A child, some paper, and a writing implement

How to amuse a small child with only paper and pen (pencil, crayon, whatever)

So you and the small child have found yourself in a small space that is fundamentally not well equipped for children. You can usually come by some paper and a writing implement. A restaurant may well have provided you with these things, but if the small child in question is my daughter, she is going to refuse to spend much time on coloring. What can you do?

Draw around a hand

Place a hand flat on the paper. Draw around it. You would be surprised how much amusement this is good for if you vary whose hand it is and who does the drawing. You could make the outline into something, if you do just one per piece of paper, but for my kid it's all about process, not product. We just trace hands over and over again on the same piece of paper.

Make a list

Sometimes my daughter wants to make her own list, which she writes down. Sometimes she would rather dictate a list and see me write it down. Sometimes she determines a topic and makes everybody at the table say something which she then writes down (I think she gets this from circle time at daycare). Her two favorite topics are "Food" and "Your favorite thing". Often she tells you that you have named the wrong favorite thing. Lists are also good topics for books.

Make a book

I recommend this all the time. How to fold a piece of paper, even printed on one side, into a small book. These make lists seem extra-special. They are also good for writing stories in.

Matching game

Peggy Kaye's books are full of great pencil-and-paper ideas. One infinitely adaptable idea is to take a piece of paper and write some things to be matched up scattered around it, and then connect them together. You can start really easy; A B C D E each written twice, match the identical ones. And then try A a B b C c D d E e, match the upper to the lower. Or connect them in order. Or the numbers 1-10, connect them in order. Or connect the even ones in order and the odd ones in order. Or draw some animals (or if you have them put some stickers on) and write their names and match them. Or you do one set of letters, the kid does the other. Or you put down all the letters in a word, the kid connects them up in order. See, you can make up versions of this forever. (Match the math problem to the answer...)

But here's the really magic twist: any one of these can be made much trickier and more interesting by connecting them without letting the lines cross. Seriously, I do this solitaire to intrigue her, but it's actually kind of addictive. And it means you and the kid can play together in a way that requires thought on your part even when you're matching "2+2" to "4".

Shape game

Another one that comes from a book, this time Anthony Browne's The Shape Game. One person draws a squiggle. The other one makes it into a drawing of something. With a very small child, the child always does the squiggle. With older kids, two pieces of paper and two different color pens add to the fun; you both squiggle and exchange.

Folding paper

Folding is nice because it doesn't need blank paper. 2s and 3s are extraordinarily easy to please; they find fans very impressive. (Accordion fold piece of paper. Fold in half at middle. Wow. If your piece of paper is long and narrow, omit step 2.)

Moving up to things that will impress a slightly more picky audience, try the boat/hat as shown in Curious George Rides a Bike. I did this as a kid (although we used the boat as a hat; it holds together better than the so-called hat) and remembered how but my husband disclaims all knowledge of such things, so here are some online instructions.

If you go so far as to make yourself a square, a cootie catcher is possible. These are only good for fortunes if you start with blank paper, but they make good puppets no matter what. With blank paper and fortunes they're good for amusing kids right up into the double-digits.

A business card, a cheap postcard, or any other rectangle of stiff paper makes a business card frog which will jump and everything. These are easier to fold than traditional origami frogs.