cheap, fun toys and activities from bits and pieces around the house. Today, five simple activities with lids suitable for toddlers;

1. Count them: Immy (21 months) is at the stage where she loves to listen to me count. She likes to help by pointing at the items as I count and will already say, “One…two,” with me. We count alot during the day, when we are reading books or hanging out the washing or driving in the car. Counting is an easy learning activity that you really can take anywhere!

2. Sort by colours: A fun way to introduce toddlers to colours. Say, “Look, Mummy has a blue lid,” or “Can you find me a pink lid?”

3. Match lids to bottles: One morning when making Immy breakfast, I passed her a bottle and three lids, one fit and the other two were too big. Problem solving, toddler-style! The conversation we had as she tried to find the right lid and put it onto the bottle reinforced lots of words and concepts – size, colour, trial and error, perseverence.

Another great variation of this activity is to give your toddler a tub of various containers and their separate lids. They love matching the right lid to the right container.

4. Make your own matching textures game: Commercial, wooden versions of these available from Montessori retailers cost $20+ Mine cost virtually nothing. I used wadding, bubble wrap, felt and sandpaper in the example above, gluing a small pieces into each lid. Making two lids for each texture makes a fun matching game.

5. Make your own sorting game: I cut one large and one small round hole and one thin, rectangular hole in the lid of an ice cream container. Immy had a great time testing which lids fit into which holes.

Pop back tomorrow for activities with lids suitable for preschoolers.

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Christie Burnett is a teacher, author and mother of two. She created Childhood 101 as a place for teachers and parents to find engaging, high quality learning ideas.

4 Comments

  1. Great ideas, hold onto the lids too, as kids get older they become useful for games of draughts, you can print small pictures on a4 page, laminate it and play find the matching picture (similar to your matching textures game) and a # for naughts and crosses on a page

  2. I collect lids as well. They come in handy for all sorts of play and craft. We also use them to make stamps – we place a foam sticker on the top of a lid and then use a brush to paint the lid and use it as a stamp.

    I agree with your previous post about giving children two choices (which essentially result in the same outcome).

  3. My big girls can often be heard asking Mr 2 to, "Put a lid on it!".. lol
    I used to do heaps of activities with them using bottles and lids – something that they are now repeating with Mr 2.

    We haven't done anything with textures for a while though – thanks for the reminder!

  4. We have milk caps coming out our ears. Great ideas! And when she loses interest, I won't feel bad about getting rid of them, since they take hardly any time to make too!

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