2 Year Old Play

i have a 2 year old in care who seems to have very little intrest in playing any thing for more than 10 min at a time. i have two children of my own 5mth and 3years. i will also be haveing a 1year old in soon. what can i do to get the 2 year old to sit still and do one thing in stead of just wandering around pulling stuff out look at it and put it down. also what sort of things do you do with this age group. my kids i have 4 have always just played by them selves or with me.

[pingaa3]

you have to start small. Try setting him up at a "play station" (just a fancy term for staying put with one play scheme) for 5 minutes at a time. Use a ringing timer. Be prepared to have to enforce it by sitting next to the child the entire time. Work the child up to an age appropriate time at each activity. We have 1 1/2 year olds play in one place for 10 minutes, and for 4consecutive play stations. Also we require any child over 1 to learn to clean up and only have one toy group in play at a time. Yes even the 1 year olds are capable of cleaning up. We start singing a clean-up song to help prompt and at first take their hands and gently model the "cleaning up" action. It only took us a week or so to get the kids in the swing of things with minimal prompting. Now when we need to we can have all 8 kids playing at play stations for 30-60 minutes and cleaning up when we are all done.

Thanks for the reply. I found out today that the other care givers he has been to didn't even bother to try and get him to going in with the other kids, just left him to his own. I am going to sit with him each day and get him to finish what ever it is that we are all doing. he has no idea how to do a puzzle by himself and he should my kids all did and still love doing puzzles.

Tts going to be hard but if I don't he is going to have probs at school.

Any suggestions on activites that are good one on one would go down a treat?

thanks heaps

[pingaa3]

building with blocks, wood or mega or peek-a-boo

coloring, playdough

playing pretend play little people or cars/trains (thomas and lightening mcqueen)

large knob puzzles to start then moving to peg puzzles

mr potato head

lacing large beads

pretend play zoo or farm

tea party/picnic games

activity tables like leapfrog little einstein

all these are activities you can start with him and teach him to play alone.