Activities for 18 Months Old
Parenting is a hard thing, especially for toddlers who are merely in the initial months of life. When a kid turns 18 months, different changes arise in his behavior including gait, stability of walk and other things associated. Here are the initial 5 necessary changes that arises in a kid when he reaches 18 months:
1.Walks without support:
An 18 month old toddler learns to start walking without a support, before 18 months, toddlers usually crawl.
2.Can hold a cup and drink water or milk by his own:
Toddlers of 18 months can hold cups and other small things. They can drink on their own.
3.Can undress themselves:
Kids of 18 months can undress themselves and understand how to ask for a different dress.
4.Can say small words:
Kids of 18 months can say small words like mama, Baba, and other mini words synonymous to food.
5.Can Grasp small instructions:
Small kids can grasp instructions, when told to grasp something, pick or keep things back. Such instructions are acquired from surroundings i.e. parents and other kids around.
9 Healthy Activities for 18 Months Old
1. Magnetic letters and play dough:
Placing magnetic letters on the board is an effective activity for an 18 month old kid. This approach lets the kid understand the technique to make the child learn shapes and pronunciation of alphabets. Use small phrases like, “where is A? show me B, let’s find D” to help improve the child’s ability to grasp and learn instructions.
Magnetic letters are usually available in colorful attractive packaging, the age at which a child’s sight catches brilliant colors.
Play dough is also a colorful dough with which a child plays. Using different molds and shapes will let the child understand and distinguish shapes. Ask the child to locate colors by giving instructions like, “Make me a yellow sun, where is the black penguin, let’s make a white snowman”.
2. Stacking Cups:
Take your kid to the kitchen. Ask him to help you in stacking cups with you. Let him stabilize his body and pick up cups. Show him first how to do it, and then keep giving instructions without using your hand. Such techniques will improve your child’s listening abilities and keep your language clear when giving instructions. Avoid giving crockery that breaks easily, it will hurt your child, use plastic cups.
3. Building towers from Blocks:
Rubber and plastic blocks are available at play stations and schools for little kids to identify colors and make creative towers out of it. Blocks are used for creative thinking, identification of colors and learning to stabilize things. Learning and helping your kid to gain confidence with this activity achieves a goal at an early stage. Blocks help to improve thinking of cerebellum, i.e posture maintenance.
Blocks improve and develop motor skills, help in improving function of brain development, and problem solving strategies are improved and learnt.
4. Hide and seek:
Hide and seek is a good physical activity. This usually requires two participants, thus it is for kids who have siblings or friends. One of the elders hides and the child has to find them out. The elder should hide in some obvious space so that they can be figured out easily. This helps the child to be physically involved in games, find out the partner via different mechanisms, and solve the problem of identification.
Active learning is a result of hide and seek. Hide and seek can be played via objects too. Hide your child’s favorite toy and let him find it. He will panic in the beginning but teach him how to find missing things.
5. Blow Bubbles:
Blowing bubbles is an interesting game. Your child will love it. It is physical involvement and the beautiful bubbles will just blow on your kid’s face. Such activities would encourage your child to enjoy it and you will spend quality time with your kid.
Teach your child playing with bubbles and how to blow into the straw.
6. Drawing and painting:
An 18 months old kid is usually very small to hold a pen. Still you can encourage him to do random drawings on the page to be familiar with the use of a pen. Drawing and trying to use pens and colors on paper might be the basis of hobbies like painting, sketching and writing. Kids who are taught this at early stages in life are usually more creative and adhere to working.
7. Simple Puzzles, Crosswords , and Find-through the map:
Simple puzzles, crosswords and finding through the map are basic problem solving strategies. Puzzles like adjusting pieces to create a full photo, crosswords like name of the kid and other hints to locate the name of mum and dad stimulate cognitive thinking. Find through maps helps in thinking about solutions within the map. Crosswords are good for above 18 months kids when they are aware of words and alphabets. You can make simple puzzles of your kitchen garden, bedroom and other familiar places to help your child locate it.
8. Coloring the color book:
Coloring the color book is an effective method to help your child develop color within boundaries. This is necessary for stability and cerebellar function as well as later on use of a pen. The boundary highlight in the edges of the figure to be colored should be figured before guiding the kid to start coloring. This will let your child understand the boundaries.
Similarly guiding your child to the effective colors is necessary. Tell your child to color the butterfly red yellow and orange. Give him the three colors and mark the butterfly different parts with different colors and tell him to follow the instructions. This is how your child will learn to understand your teachings.
9. Making your child listen a story:
Start narrating a story to your child. Explain to him and help him imagine the plot, by adding adverbs and adjectives like beautiful shiny blue lake, old brown cave, beautiful princess, brave prince. These synonyms will help your child to imagine and give shape to the words in his head.
