10 Fun Activities for 1 Year Olds to Do at Home When You're a Stay At Home Parent

18/7/2017

10 Fun Activities for 1 Year Olds to Do at Home When You're a Stay At Home Parent

You are reading: 10 Fun Activities for 1 Year Olds to Do at Home When You're a Stay At Home Parent

Daily life can get really repetitive and mundane if you're a stay at home parent, especially if you don't consciously look for activities for 1 year olds to do at home.

Through this blog post, I would like to share 10 fun activities that we do with Mae at home almost daily, and I believe that these activities either teach her something, or train her in some skills.
I hope that your little one will also have fun and benefit from these activities:

1) Reading

This is a very educational activity and there are so many benefits to it!

Mae loves us to read to her, especially books with large pictures!

As she is a Peppa Pig fan, she loves it when we read two of her books to her: "123 with Peppa" and "Peppa's Big Day Out".
Seeing the characters in the book whom she is so familiar with makes her excited to listen to the books being read.

These books are educational: one teaches about counting numbers, and both have lots of characters and objects to teach Mae about.

Reading is definitely one of the great activities for 1 year olds to do at home when you're a stay at home parent!

2) Shape Sorters

When Mae was just a few months old, she was already playing with her set of shape sorters.

Initially, she took the shapes and knocked them together repeatedly because she liked the sound. She also threw the shapes around for fun.

However as she grew up, her interaction with the shape sorters changed.
She began to guess which shape could fit into each hole, randomly trying to stuff the shapes forcefully even when they didn't fit.

Now at 17 months old, she's able to fit the correct shape into the corresponding holes perfectly, without needing to guess.

Playing with Shape Sorters is definitely one of the fun puzzle activities for 1 year olds to do at home when you're a stay at home parent!

3) Listening to and Dancing to Music

Mae is a musical child. Ever since she was a newborn, she responded to music by moving to it, and now she dances to music that she likes.

I feel that exposing little ones to music from a young age is important for them to develop a love and sense for music.

Listening to and dancing to music is surely one of the fun activities for 1 year olds to do at home when you're a stay at home parent.

A bonus benefit is that it's a great bonding activity and also a body workout - you can grow in the relationship with your child and also keep fit at the same time!

4) Drawing

I love to draw and I love to share my love for drawing with Mae. We bought a magnetic drawing board for her so that she can draw on it without messing the house up with ink marks!

Everyday we have a drawing session where she doodles on the magnetic drawing board, and then I draw some objects and ask her to identify them.
I find that it's good for her learning and it makes learning fun too!

Drawing should be included as one of the great activities for 1 year olds to do at home when you're a stay at home parent.

5) Building with Blocks

We also set aside some time for Mae to play with her blocks at home everyday. Through building with blocks, she is able to exercise her creativity and imagination and create something with her own hands.

I'm always very impressed by the stuff she builds and how thoughtful and deliberate they are.

She can spend quite a long time playing with her blocks on her own, sometimes more than half an hour in one sitting!
That gives you time to complete some tasks if needed.
Of course it's best to sit with your child and play together. It's amazing for bonding.

Building with blocks is one of the creative activities for 1 year olds to do at home when you're a stay at home parent.

6) Simple Exercises

We like to give Mae opportunities to exercise her muscles at home.
One of the innovative ways we do that is to let Mae do pull-ups and to hang-and-swing on a short bamboo pole. It's our makeshift toddler pull-up bar.

By securing the pole between her high chair and the table, the height is just nice for Mae to do some simple and fun workouts on it.

I feel that making sure that Mae has a strong body is important for her overall healthy development.

We are interested to explore more about what exercises toddlers can do so that Mae can exercise other muscle groups too.

I feel that doing simple exercises is one of the important activities for 1 year olds to do at home when you're a stay at home parent.

7) Pasting Stickers in a Sticker Book

Mae is very attracted by colorful and cute stickers. We have a sticker book which she can paste her new stickers in.

The fun thing about a sticker book in contrast to a normal paper book is that you can easily remove the sticker from the sticker book and paste it on another page if needed.
This means that one sticker can be recycled many times for lots of fun.

We realized that by giving Mae a sheet of new stickers and the sticker book, she can entertain herself for a really long time.
Sometimes she may paste the stickers on herself or her clothes too, so that's something to watch out for, haha!

Some stickers are really tiny and difficult to peel out from the sheet, so playing with stickers can train your little one's fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.

This is one of the awesome activities for one year olds to do at home when you're a stay at home parent.

8) Driving Toy Vehicles

Mae has quite a few toy vehicles to drive around at home because most of them are pass-me-downs from her older cousins.
She has a fire engine, buggy, train, rocking horse, and car!

Mae loves to drive around the house in her toy vehicles and will often initiate the activity on her own.
I guess she will grow up to love driving in the future!

There have been a few times where Mae fell off a toy vehicle when we weren't looking and got hurt. She cried loudly when that happened.
When letting your little ones drive their toy vehicles around, make sure to keep an eye on them for their safety.

Driving toy vehicles can also train your child's sense of balance and is one of the really fun activities for 1 year olds to do at home when you're a stay at home parent.

A post shared by Miltoה Goh Blog (@miltongohblog) on Mar 20, 2017 at 8:08am PDT

9) Play Hide and Seek

This is one activity that your little one can't do on his or her own! Mae loves to play hide and seek with me at home.

I would often randomly initiate the game and say to Mae "Come find daddy, daddy is going to hide now", and she would start smiling and running to look for me.

Then when I say "Now Mae go and hide", she will run off to hide somewhere (not very well-hidden) and I would pretend to need lots of time before finding her (it's probably not fun for her if I find her too fast and easily).

I think Mae will be playing this game with her friends next time, so why not introduce her to it now? She enjoys this game a lot.

Playing hide and seek is a one of the cute and entertaining activities for 1 year olds to do at home when you're a stay at home parent.

10) Doing DIY Photoshoots

We post many photos of Mae on our Instagram account, sharing with our readers about Mae's development as well as what is going on in our lives.

We have been doing DIY photoshoots at home for Mae ever since she was a newborn, so she has gotten rather used to it.

Often she would pose adorably and smile brightly for the camera (Sony RX100M III) or iPhone.
Maybe I will do a blog post about baby and toddler photoshoot tips sometime in the future!

By doing lots of photoshoots for your child starting from when he/she is little, you will have many photo memories of the growing up years and milestones.
Your child will most likely also develop confidence in front of a camera and have good self-esteem in the future.

I feel that doing DIY photoshoots is definitely one of the best activities for 1 year olds to do at home when you're a stay at home parent!

A post shared by Miltoה Goh Blog (@miltongohblog) on Jul 5, 2017 at 7:54pm PDT

I hope you enjoyed reading my post on "10 Fun Activities for 1 Year Olds to Do at Home When You're a Stay At Home Parent".

What life lessons has the journey in discovering and pursuing your passion/talents taught you?
Share your answers with me by leaving a comment below.

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Many Blessings,
Milton Goh

10 Fun Activities for 1 Year Olds to Do at Home When You're a Stay At Home Parent

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