One of our goals this year is to help our boys truly play with their toys. We have some great toys in the house and so often many just get tossed aside and misused. As the year came to a close, my husband made a list of all the different categories of toys we owned. If you are wondering, he came up with roughly 15 different categories. Whoa. Some, like construction and trucks, are much larger because our boys are really enjoying these types of things at this stage of toddlerhood.
Another goal of ours (mainly mine) is to minimize the clutter and unnecessary items we own. I am an aspiring minimalist (this will probably never happen but I'm determined to implement some of the great tools and ideas I'm finding!) Toys, I'm sad to say, have been a huge source of clutter and stress for me this past year. They just always seemed to be everywhere. Clutter and I do not get along. It is actually a big trigger for me in terms of stress and anxiety. I was set on figuring out a way to minimize the clutter that did not involve getting rid of their toys because all of them are less than 3 years old. Most a year or less. $75 and 9 bins later, I have a plan and lighter shoulders. Yay!
I separated their toys and books into vague categories and placed them in boxes (more on the details of this in a later post). Each week our plan is to store the toys from the week before and bring out what pertains to the "theme" of the week ahead. I'm finding that this does take a lot of thought especially since I am trying to incorporate activities that cultivate learning not only more about the theme of the week but also about colors, numbers, and letters.
Week 1- Trains!
Monday- Since Monday was New Years Day and Tyler was home from work, we focused on just spending the day with him and catching up on some household chores. They boys played with whatever toys they wanted. That night was the night I sorted all of their toys and put them in storage. It was a late night!
Tuesday- We have a VTech train set with tracks and two motorized trains. It does have some active play options (turn motor off and push trains, rebuild the tracks, knock boulders through the mountains on to trains, etc.) but it honestly is more of just a sit and watch kind of toy. I don't mind this at times and the boys really do enjoy it. (I didn't get a picture because, alas, the boys tore up the tracks after being told not to and got it taken away.) There was quite a bit of free play this day.
Wednesday- Another day of quite a bit of free play. We did have some some "craft" time as they colored pictures of trains. The boys were gifted an alphabet "floor" that you can connect into different words and such. We spelled the word "train" and they chose a letter to sit on while I read a few different books about trains. They actually really enjoyed this simple activity. We have small Thomas and Percy trains that they played with quite a bit this day as well. (Talk about #momhairdontcare ... Whoofta.)
Thursday- I "crafted" (I use this term lightly as I am far from crafty/artistic) the boys a train to stick to the wall for color sorting. I went down to the basement and pulled out all of their blue, yellow, red, and green blocks. They spent quite a bit of time that day sorting and matching their colors. Ezra really enjoyed it. Stay tuned for a simple how to!
Friday- I had every intention of pulling their VTech train set back out this day for some more fun play, but I woke up at 3am with the stomach bug. Yuck. I don't even know what they played with because I was upstairs in bed all morning. Tyler did say they read quite a few books. That evening we watched a couple episodes of Chuggington as a family. We were going to watch Thomas or Mighty Machines (the train episode) but apparently Netflix doesn't have them listed anymore. Bummer.
Saturday was a day spent doing household chores and grocery shopping. Poor Ezra caught the bug that evening.
I am confident that we will repeat themes throughout the year. Hopefully I will be able to come up with some new ideas when this happens!
I hope that this can give you some ideas when it comes to toys and play! We have just begun the second week of this method and I am already seeing much better play, sharing, and even teamwork with the boys.
Until next time,
Emilee