High Chair Activities

The high chair is a wonderful thing! Contained for 5 minutes while you cook tea or make a cuppa and you know exactly where they are. You can move the high chair next to you so they safely play and you can keep a watchful eye. Win Win!! As well as giving you some time to do things that need doing it can also be great for you to sit with them and enjoy some fun.

So what activities can you do in a high chair? The answer……LOADS!!

Check out my top activities below;

Finger Painting

Use an edible paint recipe and give them some either straight in to the tray or in little tubs. Taste safe, messy but lots of fun. Giving them a chance to explore texture, colour and taste. Great for sensory integration, development for fine motor skills by strengthening the hand muscles, stimulates creativity and imagination and can be quite relaxing(until you have to clean it up lol) Best tip – have the bath ready.

Sensory Bags

Sensory bags are a more clean alternative and still allows the child to explore different colours, textures and items. They have many benefits:

Creativity and imaginative play allows them to get a better sense of the world around them.
Curiosity is sparked as we use they explore whats inside each bag
Improves fine motor skills as they manipulate the bag and contents improving hand muscle strength
This type of play allows the opportunity for self expression because there is no right or wrong answer and they feel safe to change or experiment with what they are doing.
This type of items are unstructured, open ended allowing real exploratory play.
Playing along with them, gives you lots of opportunity to talk and discuss what they/you are doing. This open communication can help with their social skills, speech and language development and your parent child bonding.

Not sure where to start making your own? Head to our Messy Play recipes for help

Colander and Feathers/pipe cleaners

Grab your colander from the cupboard and turn it upside down on the high chair table. Thread through some pipe cleaners or feathers into the holes for your little on to pull out and push back in. Great for hand eye coordination, concentration and fine motor skills.

Tissue Box and materials

Take an old tissue box or a box and create a small opening in it. Add lots of different swatches of materials in different colours and textures. Cut them from old clothes, bedding, towels or anything else you have lying around. it also works well with small chiffon coloured scarves. Pop all the swatches into the box and then allow the child to pull them out and put them back in again. Great way to explore texture and colour. Again, wonderful for concentration skills and strengthening the hand muscles.

Jelly

Recovered from the painting yet? Ha ha!! Let’s get messy.Make some jelly and then add t to a small tray or straight on to the high chair. Let them taste, mould, squeeze and enjoy the smell and texture. You could add some plastic animals like snakes to make a swamp and get those little imaginations going.

Play dough

Play dough is of course lots of fun but did you know it’s a fabulous learning tool too? Play dough also gives opportunity to be creative and imaginative. Moulding it into animals, food for their shop, stars for the sky…..where ever their imagination takes them! Our play dough mats(AVAILABLE HERE and recipe) allow you to prompt them and help them think creatively. It also opens up the dialogue between you allowing for discussion on what they are creating, using it in role play and promoting their speech and language development. When moulding, squeezing and working with the dough the hands muscles including the pincer grip is strengthened which improves pre-writing skills and fine motor skills.

Sticky tape and lolly sticks

Simply tape the sticks to the tray using tape. Something like masking or insulting tape works well. Once taped down let little fingers work on how to get them up by peeling the tape. This works well with toddlers and of course they should be supervised whilst doing it so the tape and sticks aren’t consumed. Brilliant for developing the hand and finger muscles.

Dry mess

How about some rice, pasta or couscous. You dye them with our recipe HERE.

Turn the tray into a construction site with couscous, diggers and cars

A fairy garden with pink glitter rice and mini fairies

A jungle with green rice and sand couscous and some plastic jungle animals

The options are only limited by your imagination!

I hope you have found some of these useful and that you go forth with confidence and ease as a parent to give them a whirl. Let us know on our Facebook or instagram pages how you get on. We would love a tag.

Our Classes

We provide fun and interactive classes for children aged 0 - 10 years.

High chair Activities