Ideas for a 14 month old? We have two weeks with her and no child care (thankfully only limited work obligations). Id like to do something other than go to the park every day (and it’s supposed to be raining next week) so fun, easy indoor activity ideas would be great!
So far:
Around that age, posting was a huge hit. We have an old protein bottle and a mix of dowel pieces we cut down and silicone straws for the take and toss cups.
Taby (not toddler really yet, not baby anymore- wants to do things but can’t do much yet) is a HARD age to entertain. Busy Toddler has some great easy ones on this.
I know a lot of people this age have luck with Pom poms and TP tubes. Tape TP tube to window, they drop poms through. Latte was too much of a stuff eater for that one though.
She loved going through recycling at that age. Transfer activities. All our spoons and two yogurt tubs? Excellent. Blocks and two different size bins? Superb.
Homemade playdough (not great to eat but not dangerous)
Last year we did finger paint through plastic bags
Action songs
If you get desperate, many libraries have short YouTube storytimes that you could do together.
Oh yes we did paint bags too! That was fun.
whats your schedule gonna be like?
is there a parents signal chat where we can turn on videos for like 10-20 minutes and get some non-germ child interaction?
Brilliant.
Yes! I decided to be crafty this morning during a nap and put together this calendar…as you can see, we have lots of free time over the next two weeks 
Pipsqueak has been really into coloring so I told spouse to add decorations while she scribbled. Queue epic meltdown because suddenly crayons need to be chewed on. 
We have an OMD discord that has a couple video chat rooms we can use.
I’m sorry to say my child isn’t super amped about the park. He doesn’t give a shit about the toddler play area, the one slide he loves and climbs with abandon is good for maybe a few slides, the swings are fine every now and then. He mostly likes to walk straight up to the barrier on the main ride and stand with his face against the fence perilously close to fast moving traffic. Or to look into trash cans.
We’ve:
Made houses of wood and leaves
Smashed all the things - snow, ice, sticks
Leaf piles
Digging
Swords
Collecting walnuts, leaves, sticks
Made a stick forest
Making forts
Racing
Red light/green light
On and on.
Im getting side walk chalk, preparing outdoor toys in a park bag (balls, shovels in there too, a big plastic truck).
But yeah. All these insta bitches and their intentional parenting and slow living are all “yay get out and play and explore nature” and my kid is like, “well this stick is fine, but can we be donennow?” I may just have a kid who is as big a couch potato as me. Which leads me to:
Sigh.
Poke things with sticks?
Read outdoors? Outdoors is healthy, you don’t have to do “outdoor” things to get the benefits.
Bubbles
Water play in many months
Sit on your bum staring at traffic so you don’t run into it?
Is there construction to stare at? A flight path to stare at
It sounds like your outside time takes a lot of effort from you, which sucks. Hopefully in January you can shift that job back to teachers.
I would love to just let him do whatever he wants (so I can have a breather) but that usually means he wants to walk towards the unfenced street. But yeah I always feel a lot of pressure to entertain him.
I really admire the parents who have taught their kids well into obedience to stay in the park bounds but we are struggling with that. Maybe I’m a pushover? Unclear.
I think this is luck of the draw combined with different types of parks? If we drive out to the suburbs the parks are large and Pipsqueak can explore without ever getting near traffic. If we walk the two blocks to our local park, there’s a lot crammed into a smaller space and it’s much harder to keep her entertained without going into traffic.
I’m not much help with 3 because parks were closed for Duckling being 3yo. But.
We aimed to Exist Outside, as suggested by @elle. Walks. Bird spotting. Pick up a stick and find a tree to “chop down”. Rattle it on some fences. Maybe you need really short trips outside, so what’s the smallest amount of time outdoors that is still worth it for the amount of prep you have to do to get out of the house?
Yeah, and the general area we live in, I guess. Even side walk walking is not advisable because the sidewalks are all kind of garbage and all along very busy roads.
It’s a good mindshift for sure!! I appreciate you both for it. It’s harder to exist outside right now. It won’t always be.
Winter is a HARD time to get a kid adapted to outside play. And it’s a skill! It’s a new setting. There’s way more sensory input. It’s a lot to get used to. Also, not having other kids out playing makes it hard. In winter, our outside time is mainly walks, not a lot of play. The play we do manage tends to involve other kids, or things like throwing sticks into steams- hard to do in a properly urban environment.
You can always join and poke around the 1000 hours outside Facebook group- there’s a few performative type people for sure, but mostly it’s nice for lots of ideas for different ages and climates. I would use the search feature probably, to specifically look up cities/urban/etc. And only kids. It’s hard having an isolated kiddo.
The park part of the park holds very little appeal for Latte. We mainly do races from one end to the other, and scoop wood chips into her dump truck, and sometimes swing.
It feels very good to be told that I don’t have to do anything super inspired and to stop putting pressure on myself. Thank you all 
@elle I also often used the “park bag” idea at your suggestion so thank you for that too hahaha
So, just gonna post a million times stream of thought: he loves water play so winter has been very boring for him indeed. At our old house he was outside pretty much all day at his discretionw with a hose and a water table since we had an awesome fenced in deck area.
Only kids are tough. I grew up with so many cousins so this is hitting me hard. There are kids his age around but no one is using the park! Ahhh!!!
That’s what we’re struggling with right now. Everyone is in school or daycare, or even just inside. It sucks.
We walk to the grocery store a lot, do you have one close? Does he still tolerate a stroller strap in? Latte zens out usually, it’s great for all involved.
One other thing… throw out use rules lol. Let him dig holes. Let him climb the wrong way up the slide. Etc. That can help make stuff more interesting. If outside is a space where “no” is constant, it won’t be much fun. I try to save outside “no”s for big deal safety items.
