How to Entertain Toddlers at Your Outdoor Social

You are planning this fabulous BBQ and inviting all of your friends and their children. You have the food, the drinks, the décor. Your husband has been assigned the grill station, you have prepped all the food, made sure there was back stock of all the essentials and now you need to determine entertainment.

Grown-ups and older kids are easy. Good food, music, and friends is the formula for this arena and if that isn't enough set up a badminton or volleyball net, maybe even an area for a game of horse shoes. If you have a pool, pretty much everybody can go swimming and have a great time.

But what about the little ones? The cute little toddlers with short attention spans and endless energy will need something safe to occupy their time. There are a few simple solutions here.

Water! Kids love to play in the water and love to interact with natural elements. You can pick up one of those little kitty pools with a few floating toys and the kids will have fun for hours. If you don't want to get a pool just turn on the sprinkler! They will have fun bobbing in and out of the sprinkles of water. You could also fill some buckets with water and put a bunch of bright, various sized containers around. Kids love to pour water and play with different sized objects.

Show them good old fashion games like "Simon Says" or "Duck-Duck Goose". Even though toddlers most often times get too impatient to wait to be caught they still love hide and seek. It's actually quite cute to see them "hide".

Fill a trunk with funny "grown-up clothes" and let them play dress up. When I was a kid my favorite thing to do was put on my Mom's big sunhat and heels. Grab some fun pieces that aren't precious to you and throw them in a trunk for them to try on (over their clothes). The party will love the cute factor and the kids will have a blast pretending.

Sidewalk Chalk. What kid doesn't like to draw? A huge box of sidewalk chalk will run about six dollars and provide a rainbow of colors. They can cover your paved area (supervised) with creative abstractions and precious representations of birds, princesses, rainbows, etc. When the party is over and the kids are gone, you can easily hose off the pavement.

Bring out the bubbles. Toddlers love bubbles. When I was a kid, they had the simple bubble wands you dipped into the bubble solution but now there is a huge selection of bubble makers and they are all inexpensive. You could even get a bubble making machine for the day!

Rent a small bouncy castle! This is for a bigger budget, but if you have a lot of friends with kids it is definitely worth it! Often times, the big ones you see are for bigger kids. You can rent a smaller bouncy castle for toddlers and they will play until they are falling asleep. It's also great physical exercise.

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