Help please activity ideas for a 15 month old alongside a 3 year old :/

[mrssully]

How do you plan for 3 year old along side 15 month old they are so far apart in age its tricky.... i like doing objective led planning and easy when i have them on their own but not so much together!?

how does everyone else plan for them etc?

thanks guys x

[Ellisha]

When the little boy I looked after started he was 14 months and I had my own 2 year old and 4 year old (who I obviously didn't plan for!) but I would do things like playdough where the 14 mo could just push with his fingers, stick pencils in, etc but my older ones could use loose parts, pipe cleaners, etc to be creative, count, look at colours, shapes, use tools like scissors. Or we would do a pouring activity with rice where the 14 mo would just pour or pick up rice, but the older ones would be creative with cup cake liners, scoops, etc.

[Mouse]

When I have an age gap like that I tend to do individual focussed planning for one child, then make some adaptations to make it suitable for the other one as well.

As a simple example I might be trying to get the younger one building a tower of bricks. We'll just build a few bricks, counting as we go then knocking them down. For the older child I'd make some pattern cards and get them to build a repeating pattern, eg, red brick, blue brick, red brick, blue brick etc.

At other times I will plan an activity for the older one to do while the younger one sleeps, or for the younger one to do while the older one is playing.

Perhaps you could give us an idea of activities you would plan for one child and we could give you some ides on how we would adapt it for different ages.