Toy Rotation

Hi Everyone,

 It’s Hump Day!  Are people still calling Wednesday that?  If not then just happy Wednesday. 

I think we as parents all start out with a dearest intentions of not being that house with all those kid toys.  You will keep them to a small number and your kids will play with them, all day every day. I will just wait a minute while all you current moms finish your laughing. Okay, lets get back to it.  

James has started to develop a decent amount of toys and he would play with half of them for a few minutes and be onto the next thing.  So while on pinterest I saw the idea of toy rotation.  I know this isn’t anything new and I have even do a little bit with James before.  I divided them into two groups and would switch every couple of days.  This worked okay but it wasn’t great.  So I read a couple of blogs and took a trip to target and hit up the dollar spot.  

I ended up getting 4 medium tubs with lids.  They came in a in a pack of two and were only $5.  I thought I would see how 4 boxes went and if it was a hit I could always add more.  Since school is getting close to start there were tons of educational things at the dollar spot.  I grabbed some little puzzles, some wood blocks and magnet letters, numbers, shape and animal books.

 I also grabbed a couple of new toys for James, a little grill that teaches him shapes and colors and even Spanish and a little flashlight that makes sounds and stuff.

Once we got home, James went down for a nap and I started organizing the boxes.  I bought out all of the James’ toys, took out the toys that he was just to old to play with and no longer interested at all, and looked for themes within the toys. The themes that I found where Balls, Cars, Shapes and others.

I made sure that I included books and a variety of items inside the tubs and even numbered them so I wouldn’t get confused.  I also split up this big toys items are going to rotate them in every so often.  

We have been doing the toy boxes for a couple of weeks now and I think they are going pretty well. In the morning, James get very excited when I bring him a new box to explore and the first time he found the wooden boxes he crawled with them all the way into the kitchen for breakfast. Somedays it entertains him more than others but his still favorite activity is to explore the house.  I think it’s just the stage he is at.  He is learning how to climb up and in things and walking around the house so it’s just a big playground.  Another nice feature about the toy tubs is the super fast clean up, it now only takes me a minute to pick up all the toys and pack them up for another day instead of a few minutes to track down and put together everything he had gotten into that day. 

I’m sure in a few weeks or so I might add a new box, maybe mix up the items in the boxes or add some new items, to keep things interested for James.  But right now they are working and didn’t really cost me too much to put together. 

-Megan

Do you often look to pinterest or other sites for inspirations?

What did you do when you realized that your kid just had way too many toys?