Play Ideas for an 18 Month Old Child

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Play dough – you can make your own: 250ml flour, 125ml salt, 15ml Crème of tartare. Mix all the dry ingredients. Add 250ml boiling water and 30ml oil. You can also add food colour and flavours e.g. vanilla. Store is in a plastic bag in the fridge. You can make a container for all the play dough “accessories” such as wooden ice cream sticks, golf pegs, cookie cutters, rollers and even small plastic animals. You can let her push the ice cream sticks/golf pegs into a ball of play dough and take it out again and place it in an empty spice bottle.You can also hide some of the small animals in die play dough and let het try to find it.
Let her use golf pegs to make holes in a styrofoam board (old mushroom or baby marrow containers work well)
“Bubble wrap” – let het pop the bubbles using her thumb and index finger. You can also put it on the floor and let her walk/run over it.
Stick the four coners of a piece of news paper on a mirror. Then start ripping the news paper into strips at the top. You can now use selotape to stick every second strip. Now let your little one tear down the strips that are lose. Encourage her to use a pincer grasp (a grasp between the thumb and index finger). She will now start to see herself in the mirror  You can make the newspaper strips into balls and throw them into the bin.
Shaving cream – use a big plastic tray. Play in the shaving cream, show her how to make different patterns in the shaving cream. You kan also add some mixed powder paint. Let her mix the paint with the shaving cream and see how the colour changes. You can press a piece of paper on the shaving cream, lift it and let it dry – what an amazing art piece! (When you mix the powder paint add some bubble bath, it washes off very easily from clothes and hands ).
Big peg puzzles – especially the ones with a picture on the board.
Cut empty toilet rolls into rings and let her tread them over a wooden spoon – this is the beginning of threading beads.
Make music on pots and empty containers. Play with her and then say “stop” and let her pause and then start again. You can also show “stop” with your hand to give her a visual cue. This is good for communication development.
Let her “draw” with a glue stick on paper. You can then sprinkle glitter over the paper using an empty spice container. Genlty rub over the page to ensure the glitter sticks to the page and then shake of the extra glitter.
Stick some stickers on her hands and feet. You can also stick it on a dolly.It is good for hand function to peel them off and also a nice way to start practicing body parts.
Start posting coins of buttons.
Start magic painting with water. It is good to start using “tools”. You get the water painting books at different toy and book stores.
Start “dress-up” games. Keep accessories like scarfs, beads, shoes, hats, handbags, sunglasses etc. in a big container.
Start playing skittles. You can make your own skittles with empty cooldring bottles. You can fill the bottles with coloured water and even glitter. Just be careful not to make them too heavy, they should still be able to fall over. You can use balls of socks to throw them over or a bigger ball to roll them over.
Place some sugar in a balloon and inflate the balloon. Suspend it with a piece of wool and let her use a bat or her hand to hit the balloon.
Boil spaghetti and add some food colouring to make is fun. Hide some plastic animals or toys in it and let her find them in the bowl of spaghetti.
Make different tactile boxes out of ice cream containers. You can add some dry pasta, rice, and corn kernels. Hide objects in them for her to find.
Get different size hair curlers and let her fit them into each other and “stick” them together.