Our Splash into Summer series continue and today it’s all about picnicking with your toddler. Today we plan on giving you some tips on how to create a really nice picnic for and with your toddler both indoors and outdoors.
It’s been a long hot summer and guess what? It’s not over yet. Instead of staying indoors how about a picnic? Yes! A picnic doesn’t always have to be at the beach or somewhere terribly exotic or expensive. You can have it right in your own backyard but if you live in the city like some of my readers do you can even have an indoor picnic. But how do you get your little one to join in the fun and help out?
Give your toddler her own little basket and let her fill it with whatever she wants to in there for the picnic of course. Give her options and let her choose and don’t be like my mommy. She gives me options and then say “this will be better for you”. That’s not letting me choose mommy!
If your toddler is anything like me, they might get very upset when you do that. So give them healthy options and please once again let them choose.
Here are a few playtime activity you might want to think about:
- If you’re indoors spread a blanket on the ground. What’s a picnic without a blanket? You can also do that outdoors as well. We little ones like laying on blankets especially outdoors.
- Make up your own games which us toddlers love to delight in. I especially love it when mommy pretend to be an animal. She makes the most silly sounds. This will help with animal recognition and is also fun.
- Having a big bouncy beach ball is perfect for both your indoor and outdoor picnic. We may not be great catchers but who doesn’t like to throw or kick or whatever you do to a ball. This in turn helps out a lot with our hand to eye coordination.
- If you are doing an outdoor picnic and have a sandbox, pretend you’re at the beach. I love digging around in the sand and I’m sure your little toddler would too.
What about food? Well here are a few healthy choices:
- Fruits such as grapes, cherries, strawberries, apple slices, bananas etc. Any fruit your toddler may love. Be careful with small pieces because you don’t want your little one to choke so supervision again comes in handy here.
- Baby Carrots and Cherry tomatoes are great veggies as well. I love to eat cherry tomatoes.
- Cheeses. I especially love the string cheese so these are always around for me.
- For drinks it’s a better option to do 100% juice boxes instead of canned sodas and include milk if your toddler likes it as well. If your toddler can’t drink from a straw then a sippy cup would have to do.
- If you’re doing sandwiches, cut them up into cute and adorable shapes with a cookie cutter or those delightful FunBites if you own one.
- And be sure if you’re outdoors to have water available as well and to make it extra special stick some fruit in it to give it some flavor. Your toddler would be so intrigued with the fruits floating or sunk to the bottom that might not even realize that they’re drinking water.
What about friends? Well if your toddler has no siblings or friends who can come along to your picnic you can always invite your stuffed animals. They would love to join in on the fun too.
If you are planning an outdoor picnic I also encourage you to use the necessary summer safety precaution that we mentioned in our Summer Protection Guide.
Once again we hope our little guide has been helpful in you creating what we call a Toddler’s Picnic Party.
The Splash Into Summer series runs from July 7 through July 27. Check out the other posts in this series from this fabulous group of bloggers:
Sundays – Colleen from MommieDaze
Mondays – Tammy from Zucchini Summer
Tuesdays – Nicole from Momma on Wheels
Wednesdays – Katie from Gift of Curiosity
Thursdays – Michelle from The Paper Vine
Fridays – Terra from Life as a Field Trip
Saturdays – Madison from Growing Up Madison
