Animal Rescue Transfer Activity

Need an easy toddler activity? Try this simple animal rescue.

My daughter is an animal lover – she has been since birth. Since animals are what interests her most, I love creating easy toddler activities based around her obsession. For this play time experience, I created a simple animal rescue activity that she loved.

When you make an activity for your toddler, my best advice is to tailor it to their interests. My daughter (23 months) loves animals so an animal rescue suits her to a T. If I made this for my son, it would be a totally different activity.

Creating an animal rescue is so easy!

Materials:
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• Tiny animals (we used these)
• Plastic containers
• Under the bed storage tub
• Blue food coloring
• Ladle

The set up for animal rescue was simple! I filled a plastic container with blue dyed water and dropped in her tiny sea animals. I set that plastic container inside an under the bed storage tub (to keep the floor somewhat dry) and placed an empty container inside too.

I also set a ladle in the tub as the “scooping” device.

What is a scoop and transfer activity?

A scoop and transfer activity is one that does just that: the toddler scoops an item and transfer it elsewhere. I love these activities – like my basic scoop and transfer activity or this rice scooping one.

This scoop and transfer activity uses a ladle and was my daughter’s first experience with one.

Learning to use a ladle is a life skill that I love teaching toddlers.

The magic of the water draining out from the ladle but the solid object remaining is perfect for them.

Because her animals sank to the bottom, scooping them was more challenging than I had expected, but that’s fine!

She was up for the extra challenge of trying to scoop the animals up with the ladle and I loved watching her mind come up with different ways to try to scoop.

Items that float would definitely be easier and I would recommend that for younger toddlers.

But at 23 months old, this proved to be a perfect challenge for my daughter and hooked her ever-wandering attention. She sat at this bin for 10 minutes replaying it over and over again.

She even went back to it throughout the day (I like to leave activities out for a while).

How could you tailor this to your toddler?

Consider all the variations for this activity for your toddler with different toys that peak their interest. Maybe one of these:

• Legos
• Potato head body parts
• Balls

The basic idea (scoop and transfer with a ladle) is an easy one to tailor to your toddler’s specific interest.

After playing this for a day, my daughter has already asked to “rescue the animals” again so I know this one is a hit. We plan on doing this often and I can’t wait to watch her ladle skills improve with age and practice.

Will you try this activity with your toddler?