HT Games
Sock Race
Active toddlers have a natural urge to "help" their parents with their chores. Next time you have a basket full of warm, clean socks from the dryer, grab an extra basket. For each pair of clean socks, place one sock in the first basket and the matching sock in the second basket. Place the baskets on opposite sides of the room. Ask your toddler to help you match the socks by taking out one and "racing" to the other basket to find the match. When she brings them back to you, roll them together and thank her for the help.
Spider Web Races
All you need for the spider web race game is a ball of yarn. In your living room, kitchen or child's bedroom, create the web by stringing the yarn all over the room. Run it under chairs, around table legs, across beds, back and forth between a desk and a chair, and so on until you have created a yarn web throughout the room. Ask your kids to enter the room; then time each child with a stopwatch while he tries to get from one side of the room to the other without touching the yarn web. Once all of the kids have crossed the room, the one with the shortest time wins. Let the winner string the next web and play another round.
Obstacle Course Relay Races
If you have several kids in your home and they are becoming a little too wiggly and active, let them run off that energy by creating an obstacle course in your home or yard and then running relay races through it. Obstacles, in this case, aren't jungle gyms or tires to run through, but instead things such as a pile of clothing to put on, a balloon to blow into until it pops, a jump rope to skip with five times in a row without missing, a glass of soda or water to drink, a chair or table to run around three times or crawl under, a laundry basket into which a soft ball is tossed, a pie pan full of whipped cream to lick clean with no hands allowed, a can full of slips of paper with instructions written on them (for example, "Sing 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' in a squeaky voice," or "Jump up and down while clucking like a chicken").
If you can go outdoors, add more obstacles such as a bicycle to ride across the grass, a basketball to shoot into a hoop, and a skateboard to sit on and paddle (with hands) down the driveway and back. Setting up the course is half the fun; let the kids help. When the course is set up, draw a start and finish line with colored sidewalk chalk (or a piece of string if you're indoors). Divide the kids into equal-size teams. Use a stopwatch to time each team. One player on a team goes through the course. Once she is done, the next player goes through the course and so on until all of one team has finished. The other team goes next, and the team with the lowest time wins. If you have an odd number of children, you can play, too, or one child can play on both teams.