A List of Educational Activities for a Two-Year-Old

Literacy Activities

• Read to children to build their vocabulary and enhance language development. According to the Evidence-Based Center for Early Literacy Development, reading books to two-year-olds develops their active and passive listening skills. You can choose concept books that include topics like sharing, potty training and parts of the body. The center also suggests that children between the ages of two and three can benefit from exposure to puzzle books, books about matching and sorting and books that feature letters and numbers.

Math Activities

• Provide math activities for two-year-olds to allow them to practice basic skills such as sorting, classifying, counting and comparing. The Scholastic website recommends sorting activities for two-year-olds include sorting crayons, markers, keys and pasta into containers. Help children practice classifying by arranging trucks or blocks by size. PBS Parents suggests providing opportunities for children to count sets of everyday objects. Show children how to compare different sets of objects to demonstrate the concept of more and less.

Science Activities

• Science activities for two-year-olds center around observation of their surroundings. Two-year-olds are naturally curious about their environment and enjoy discovering the world around them. Allow children to explore, ask questions, guess at answers and test through experimentation. For example, a child may ask "Why does ice melt quickly on a hot day?" Experiment by placing one ice cube in the sun and one ice cube in the shade and then observing which one melts first. Some science activities for two-year-olds include observing insects, animals, and plants; examining spider webs; collecting materials found in nature; planting seeds and providing care for pets.

Sensory Activities

• Sensory activities are educational because they help children children learn to perceive their environment accurately and stimulate core cognitive skills. Expose a two-year-old to a wide variety of textures to further support fine motor skill development. Buy or create a sensory table, which is any type of container that can be filled with objects and liquids. The sensory table provides a space for the educational sensory activities. Fill the sensory table with materials such as rice, bird seed, sand, water, magnets or shaving cream. Add shovels, spoons and measuring cups to help children manipulate the materials. Create a worm sensory table for two-year-olds. Add live worms and potting soil to the sensory table or, as an alternative, use plastic worms. Provide the child with plastic gloves, shoves, buckets and magnifying glasses and allow him to explore. Show children how to transfer sand or water from one container to the next to teach them about volume. Encourage children to sort and count objects to help them developing counting and sorting skills.