I love when I can find new activities for Buddy using materials I already have at home. Today, I pulled out an old colander of ours for playtime. (This idea originally came from Powerful Mothering’s blog here.) To start, I gave Buddy a bunch of pipe cleaners in the colander, and let him explore the materials. It’s been a long time since we’ve played with pipe cleaners, so they were new to him.

Buddy enjoyed pulling the pipe cleaners out of the colander and bending them.  Then he put most of the pipe cleaners back into the container. When he saw that one of the ends had poked through a hole, I showed Buddy how to pull the pipe cleaner through it. Then, I put a bunch of pipe cleaners in the holes, and Buddy had fun pulling them out.

After awhile, Buddy decided he wanted to try to put them into the colander holes himself. This was a little challenging for him, but he worked at it for a long time. I’m sure when Buddy is a little older (he’s almost 21 months now), he’ll be better at this part of the activity.

At one point, Buddy decided to flip over the colander to pull the pipe cleaners out of the other side. I loved seeing his creative thinking!

After awhile, Buddy took out all of the pipe cleaners, and he decided it would be fun to play peek-a-boo with the colander. There was much laughter involved in this game because he could see me through the holes!

Buddy played with the colander and pipe cleaners for more than 20 minutes, which is forever in toddler time. Eventually, he needed a new activity. I decided to pull out a bunch of his small balls to put in the colander. These were a combination of our Bright Start balls, Munchkin bath balls, and other balls we happened to have (affiliate links).

Buddy had a great time putting balls in the colander and spilling them out again. Sometimes they went all over the room, but sometimes they just stayed in a small pile. He chased them all over the room and threw them back into the colander.

These activities took absolutely no prep time on my part (hooray!), and there was very little clean up involved. Even better, they kept Buddy occupied for about 40 minutes. We both had a great time, and I’m sure we’ll do it again.