5 Creative Ways to Entertain a 5-Year-old

These are five creative things that my five-year-old niece likes to do for entertainment when I watch her. She's an intelligent, imaginative child and most of the games she's made up herself. She loves attention and interaction with friends and family. She is also bored and distracted easily so finding creative ways to entertain her is a challenge. These are the top five ways I keep her engaged in activity.

The first creative way is a game she loves to play that she somehow made up herself. It's like playing pretend with her stuffed animals or dolls or even a salt and pepper shaker. She calls it "playing talk." And it's her favorite game. She is already a very maternal child. She loves baby dolls. But from an early age she would take something as simple as two sticks or a salt and pepper shaker and pretend that one of them is a mother and the others are her babies. Then she would use her imagination to say what she wanted the objects to talk about if they were real. This can be done with any objects as well as toys and she could do this for hours if I would keep playing with her.

She's in kindergarten now and learning to read. Another creative way to entertain her is for me to print out words in sentences on paper and for her to copy or read them. I help her learn to read and write while I play with her and she develops a love for reading

The third creative way to enterain her which is interrelated to her love for reading is simply to do that. To go to libraries and bookstores for books and read to her before bed. Another resource for books and stories are online of course. There are websites such as www.storynory.com that have free audio stories she can listen to before bed.

The fourth creative way to entertain her is related to books. It is pretending that she works in a library or bookstore and checks out or buys books from there. This can be including using stuffed animals and dolls as her "children" to mix in playing pretend with the books.

The fifth creative way to entertain her is that I taught her last night to play Skip-bo. A simple card game with numbers 1-12 that I started playing when I worked at a Girl Scout Camp at one time. She caught on quick and she's at just the right age to start learning to play card games.

Children have unique views of life and lots of imagination. They can respond to interaction on the most basic levels and enjoy it just as much or more than watching TV. These are a few creative ways I've used to engage my niece in activity. I hope it inspires many more from you.