Situation · the gap before dinner · 4 activities
Five Minutes or Less
Four short activities that start in seconds and are genuinely finished in five minutes.
If you have one hand free and no table, do three instructions in one breath. You say them, she goes and does all three in order, and you have not touched anything. Three to five minutes, nothing to fetch, and it works from the sofa or the cooker.
The other three route by what the five minutes is for. Waiting for pasta, with a child bouncing off the cupboards: the straw blow race, a straw and a ping pong ball across the kitchen table. Coming down after something went wrong: Mirror Feelings Copycat at the hall mirror. Needing a two year old to be doing something, anything, right now: a strip of tape on the floor and Walking the Balance Line.
Five minutes is the honest number rather than a floor. Two of these will run far longer if the mood is right, and that is a bonus rather than the plan. How long a child of a given age will actually stay with something is in our guide to attention span by age, which is shorter than most people expect and steadier than it looks.
The four
Ordered by the age each suits best. Each line gives the setup, the play time and whether you have to run it yourself.
- Walking the Balance Line Your child walks the length of a strip of tape stuck to the floor, slowly, and then turns round and walks back. 2 min · under 5 min · household only
- Mirror Feelings Copycat Your child pulls the face on the card, sees it in the mirror next to yours, and hears you name the feeling that goes with it. 2 min · under 5 min · cards you draw
- Straw Blow Ping Pong Race Your child blows a ping pong ball across the table through a straw, and races it to a strip of tape at the far end. no setup · under 5 min · household only
- Three-Step Instruction Hunt You give three instructions in one breath, and your child goes and does all three, in order, without help. no setup · 3 to 5 min · nothing at all
Three of the four need nothing but what is already in the room. The no-preparation shelf has the rest of that family.