35 activities · 8 guides · ages 2 to 7 · free
The activity library
Every page gives you the age, the setup time, the play time, the materials, the mess and how much of you it needs, before you scroll a single line. Then the words to say when you hand it over, what it looks like when it is working, and exactly what to do when it is not.
Thirty-five activities, no adverts on any of them, and nothing waiting behind an email address. Find one you like and print it. It is yours.
If you want one right now
One from each age, plus the two guides parents open most. Every shelf further down this page opens too, so browse if you would rather choose your own.
Start with the age
Age is the fastest way in, so it is the spine of the library. Every activity carries one best age and a range either side of it, because no child outgrows a tray on a birthday.
An activity appears on the shelf for every age it suits, not just the one it is aimed at, so the four year old shelf carries everything that works at four. Seven year olds live inside the six year old shelf.
Age crossed with skill
Fourteen of the forty crossings have enough behind them to earn a page of their own. The other twenty six sit inside their age shelf, where they are easier to find than they would be on a page with three things on it.
Browse by skill
Eight areas, twenty five sub-areas, and most activities sit in several of them at once, because that is how children work. The first one listed on an activity page is its home shelf, and it is the one in the breadcrumb at the top.
Hands and Fingers15 activities
What the child does with hands, fingers and small tools.
Numbers, Shapes and Thinking15 activities
Quantity, space, pattern and measurement.
Talking, Reading and Writing6 activities
Speech, sounds, letters, vocabulary and following what is said.
Early speech, letters and sounds, and following instructions all sit inside this shelf for now, alongside the storytelling work. Speech is what we are writing next, and it is where this shelf will grow first.
Senses and Sensory Play2 activities
Deliberate use of touch, hearing, sight and smell as the point of the activity.
Balance and Whole Body Movement7 activities
Large muscle work, balance, and knowing where the body is in space.
Everyday Life Skills2 activities
Real household work done at child scale, with real objects that can actually break.
Feelings, Focus and Getting Along3 activities
Emotions, cooperation and holding attention.
Nature and Discovery1 activity
Observing living things and simple physical effects.
Browse by what you are trying to build
Nobody labelled these for us. The word patience appears exactly once in the whole of the source material, so every shelf here comes from what an activity actually asks of a child: slow work, or repetition, or a result that arrives later.
The shelves are very different sizes. Concentration holds twenty-four and empathy holds three, which is an honest picture of what this library is mostly made of: quiet work with one right answer in it.
Browse by what you need right now
A parent typing calm down activities for a 3 year old is in a different state of mind from one typing fine motor activities, and the page has to sound different.
Browse by what is already in the house
Every activity tells you one of four things, right at the top. Nothing needed. Works with what you already have. Works with a substitute you make in two minutes. Or genuinely needs the real thing. That fourth one is on the first screen, so you will never get halfway down a page and discover you have to go shopping.
Five to start with
Five as different from each other as we could make them. One needs nothing at all. One is genuinely messy. One needs something you have to buy, and says so on the first line. One you run yourself, with a blunt tool on the table. Five ages, five different corners of the library, and a fair sample of the other thirty.
Water Pouring and Transfer
Your child pours water from one small jug into another, and then back again, until the table is wet.
2 to 4 · 3 min setup · messy · household only
Three-Step Instruction Hunt
You give your child three instructions in one breath, and they go and do all three in order.
3 to 6 · no setup · no mess · nothing needed
Painters Tape Floor Balance Track
Your child walks a line of tape stuck to the floor without stepping off it, then does it carrying something.
3 to 6 · 4 min setup · no mess · one substitute
Continent Map Puzzle
Your child lifts each continent out of a wooden map by its knob and puts it back where it came from.
4 to 7 · no setup · no mess · has to be bought
Soap Carving and Safe Whittling
Your child cuts a shape out of a bar of soap with a blunt blade, slowly, and the shavings go everywhere.
6 to 8 · 5 min setup · messy · you stay at the table
The guides
Eight of them. A guide answers the question you actually typed, and where it rests on outside research it names it on the page where you can see it. An activity page links to the guide it draws on, so you can always follow a claim back to where it came from.
- Hands, Pencils and the Grip Question Fast, legible handwriting does not need the textbook tripod grip. Two studies measured it and found no advantage. Cornerstone
- Waiting: How Patience Actually Develops The marshmallow test does not survive controlling for family background. What replaces it is far more useful to you. Substantial
- He Looked at It for Ninety Seconds and Walked Off Ninety seconds is information, not a verdict. What it is usually telling you, and the one thing to change. Start here
- Too Easy, Too Hard, or Just Right The three signs a task is too easy, the three that it is too hard, and the one that says it is right. Practical
- How Long Should a Child This Age Concentrate For? What sustained attention looks like at two, three, four, five and six, and why the length follows the task. By age
- Balance, Climbing and What a Body Can Do at This Age What changes between two and seven in balance, carrying and knowing where the body is in space. By age
- The Child Who Gives Up Immediately Whether a child tries again depends far more on what a failure costs than on temperament. Substantial
- Routines That Stick A job sticks when something real depends on it and the child can see the dependency. Practical