Toy Rotating & Why It'll Change your Life
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Post by Thenedra Roots for Maple
Have you ever been sitting on the floor, sipping your cold coffee, and wondering why your child is not playing with any of their toys laying around? Chances are your child is completely overwhelmed by all of the options, so they’ve chosen to disengage. It took me a while to figure this out and it often left me very frustrated. My children have a variety of toys: open-ended, wooden, plastic, montessori, dress up clothes, etc., yet they often chose to fight over who was playing with the remote first.
Toy Rotating & Montessori
I was introduced to the concept of toy-rotating through some montessori resources that I follow. The idea behind rotating your kid’s toys in and out, is to minimize the amount of options that you have out for your child, so they spend more time engaged in them. When a child has fewer options, they are appropriately stimulated, increasing their attention span with the toy, and it allows for more freedom of creativity.
Simple Toy Rotating Method
Rotating toys does not have to be complicated, in fact it’s fairly simple for most households. You simply set out 5-10 toys at a time and box up the rest and put them away. For younger children, once you’ve noticed they’ve lost interest in the current toys that are out, you can simply swap them out. For older children, you can allow them to swap them out themselves. For example, tell them they can “shop” for a “new” toy from the bin, once they choose one in the current rotation to put away for a while. This creates a fun and exciting chance for older children to participate as well.
A few benefits of toy rotation are:
Less clutter in your home
Easier way to identify toys that your children may be too old for/are broken
A great way to organize things that could be sold or donated
And more engaged play time, which means sipping hot coffee for you!
Writing and Image supplied by Thenedra Roots for Maple.