Fun activities for 1 year old

Lately I have been working with my 3 year old with lots of activities, which I will post about them soon. He is having a blast and working on his fine motor skills and learning his abc's. However, I felt like I was not giving enough attention to my little son, as he is always crying and screaming while I am busy with his brother. So, I decided to find some activities for him as well, so he would not feel left aside.

My one year old loves to play with the wipes, but I have to say that it is too expensive and wasteful... Once he gets his hand on a box of wipes, he just won't stop!

So, I went to pinterest to get some ideas and all I found was to make some "wipes" with small pieces of fabric. I have to say that didn't appeal to me as I didn't want to sew anything. There was also an idea of using juggling scarves, which was a little more than I wanted to spend. I started to brain storm and look around the house for something that would be interesting and fun. I was sure I would find something until I saw my "small" pile of baby food jars and all the lids in this big ziploc bag. I grabbed an empty wipe container - in this case, huggies works best - and a few lids and did a test. 

He loved it so much, that I had to go back to that ziploc bag and grab more lids! At first, it was a little challenging for him, but with a little help from his momma here, in no time he was a pro!  

He had so much fun, that he played for a very long time, putting one lid at the time and enjoying the little clanking noise it would make, then once in a while he would shake the container. Then I showed him all the lids inside, so he wanted to take them all out and do it all over again! Of course, eventually he got tired and just wanted to spread and throw the lids everywhere...

Since he had so much fun with it, I went ahead and did a couple of projects I had pinned and never really got to.

Using an empty container of his snack, made some holes in the plastic lid and gave some pom poms. Another huge hit! He really enjoyed this one as well. So, to make it a little fancier, I just covered the container with some nice paper.

So, now it looks really cute and I can take it with us when we go out. And following the same concept, I used my old spice container and pipe cleaners.

This one is still a little hard for him. I had to put the pipe cleaner into the holes so he would push them down, but he was not that much interested in this one. He just threw all the pipe cleaners on the floor and look at me with a "I am done" face. So, I will save this and try again later.

What I really like about these projects is the fact that they were super easy to put together and best of all, with all the materials I already had on hand, so no need to go out and spend any money! Double thumbs up!!

Do you have ideas of fun activities for the little ones? Share your ideas in the comment box below!