"Seeking Activity Ideas for My Almost 2 Year Old"

Away from the house - parks, libraries, and pet stores are always great for exploring, and free.

At home - dance inside on rainy days (suprisingly BareNaked Ladies has an awesome kids CD that parents can enjoy), find something safe to bounce on (we have an old sofa sleeper mattress we pull out on the floor and bounce on), run and play in the backyard. I'm also a big fan of good old fashioned coloring or play doh. We keep a plastic/vinyl table cloth cover on our table and they boys can spend hours with markers or play doh. Actually play pretend with those "Little People" sets. Put them up and make the people and animals go about their day, talking to each other. Puppets are great too. Oh, and we have a two story house so we play "stair ball" (sit at the base of the stairs and try throwing balls up the stairs and getting them to stop rather than roll down the steps. The one whose ball stops on the highest step wins-though the game gets unorganized frequently but is always fun).

By the way, I have a 21 month old and 3 1/2 year old so I know how hard it is to entertain sometimes. My boys are close in age and it never ceases to amaze me that once I get them started they take over and play on their own. Frequently they create their own silly games. I don't believe in gender separation and my boys play dress-up, kitchen, and help me cook (sprinkle, stir, etc...), don't worry about finding separate activities for the girl and the boy, just find whatever they like.

My son really enjoys going to gymboree once a week to jump, climb etc. We also do a music class once a week called heartsong music together. Lastly we have one play group meet a week that meets at parks. All these thing help me keep up with the stimulus his body and brain demands.:)

These are just ideas. Your children will be able to do these at different levels. When I say a race, you can start of by just saying "lets see how long we can ALL do this together". Eventually your son is going to catch up and maybe surpass your daughter.

First of all many boys like active games. Keep that in mind. They have tons of energy and need to expel it so that they will not become aggressive. It is their natural instinct to want to climb, run, zig zag, jump, hop.

Have races. Who can hop from one spot to the other the fastest? Who can walk backwards from one spot to the other?

Good time to play Simon Says. Take turns. Let you daughter lead, let you son try it too. If you go to a playground, it is fun to invite other kids to join!

Build an obstacle course. Crawl over the slide, go through this box, hop over this toy etc...

Gather up boxes that he can use as big blocks. Tape them up really well and let him "build" with them. This is a great thing to do outside. You can also gather boxes and make a crawl through maze. Change it around and watch him figure out what direction to go. At night, give the kids flashlights and let them crawl through the darkened boxes.

Puzzles. Try a small number of pieces and then move up. Once he has really mastered a certain number of pieces move up to the next one.. The other thing I did with my daughter was to turn the puzzle over to the blank side. It was amazing how well she could put the puzzle pieces together even without the picture. As he gets older have him draw pictures on the back of the puzzles so his own art work is a puzzle.. We would also mix 2 puzzles together and have our daughter do 2 puzzles at once.

We would also play hide and seek with her toys. We would pick 3 toys and hide them in the room. She would then come in and have to find them. We would then have her do the same thing to us. Only use toys!

You can do anything. You can rake a small pile of leaves and run through them, you can collect acorns, you can go to easy hikes. Anything your daughter likes to do, your son can do to some degree. You can bake and decorate cookies. Lots of these activities should be followed by long baths. Washable markers and paper, play music, dance.... At two and three the difference between your son and daughter is small. As they get older, they will develop their own interests and still enjoy doing things together from an early base of doing so. Have fun!
M.
Homeschool mother of an 18 year old daughter (tomorrow)and a 15 year old son. Married over 21 years to a great man.

I'm not sure what type of activities you're looking for but you can...
have your children sort their laundry
let your children help you in the kitchen
create your own ruler from a cereal box & measure & compare various objects
encourage scissor skills by making a collage
identify various foods at the grocery store

There's also a great book at the library called 365 ways to a smarter preschooler. MY daughter and I enjoyed that book so much that we ended up buying our own copy! That book has activities like: make your own paper, paper towel tie dye, shadow drawing, hat making, etc. Most of these activities use common items from around the home.