On The Toy Shelf

In a burst of energy and random love for my children I refreshed the toy shelf the other day and this is what it looked like for the 2.7 seconds before everything was dragged out to play with!

Because we have a small house without much storage and the kids mostly play in the lounge along with everyone else, we try and rotate toys into the toy corner every few weeks to keep it interesting and so there is a place where everyone can play together.

At the moment we’ve got the two doll’s houses out. My Dad made one each for the girl’s third birthday, named and all. What used to be the coffee table but is now just something else for Muski to climb bcame the perfect space for building with Duplo.

On the Shelves;

Top Left – a basket of fabric scraps, ribbons and hair ties.
The girls LOVE to use fabric bits to make clothes for the dolls, or blankets or rugs for the dolls house or a million other things that I’d never think of. Muski likes to pile them into his trolley and wheel them around.

Top Right – A box of people.
We’ve got a great collection of painted wooden people and for Christmas, the girls got a set each of nice bendy dolls.

Middle Left – Some wooden cars and a stacking stick.
A couple of the lovely wooden cars Muski got for Christmas. The Dump truck on the right is this one from Ecotoys and it is just lovely. The little man has a happy face one side and sad one on the other! The Stacking stick is from Ikea, we never seem to be able to find all the bits but that doesn’t seem to worry the kids.

Middle Right – Books Books and More Books!
Everyone in our house LOVES books. Muski is book mad at the moment and will bring book after book to anyone who looks like they might read to him, though often you only get the first line read before he trots off to get another one. Every once in a while Muski looses his head and gets overwhelmed by the lovely ripey-ness of books so our ‘on the shelf collection’ at the moment consists mostly of older board books, ones we won’t be really traumatised to see ripped a little. They are in a basket because staking books back on the shelf is way too hard for our 18 month old.

Bottom Left – Peek-a-blocks.
Muski was recently given a ‘peek-a-block’ truck which has lots of nifty spots to slot in the various peek-a-blocks (clear plastic blocks that have different things inside them – I think they are fisher price brand) that we’ve collected over the years. The truck makes a noise when you push it, and we all know how much I love noisy toys so I was all set to leave it at Nanny and Bobo’s… but Muski loves it so much I had to bring it home. Lucky for me it has an off button!

Bottom Right – Duplo.
We have HEAPS of duplo thanks to a little toy swapping with a friend and a second hand toy shop that used to sell random bags of the stuff going cheap (pity it went out of business). That means we’ve got enough to build huge towers, we’ve got all kinds of nifty accessories, lots of people, lots of animals and even a train set. We really like duplo and the girls use it in so many ways. We do have some doll’s house furniture but we put that away when we got out the duplo as the girls seem to create amazing accessories for their doll’s houses out of duplo and are much more creative.

A basket of fabric goodness

All the people lined up in the house – not sure what they are waiting for, but they are very well behaved!

They are partying now, after the house has been decorated!