Fast Action With Household Items Can Keep Your Child Happy

Quick – your toddler or preschooler is bored and he's starting to whine. What can you get to catch his interest and change his attitude? Actually, you have plenty of readily available items that you could quickly grab to bring on the laughs and creativity and eliminate the restlessness.

Whipped Cream – Grab the can out of your refrigerator. Strip your child down do her diaper or underwear. Clean off the un-upholstered kitchen chair. Spray on the whipped cream and let her explore the texture, make pictures, and revel in the yummy taste.

Return Address Labels – Grab all those extra labels you get in the mail from charities along with some paper. Hand them over and let your child have fun making sticker pictures.

Junk Mail – You get plenty of return envelopes and bright-colored pictures in your junk mail. Hand it over to the kids and let them play office. It's even better when you haven't bothered opening your junk mail – then you can have them "help" you open all the mail.

Used greeting or holiday cards – You don't need them anymore, but the pictures on the front of those cards could be candy to your child's imagination. Hand over the cards with a blunt-edge pair of scissors and let him cut out pictures. He can arrange them on paper to make a collage. Or, let him decide what to do with the pictures and see what his creative mind comes up with.

Let your own imagination come up with what you can quickly hand to your children when they need a change of pace. They don't need complex toys or an elaborate craft supply set up, they only need something simple that they don't use all the time. In no time they'll end up having some unexpected fun and you'll ward off the stress of an unhappy child.