Rotating Toys
Our big project of the day was rotating out our toys. This wasn’t supposed to happen; in fact, we’d already done our main chore for the day (cleaning cobwebs). Impromptue organizing projetcs don’t always work well for me; my idea of how things are supposed to be organized tends to look different than the kids’ vision. The fact that this was all about sorting toys was just the icing on the cake.
However, the whole thing actually went really well. Ian was able to listen to what I needed (do not drag the toys out of the bag and attempt to play with all of them at once; put them in a pile over here until we’ve sorted them). Both he and Chava were surprisingly good at putting some toys aside to donate. I haven’t done that with the kids before, although they’ve seen the box that is set to be donated. Ian was able to tell me what he thought he should keep, and why. He has a startling memory for where each toy came from, and how he has played with it in the past. We ended up with a good pile of toys to keep, and managed to put the cheap plastic toys from the doctor’s office into the ‘donate’ box.
The next step was putting up the toys that had been out. I was a little sad to put up the house that we gave Chava for her birthday, but she has stopped playing with it in the last couple of weeks. I pulled down their castle, which is one of Ian’s favorite toys (I happen to like it quite a bit, too). They played happily for the rest of the afternoon.
I am always a little amused by how well this system works. They play much better when they have less clutter to try to play around, and less choices to overwhelm them. They are more likely to play with the toys, play with them longer, and are more creative in their play. Even better, when we rotate the toys that have been put up for awhile, it’s a little bit like Christmas.
All in all, a complete success. The kids were helpful, and I didn’t get overwhelmed. I accomplished two goals: rotating toys and working on making the den a useful space. We all had a good time together, and the kids have a bunch of ‘new’ toys.