A look at the open-ended toys on our shelf this week all reset and ready for play! Read on to find some inspiration and ideas for your own play space at home and some ideas for ways play.
This week we have a range of open-ended toys on our shelf. Included are some of our favourite Grimms and Grapat wooden toys.
This shelf sits in our dining room right and the girls have a little art/craft area to the right side of these play shelves.
I recently decided to purchase some matching open baskets for the bottom row of shelves. This makes it easier for the girls to see what is inside and also to get the baskets off the shelf and play. Our baskets are from Adairs and I bought them when they were on sale.
The bottom baskets contain:
Basket 1 - Grimms houses, Grimms cars, Way to Play roads
Basket 2 - Dolls and a few dolls accessories
Basket 3 - A range of building blocks and our Grimms Weather Set
Basket 4 - Grapat Lola (the bigger pieces only), a DIY colouring matching board and some bean bags
Second Shelf:
All the toys on the second shelf are safe for Miss 1 to use and this is considered when setting up the shelves for the week.
Cube 1:
Match up animal puzzles - a favourite of Miss 1 (22 months) at the moment. These have been great for teaching her the names of the animals and are easy enough that she can do them herself. She has also enjoyed putting them in and out of the box.
Grimms Stacker - another favourite of Miss 1 - she enjoys pulling the rings off and putting them on. It is more challenging than some other stackers because the hole in the rings is quite small. Miss 1 cannot yet put them back in the size order.
Some Collect A animal figurines - another well loved toy by both girls
Cube 2:
Basket of Grimms pebbles (the smallest ones removed)
Duplo police car
Matching puzzle from Kmart
Cube 3:
Basket of Sumblocks
Grimms large rainbow and rainbow semi-circles on top
Cube 4:
Basket of Grapat pieces - mates, Nins, Magos etc.
Grimms rainbow building boards
Top Shelf
Our Grapat calendar sits on the top shelf, with our Two Little Ducklings days of the week and seasons flashcards. We have our Treasures from Jennifer weather chart in this area too, which we change to suit the daily weather. Miss 5 enjoys looking out the window and changing the weather wheel to match the weather outside. We don’t do this everyday -sometimes we forget.
I have put our Grapat coins and rings in a round tray from Kmart this week. I added in some of our Freckled Frog coloured bowls and some tongs for colour sorting or fine motor play. Using a tray/basket makes it easy to get this down for the girls to play and easy to pack away too. There is a little cardboard person that Miss 5 made in here too ❤️
On the top shelf there is a little white shelf from Kmart. It is great for holding and displaying some of the smaller items and things more aimed at Miss 5.
We have on this shelf:
Some fairies from The Small Folk and a little fairy house
Dinosaur flashcards from Two Little Ducklings
Curious Columbus alphabet flashcards and our Chameleon reader from the Creative Toy Shop
Some other little props, such as flowers and our DIY cork toadstool for fairy play.
Some ways these toys have been used so far:
Loose parts cooking - using the tray of coins as food and adding in items from the play kitchen
Colour sorting the coins and rings.
Castle building and knocking them down
Animals in the paddock
Loose Parts Tray
This tray of Grapat rings and coins was enjoyed by both girls this week. Miss 5 enjoyed sorting the rings and coins by colour. She used the tongs for a bit and sorted the rest by hand. These loose parts were also used for pretend cooking.
Miss 1 enjoyed putting the rings and coins into the bowls (not colour sorted) and out of the tray.
That is the end of our look at our shelves this week. I hope you found some inspiration or ideas to use with your own little ones. If you have any questions please let me know in the comments below.
Until next time have fun playing ❤️ xx