Blocks can become a castle, a construction site, or a mathematical tool.
“I’m a little teapot, short and stout!”. This sweet tune isn’t so sweet when yelled at ear-piercing levels one hundred times a day from a bright, plastic, battery-operated toy. In this age of electronics and gadgets, the marketing for these products starts as soon as your baby arrives. Our family has been suckered into “needing” these toys throughout the years. The latest gadget that will make my baby smarter or more entertained is advertised during every commercial break and in the front display of stores, making it hard to resist.
One of my goals this year is to replace all of our close-ended toys with open-ended toys. Open-ended play simply means that the toy is open to your child’s imagination. Blocks can become a castle, a construction site, or a mathematical tool (“how many blocks can we stack at once?”). A wagon can become a doll carriage, transportation device, or a ride-on toy. These types of toys can be played with for hours and used in so many different ways. Closed-ended toys, however, have only one or two uses, most of which involve loud noise and lots of batteries.
The problem I’ve come across, however, is that these great open-ended toys often times come with great big price tags. It takes more money to produce a hand-carved wooden race car than a cheap plastic talking telephone. One solution is to turn everyday items into fun playthings. An empty peanut butter jar filled with rocks or coins and hot-glued shut becomes a musical instrument, an appliance box becomes a boat, house, or tunnel. If you’re the least bit crafty, you can make felt dolls, complete with accessories, to go on a flannel board that hangs on the refrigerator.
So before you spend a week’s salary on the organic, handcrafted blocks or cloth dolls, look around your home for items you already own and have fun coming up with ways to make playthings for your child. It is true what they say-children really do enjoy the boxes sometimes more than the toys.
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