The Ultimate Activity Box: What to Prep for Your Sitter & Kids for Enriching Play

Having a babysitter requires planning and preparation, both from their side and yours. You can greatly help your sitter by preparing an “activity box” to help keep your child entertained throughout the day while providing enriching play that increases their mental and physical skills, as opposed to having them sit in front of a screen all day with their brain turned off.

This doesn’t have to be a physical box where everything is kept, but rather the idea of it. Provide tools and games that your babysitter and children can play together! Here is what to include in the ultimate activity box and how to prep for your litter and kids for enriching play.

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Arts & Crafts

Arts & Crafts is a great way for your child can have fun and enriching play. Using pencils and scissors can help with fine motor skills, while creativity supports mental growth. While this activity has a large range, after all, there are complete craft stores with items you never knew existed, but there are many different types of crafts you can do with all of the same products. You should start off with the basics, such as crayons, colored pencils, markers, construction paper, and safety scissors. These can allow your children to draw and color as well as make collages or whatever their mind sees fit.

Of course, you can always branch out into different and more unique materials after exhausting everything mentioned above: this includes clay, glitter, beads, and string and beads. These materials can be a little messier, so make sure your babysitter knows they have to supervise carefully. While they should be supervising and keeping a watchful eye on your kids regardless, their attention should be solely on your children while using these materials, while the latter they may be able to multitask and make lunch.

Building Blocks

Building blocks may sound very basic and extremely juvenile, depending on your children’s ages, but there are plenty of different kinds that still engage kids as they grow and still enrich their play. Legos and Magnatiles are great, relatively mess-free options that allow a lot of creativity. Your babysitter can give them prompts to try and build something specific, or just let your child’s imagination run wild and see what they can build!

Try both ways and see what seems to engage your child more. Both have great value to them, such as rule following for the former and another way to let their creativity and imagination flow for the latter. Tell your sitter to switch up the types of activities you do with specific materials so that it can be unpredictable and therefore even more enriching.

Props for Imaginary Play

To help build your ultimate activity box, you might consider investing in or buying a couple of fun props that your sitter and kids can use for imaginary play. These don’t have to be large or even costly, especially if someone you know is selling or donating their old children’s toys. You can look for activity sets such as fake kitchens and food or fake supermarkets, costumes they can dress up in, or anything you can imagine your child playing with. They can use these props to put on plays for you and your sitter, or just play pretend. Letting your kids use their imaginations, especially in familiar scenarios like a kitchen or supermarket, is great to enhance their social skills. Plus, who doesn’t want to pretend to be a princess, a cowboy, or a firefighter for a day? Encourage your sitter to play along with them and see where the props can take them.

Outdoor Games

Playing outside is always going to be a great activity for your children as it improves health and can be very fun, especially when you prepare some outdoor games for your sitter and kids. For example, you can buy a few outdoor staples, such as a ball or frisbee to toss around and a bike to ride around, and of course, there are basics such as taking a walk while collecting something of each color or taking in the sights, sounds, and smells. You might even suggest a “silly stroll,” or having your sitter give your child different prompts to walk the length of your driveway or block. Encourage them to walk on their tiptoes, like a zombie,

You can also use your own creativity to plan great activities. Consider planning a scavenger hunt that your kids and sitter can work together to solve, an obstacle course to jump and roll through, or playdates with other neighborhood children or your kids’ friends from school. These are all fun ideas to keep your children enriched throughout the day with their sitter.

Just look at what you can buy or use to build the ultimate activity box! These activities are sure to enrich your kids’ playtime while providing simple guidelines for your sitter.