Rotating Toys

When I worked with children with Autism I would recommend that parents put away almost all of the toys and leave only a few out.  At the time, my thinking had more to do with creating motivation for the toys that were put away (and could then be used for therapy) and providing an uncluttered environment to see what truly interested the child.  When there are 50 toys in a bin, usually kids will pick something out and play with it for 10 seconds before something else catches their eye.

I knew before I had children that I never wanted overflowing bins full of toys around the house.  I wanted the toys we had to matter and promote creativity and education.  I found a great website to help with choosing toys that get played with over lengths of time- Best Toys for Babies & Young Toddlers  From there, I stumbled upon this great website where the author is an SLP and talks about rotating toys How to rotate toys
She has wonderful ideas about how to separate your toys into categories and get rid of the shiny and flashy toys.  The categories are: Thinking, moving and pretending toys.  I won't go into much detail here, but want to refer you to The Little Stories website for more information.

The concept is simple and at the end you have 10 toys (or sets of toys) laying around your house.  Sounds amazing right?  After all, how many toys can your child play with successfully at the same time?? You can tweek it to fit your families needs if you have more than one child or children of different ages.  I have 15 toys out and that includes 5 toys from each category.  We have our toys divided between the living room, foyer and toy room. This works for us, but I could definitely put more toys away and they would be just as entertained.

I have been doing this with the girls since they were around 9-10 months and we started to acquire more toys.  Sometimes I get busy (read: lazy) and forget to rotate for a few weeks, but when I do it is like Christmas morning.  The girls look at all of the new toys in amazement! They forgot about all of these awesome toys! The best part is that they really PLAY with the toys for greater lengths of time, allowing for more creativity within their play.  The only part I'm really bad at is books.  We have 16 out right now.  But 16 out of like 200 isn't bad!

My toy list:

Thinking:
1) Shape Sorter
2) Melissa and Doug Farm animal puzzle
3) Fisher Price Geo Trax
4) Melissa and Doug basic skills board (fine motor)
5) Leap Frog reader junior (girls haven't learned how to use yet, we are still teaching)

Moving: (all in the foyer)
6) Strollers
7) Rody
8) V Tech sit to stand
9) balls
10) cars

Pretend:
11) Kitchen set (always stays out)
12) Brooms
13) Little People Talking Zoo Keeper
14) Leap Frog Tea Time
15) Mickey and Minnie

A day in the life at 18 months

A normal day begins around 6-6:30.  I have the luxury of sleeping in until one of the girls wakes me up! For a bit they were both sleeping until 7-7:30, but recently they have been getting up earlier. We do the typical morning activities; milk, get dressed, have breakfast, read books and play. Around 8 we head out the door.  3 or 4 times a week we go to the Y, where the girls have finally accepted that I will just be dropping them off for a hour, not abandoning them for the rest of their lives.  This was a MAJOR feat for us, especially Brooklyn.  It took her a good 3 months of going consistently before she stopped crying hysterically when we pulled into the Y parking lot.

After the Y, we usually go to the park, go to a story time, or listen to music at Whole Foods.  They have a kids hour and musicians sing children's songs and all the kids get wild on the dance floor.  Ok, mostly it's my children getting wild on the dance floor and running around the room like mad women, but it's really great (free) entertainment! Some days we meet up with one of my girlfriends so that the kids can play together and moms can have some adult time, but it's hard to really have an adult conversation at this age because they still need us to help them with a lot of activities.

"Is mom watching?" Whole Foods Kids Hour

All danced out

I forgot to mention, almost every day they stand at the fence and hope that they neighbor boys will come out to play.  Yes, it starts early ha.

Sisterly love in Publix.

We head back to the house around 11 and meet up with Daddy for lunch.  The girls go down for a nap at 12:30 and will sleep for 2-3 hours.  When they get up we hang around the house, play outside at the water table or in their Cozy Coups or walk over to the park.  Dad comes home from work and we eat dinner and the girls get bathed every other night.  This is the time of day Brooklyn and Ivey seem to get crazy and like to run around the house chasing each other.  It is so fun to watch! We encourage them to get nuts in the hopes that they will wear themselves down.  They cool down and watch a tv show before we put them to bed at 7:15.

Running laps around the house

Sweet Ivey.  Love those blue eyes!

Nothing too exciting!  The girls won't be starting preschool until next year so I have one more year of just us three gals.  I was considering going back to work, but since these will probably be our only children I have to look at the bigger picture.  They will only be little like this ONE time, so I had better savor it.

First trip to the beach.  Gulf Shores

Love <3