Recently I came across an article about reducing the toy clutter (of which our home is really...REALLY full - let me tell you), thereby helping your kids play more productively and imaginatively. I was totally inspired as someone with both a background in development, and a first-hand understanding of how easily kids become bored with an endless mudslide of toys.
Boredom leads to the inevitable dumping of containers, scattering of supplies, and entangling of every remotely long/stringy item available.
Which leads to compounding chaos...
Which leads to the failure to create, imagine, produce, or *really* play at all with the abundance of toys available for that very purpose.
After reading this article and another article that the author references along those same lines, I decided something needed to be done in our home. After all, if my kids cannot adequately play, they cannot adequately "do" childhood.
"Play is the work of the child" - Maria Montessori
“Play is the highest form of research.” – Albert Einstein
“Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning.” – Mr. Rogers (one of my personal favorites!)
I immediately started brainstorming. There were components I liked and didn't like so much from the original article. For instance, I loved the idea of simplifying and rotating out toys to add novelty, which is a HUGE motivation for play! However I thought the extremely minimalistic environment in the picture was 1) A little drab and dare I say parent-centered (barely any chance to make a mess) - I don't mind a few messes here or there as long as they are productive and helping little minds work! and 2) COMPLETELY. UNREALISTIC. for a home with nearly 4 small children who are at different developmental stages and often require multiples of a similar kind of toy in order to play well *together* (another skill I am passionate about helping them learn). So I'm tweaking as necessary.
I set to work brainstorming a play space for the kids within the tiny 10x15ish foot room we have available to us right now. As it is we have plenty of toy storage, but most of it gets filled up with random assortments of unrelated, half-broken, barely play-able toys that all seem to need a "misc" box. I've done a decent job of labeling clear containers with words and pictures and currently have categories like "people," "vehicles," "food," "dishes," "music," "puzzles," etc...but each one is SO full, and only about 20% (max) ever get played with at one time. The rest ends up littered all over my house or in the wrong box - a symptom of too many toys being thrown into too many "misc" boxes that are much too deep and sneaky to really keep track of anything well. Still, I feel like I'm at least not starting at ground zero - we have a system; it's just inundated.
My initial brainstorming page started like this:
I basically narrowed down my general play categories using some help from her website, our own toy inventory, and my experience in a preschool setting. Then I starting separating out our inventory in order to get the best use out of each activity. For things like books or plush toys, I figure I will consolidate the massive amounts of what we have, and then break down the slightly-less massive collection into rotating groups. For some things, I thought a "theme" would be fun, so for a week or two, we could have pirate/nautical themed dress up clothes, fish/sea creature plush toys, and maybe an art activity that goes along as well (if I'm feeling particularly zealous).
Today I started with the dress up bin. It's currently overflowing and only a handful of things actually get worn. As I sorted through our collection, a few natural categories emerged (though I did throw in a princess/superhero dress/cape or two into each rotating bag since those are consistent favorites, and Lord knows my children can imaginatively incorporate a princess or superhero character into almost any play activity or theme).
After raiding the house top to bottom for any and all dress-up items, I finally came up with 4 rotating bags - loosely themed: "Pirates/Nautical," "Vocations," "Fantasy/Medieval," and "Animals." I labeled each trash bag, put the 3 off-rotation groups into the garage for storage until I come up with a giant bin for rotating toys, and re-filled the dress-up bin with the simplified Collection 1, which filled the bin about 1/3 of the way. WOOHOO!
I also assembled a clear (easily visible) accessory bag for smaller items like jewelry and shoes - which are (OBV!) necessary regardless of the play theme, or even whether one is dressed like a princess, a black cat, or a police officer. That bag will stay with the dress up bin each week as I rotate. It will continue to be the bain of my existence all over the house, I'm sure - but they are only kids once!
Time to cross the "dress up" row off my brainstorming list, and tackle another item...stay tuned!
No comments:
Post a Comment