If you stay home with a toddler, chances are you are pressed to come up with activities to keep the little one engaged. I came up with the idea of a grab bag for my 2-year-old. I asked a retired teacher with more than 20 years under her belt for advice on what to put in the bag. Here’s what we came up with.

Build your bag around a theme or activity. Don’t buy anything! You would be very surprised what you can find around the house. For instance, I did a reptile grab bag last week. I found reptile books, toy frogs and mini-plastic snakes. I then downloaded some coloring sheets and activities from the web. A toy rattle snake consisted of toilet paper tubes filled with beans, duct tape on the ends and construction paper for decoration. The toy plastic snakes and frogs are great items for counting and to practice colors. As an activity, I took her to the Radical Reptile Demonstration at the imaginarium.

For today (Monday), I decided to build my activities around Music in the Park. I gathered up her toddler instrument set, a Wee sing CD and book, as well as books with nursery rhymes. We’ll do Music For Little Ones in the morning and then do the other activities throughout the day.

I’m finding the grab bags are a great way to keep her engaged, which helps me to focus attention on accomplishing work-related projects and tasks around the house. What are some things you do to engage your toddler?