Day 4 of 30 Days to Transform Your Play

Today is day 4 of the interactive series 30 days to transform your play by Kate from An everyday story and Rachel from Racheous.

Day 4: Identify interests

'This kind of play and learning happens slowly over time; sometimes weeks, sometimes months, sometimes even years. But it is connected, it is authentic and it is meaningful to our individual children.' (Kate from An Everyday Story)

I have learned with my children that there is no such thing as covering one topic in one day or week and jumping over onto something else. There is a lot of observing, a lot of repetition, a lot of the same questions,... Any imposed activities are not only a needless distraction, they most often result in resentful behaviour and 'I don't want to do it!' attitude.

Quietly observing my children over the past months made me realise just how different they are.

• Mr A 

With the spring here, it became even more apparent what is making my little boy tick, what is making him happy, what is making him peaceful. Endless hours of searching for spiders, ladybirds and caterpillars, collecting them in his little plastic containers, gently handling them and chatting to them, quietly observing, passionately explaining to other children, reading natural history books hours on end. He is one budding naturalist (I call him David Attenboroug in making), walking and climbing barefooted, getting bitten by creepy crawlies, lying in dirt just to observe ants walking along the wall. 

Yet on the other hand, this is a loud little boy, who needs to run around, cycle, climb or do insanely wild pretend play with daddy.  

As most of the boys of his age, he also loves cars, tractors and  trains. 

• Miss R

She is a very sociable and loving little soul, constantly asking for cuddles and giving cuddles to pretty much everybody and everything (children on the street, teddies, cushions and even random items like a remote control). 

She loves dancing and playing instruments...
She loves dressing up and acting in front of the mirror...
She loves helping out with cooking, laundry, cleaning...
She loves all things moving, be it toy cars or marbles...

And as any little sister, she also likes to follow and copy her brother,  and play chase and hide & seek with him. 

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.

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.

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...

Music

My children love music, especially Miss R. She moves to virtually any noise. 

We attend the Nick Cope's music sessions every now and then. The guy does a brilliant job keeping children entertained and parents sane. The atmosphere is so chilled out, children are allowed to jump around, babies crawl and nobody really minds if the little ones have a bite to eat. This sort of set up suits Mr A very well, as he would probably struggle to sit still. As for Miss R, she can remain attached to the guitar case for the entire hour. Shall I be worried :)

I am always testing which music makes them move, giggle, relax, sing,... We have been playing a lot of Putumayo music lately with our favourite probably being Putumayo Afro Latin Party and Putumayo World Playground. Putumayo have an amazing selection of music from all around the world.

                            

I also tried some aboriginal Australian didgeridoo music the other day. Yet I didn't expect that both of my children would find didgeridoo music absolutely hilarious.  So, be it didgeridoo... and blowing into cardboard rolls...