What do your toddlers do while you are working with your older children?

Wait... you found something to occupy the little one?

 

 

You're doing way better than me.  :/

When DD1 was 18 months on up, she would join in some parts... singing, music, listening to the stories, etc... and opt out for others.  She loved playing with the math manipulatives from Right Start.. especially the tally sticks (popsicle sticks), and colored tiles.  

 

DS2 usually wanted to do whatever his big brother did--and would get frustrated when he didn't understand the lessons.  That was the reason I created lessons just for him, basically busy work.  The Kumon cut and paste, coloring, etc workbooks were great for that.

 

These days, DD likes to "do homework" on the back of pages that her brothers have finished with.  She "writes" long stories using every crayon in the box, pencils, pens, etc.  A bunch of prewriting.  But she's happy doing it.  I'm lucky in that.  A big batch of homemade play dough with various kitchen tools is also a great tool.  Other times, she wanders off to play.  

 

I think I was lucky in that my kids were all 2 years apart.  It would have been more difficult if there were larger gaps.  Some days I'd also resort to a DVD or whatever... especially during math.

 

The good thing is that in the early ages, it doesn't take that long to do a lesson.   Once again, I think it's much harder if there's a bigger age gap.  When DS3 is a little older, I foresee a challenge!

My 3.5 year old likes to learn right alongside us.  But when it gets to where he loses his focus, I usually pull out his workbook.  He has a preschool workbook with shapes to trace, letters to trace/write, and numbers and colors.  He sits there and works, or he'll go play.  As often as possible, I do try to make double copies so that he can have a copy of the same worksheet or whatever we have if I think he can handle it.  We're big on making books around here, so I'll often have a blank book (sheets of paper cut and stapled together) waiting for him to draw on.  Like another post, I also keep math manipulatives on hand for him to play with quietly at the table.

My younger child loves getting his own worksheets.  I try to loosely correlate them to a bigger lesson (like math worksheets when I'm doing a math lesson or phonemics awareness worksheets when I'm doing a phonemic awareness/reading lesson) and that seems to do the trick.  For us, black and white worksheets never held his interest, but if I use full-color worksheets then he loves them.

 

Here are the printable worksheets I've been using -- they're all full color and the pictures are really cute so my son loves them.

 

Okay, so this is my 2yo, too and I'm still laughing about the water color remark... notsomuch about the "draw on the walls" part as Magic Eraser was my best friend today.
 

 

This is definitely part of the problem.  My kids are 5 years apart.  And the 7yo is very sensitive to not having any truly personal space because the 2yo knows nothing of boundaries.  We have actually put a baby gate on his bedroom door so that he can leave his door open (and is not isolated from the family just because he's in his room) but can have some semblance of privacy and protection from the "Lalaciraptor" as we call my 2yo dd.  So to have her play with anything of his (like math manipulatives) is a work in progress right now to get him to a comfortable place with it.

 

I would give my right arm for my 2yo to sit through just 15mins of TV without someone right there with her.  I should REJOICE that she's not that way, but it absolutely makes it difficult to work with ds.

 

Oh... and she infrequently naps.  When she does, it's not at a consistent time and not for a consistent length of time.  It could be 20mins or 2 hours (although that would usually include her waking once and my laying her back down).  So "nap time" isn't an option, either.  

 

Two things that worked for me were setting my little ones up in a high chair or booster seat with their own little projects to do and having a low shelf with toys they can help themselves to. I would rotate the toys every week or so. I've also done workboxes with my school kids and had three boxes each day for my toddlers with things to do. The Active Learning books have a lot of quick and easy ideas as well.

Ditto what AnnetteMarie said -- if I put my younger child up in a highchair with cereal puffs, he'll normally sit nicely for at least 10 minutes while I work with my older child. I sometimes even feed my younger son an entire meal of finger food while I sit at the table and work with my older ds.

During the 1-3 hours we school in the mornings, my 2 year old:

- paints (watercolor, naked)
- draws
- cuts and glues
- crumbles play dough, or cooks playdough for me to pretend to eat
- lets the baby chicks out of their warmer
- gets in trouble for letting the baby chicks out of their warmer
- plays records, though we try to minimize that
- plays with puzzles, blocks, puppets, dolls
- watches a movie on the computer, though rarely
- sits on her brother's lap and snuggles him, which is adorable, but only works during certain lessons
- does activities with us (um, during our Simple Machines unit, she got a turn at everything. If we're making a craft, she'll do it with us.)
- tries to pull DS out of his chair to come play with her.
- brushes her teeth, washes her hands, or washes dishes, which are all favorite activites

She is starting to settle nicely into keeping herself occupied without being distracting for at least half of the time. We are pretty unstructured, and we try to do subjects that require more listening or focus when she's busy, and then do subjects that we can handle some distraction at those times when she's being more distracting.