Attempting potty training at anytime can be a challenge, but with the winter months it can be more of a struggle.

It may be cold outside but there’s no need for toddlers to hibernate this winter with our fun guide of things to do with your little one.

Must-do activities toddlers should have ticked off before spring has sprung

The list is made up of 24 activities, one for each day of the weekend, to keep toddlers entertained and topped-up with essential nutrients throughout the winter.

The Winter Potty List is not only a celebration of fun things that parents can do with their little ones, it also includes ways to ensure your toddler gets the hard to get nutrients they need, especially the ‘sunshine vitamin’, vitamin D, which children often lack in the winter time.

Attempting potty training at anytime can be a challenge, with the winter months it can be more of a struggle so we have put together The Winter Potty List

The “Winter” Potty Training List

The 24 must-do activities that make up ‘The Winter Potty List’ include:

  • Build a den with the biggest cardboard box you can find
  • Find lots of mummy’s funny clothes and play dress up
  • Make music in the kitchen using your plate, pans, and a wooden spoon
  • Walk through a pile of leaves as big as you
  • Play chef for a day and design funny faces for Fisherman’s Jackets (jacket potato with yummy tuna) or yummy fish cakes. Not only is it fun but it’s a good source of vitamin D too
  • Make a warm drink and snuggle up in front of a Christmas movie
  • Host a teddy bears’ picnic, tucking into nutritious snacks and a beaker of Growing Up Milk, while mum sits back with a cuppa
  • Touch, Smell and Taste game: Try it with healthy foods, like tinned salmon, crunchy carrots and Growing Up Milk
  • Get your hands messy in the kitchen and make festive fruit flapjacks or fruit scones
  • Make a rain catcher
  • Decorate your room with handmade snowflakes
  • Build a snowman (or a snowdog, if there isn’t enough snow!)
  • Decorate a gingerbread house
  • Play musical statues
  • Dance in the rain
  • Hold a treasure hunt around the house
  • Put on a Christmas concert
  • Get creative and make Christmas wrapping paper and gift tags
  • Make salt dough prints of your hands and feet
  • Make a snow angel
  • Visit Santa and his little elves
  • Camp out in the lounge using a bed sheet for a tent
  • Pop on your wellington boots and jump in the mud
  • Take a walk in the woodlands

Playing for toddlers is the way they discover and develop their own capacity to create and manipulate things, to explore their senses and how they come to know themselves. All of the activities on the Winter Potty List are filled with wonder for toddlers.

Children’s play can have an extremely positive effect on a toddler’s happiness and health, which is why it’s so important to provide your little one with adequate opportunities for play.  The Winter Potty list is an easy way to get active, explore new experiences and, most importantly, have fun with your little one during the often dreary winter months.

It’s impossible for toddlers to get vitamin D from the UK sun at this time of the year, so it’s important that toddlers get a daily dietary intake. Unfortunately vitamin D is one of those nutrients that can be hard to get in the daily diet because it’s not found naturally in many foods; especially ones that toddlers like to eat.

The years from one-to-three are an amazing period of growth and development for toddlers, so it comes as no surprise that they need the right nutrition, including vitamin D, to support them during this time. In the UK, toddlers’ opportunities to get vitamin D from the sun are severely limited during the winter months. This makes it even more important for parents to ensure they are getting all the essential nutrients they need through their diet.