Treatise on Toys

Our kids have lots of toys!  I've learned a lot in 14+ years as parent about toys.

 This is a dollhouse, given to us by a friend.  It is a charming thing, and we have many fun accessories which we store in a bin when the kids aren't playing with the dollhouse.  We had the dollhouse in our basement and no one had touched it in months.  Yesterday, I asked Naomi and Isaac to haul everything up to the entry room. Surprise, surprise, the new location made the TOY seem new, and several children have spent happy hours playing with the dollhouse since then.  Sometimes,  the best thing to do with an old toy is to move it to a new location. 

 

 

This is one of the best toys we have EVER purchased -- a marble toy.  This toy has many separate parts, which can be connected in a variety of ways. Then the child puts a marble at the top and down it goes, down down down, in a fascinating, fun, hypnotic way.

  We bought it...oh, maybe 12 years ago?  A long time ago.  Let me comment briefly on the "many parts" issue.  We have many building toys with copious numbers of parts.  In my early days as a parent, I would let the children take sections of a toy and cart them off to a different room. It just seemed easier, plus the children were being creative. For example, I seem to remember Lydia pretending that colored wooden blocks were fruit and veggies, and she would carry pieces off to her room for pretend meals.

I'm all for creativity, but when I let some pieces wander off -- well, before I know it, the pieces are spread throughout the house and no one can really build anything.  So I stopped many years ago. The rule now is that a building toy needs to stay in one particular room unless ALL of it moves.  So we have bins or containers for individual building toys (like Lincoln Logs, Legos, wooden blocks, etc.) and if a child wants to play with a building toy in another room, she needs to carry them ALL, in their bin, to another room to play.

So, marble toy. Sarah, in particular, has really enjoyed it.  One issue (of course) is that marbles are choking hazards, so when we have a toddler we have to keep the marble toy in a room where he isn't habitually playing.

All these toys in our house can be something of an organizational headache.  I don't want a mess, but I do want our kids to have fun, intellectually stimulating toys to play with.  There is a balance.  I don't want so many toys that we get lost in the mess, but I don't want to limit the children too much.

I haven't gotten to the perfect place, but as I get older and we have more children and more stuff, I am more and more putting things away for a season, then bringing them out so they are fresh and new.