Saturday 5 April 2014

Day 3 of the 30 Days to Transform Your Play

Today is day 3 of the interactive series  30 days to transform your play by Kate from An everyday story and Rachel from Racheous.


30daystyp 30 Days to Transform Your Play: Day 1


Day 3: Improving a Play Space


My visit to Ikea was reasonably successful taking into account that I got caught in traffic on M25 and that I kept getting lost in the shop. I haven't bought everything I was planning to, but the long journey proved useful for reflecting on how my children play.

I haven't got far improving our play space, because my brother is staying over with his family (boy 5 yrs & girl 2 yrs old both very different to my children). It has been incredibly interesting observing them at play - suddenly I see much clearer what are the favourite toys/activities of my children. So, I think there will be more toy culling happening over the next week; I will certainly be storing most of the puzzles and board games (Mr A could not care less for any of those). 



Ideally, I would like to tackle one shelf at a time, giving it a good thought on how the materials displayed speak to my children. 

I have decided to keep our story corner, since I've noticed that Miss R loves going there just to have a cuddle with the cushions. It also gives the room a bit of softness.

I shall be making a simple terrarium that we can have in the lounge. With the amount of temporary pets that we get through on a daily basis, this seems to be a no brainer. We already have a fish tank, which now hosts a goldfish and a pond snail (and two streaks of eggs). 


Since Mr A and Miss R play very differently and both seem to need a fair bit of space, it feels right to give them enough space to play without interrupting each other. I would much rather see them playing nicely together, but I can't force it. With that in mind, I moved Miss R's favourite toys in the little Expedit shelving next to the fireplace away from the main playarea.
For example, this should give Mr A enough space to build his train set and Miss R to dance, play instruments or dress up without being pushed away for destroying a precious train line (these photos are from about 6 months ago). 





I shall be posting some photos of our play spaces later in the month when I am satisfied that the changes we have adopted work for us.

1 comment:

  1. Love your reflections and look forward to seeing and reading about the changes :)

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