Day 2 of the 30 Days to Transform Your Play

Today is day 2 of the interactive series  30 days to transform your play by Kate from An everyday story and Rachel from Racheous.



Day 2: Cull toys

Today's challenge comes at a perfect time. I have actually been purging toys (on and off) for a good week now and I am on my way to Ikea tonight to purchase some storage (Expedit unit, trolley, cardboard boxes to serve as continent boxes and plastic boxes to serve as toy rotation storage). I haven't been to Ikea for a long time and I think I might get carried away. 

The problem I find with the entire toy presentation and rotation is the lack of storage space or perhaps the lack of organisational skills. We live in a 90 m square three bedroom semi-detached house and we are lucky enough to have a fairly spacious lounge with a dedicated playarea, but I still find it difficult to keep everything tidy and accessible.

Most of our toys and books are displayed in a large Expedit unit. We keep toys in baskets (e.g. cars, figurines, blocks, balls,...), which is all good until they start to over spill - this is always the case with Mr A's cars. 

Our arts and crafts shelving unit and the children's table are located in the dining area and also need some decluttering. Our music / instrument area is next to the fireplace and I am happy with it.

At present, toys for rotation are randomly stored in the upstairs airing cupboard and stashed in a wooden chest which serves as a nature table. I won't take the photo of the airing cupboard - I think it is not too difficult to imagine a mess containing my sewing supplies, children's toys and books, outgrown clothes and a couple of lampshades. 

On my to do list:

• Donate

I would like to donate the giant Noddy toy and all Noddy books, some of the toy cars (how to convince Mr A?), baby touchy feely books, baby toys that I haven't donated already and little tikes climbing frame from the garden.

I have decided to give some of the nice duplicate toys to the grandparents to keep them at their house or their holiday flat.

• Trash

I am quite good at this. I can't stand broken toys, so they go straight in the bin. However I still need to get rid off half ripped books that even our magic sellotape can't fix anymore.

• Store / temporarily remove

We have a story corner / reading corner in our playarea which I love, but it does not get used often, as children prefer to sit on the sofa. So, I am deciding whether to remove the story corner and just space out the furniture / baskets / mirrors / plant in the playarea.

• Organise toy rotation storage

I need to decide where to store toys for rotation and stick to it. I would love to have everything in one room, ideally with a giant storage space behind some hidden mirrored door. I think I might attempt to tackle our airing cupboard and repeat the same trash / donate/ keep action for clothes and other items.

However, given that my brother and his little family of four are coming over for a long weekend, I can't imagine how I could end up with more organised playarea...

Day 1 of the 30 Days to Transform Your Play

I am taking part in an interactive series that Kate from An everyday story and Rachel from Racheous have prepared for us mummies: 30 days to transform your play



Kate and Rachel will be guiding us through a series of daily assignments over the next month to help us create more meaningful play. I haven't been so excited about an assignment / homework for such a long time, probably since I've completed my PhD nearly 10 years ago...

I've been reflecting on the first assignment for a good hour now. It feels like I should make it into a monthly routine, so that I never stand still when it comes to supporting meaningful play:

Day 1: Why do you want to make changes to the way you approach your child’s play?

- to give Mr A (4 yrs) and Miss R (2 yrs) freedom to explore and express themselves in a meaningful way (embracing 100 languages of children)
- to raise happy children / family :)
- to encourage my children to play together more often and play nicely
- to make sure I provide ample opportunities for my children to express themselves
- to encourage creativity
- to support independent yet meaningful play
- to feed their interests with meaningful materials / activities
- to parent with abundance vs scarcity
- to get the right amount of white space 
- so that I am able to say YES more often
- to create a flexible routine which will accommodate 2 children & 2 adults, which will take into account multiple inteligences and which will support child-led learning 
- to avoid buying new and rather use the existing materials / recycled materials in different ways