Creating a welcoming play space

A good play space will be beneficial to meeting the needs of your child and will encourage your child to play independently.  Often parents aren’t really sure how to do this or what to include so this guide should help you.

This will obviously depend on your housing situation but most modern homes here in Australia have areas that can easily transform into a play space for your little ones.  Ideally this space will be close to where you are during the day. Because of childrens’ strong desire to attach, a space where you are close by is more ideal than somewhere away on its own.  Children will more likely play solitarily in a play space if they can see their parent / carer from where they are playing.  If you have several children a play space further away may work as they won’t be alone, however make it a space that you can easily supervise.

Avoid the use of a large toybox where everything gets thrown in and mixed up. Children are less likely to play with their toys if they have to first find all the parts or dig around in a messy toy box.  Shelves with cubes are the perfect toy storage solution as you can put similar toys together and they can easily be accessed.  Display toys on the shelves as well as using cubes. 

A small child sized table is a great addition so that they can sit and draw, do puzzles, play with playdough, paint etc.  It also becomes a great place to set up activities for your child to come and do. 

A small cosy area can be added with a shelf or basket of books to read.  I often used the shelves to separate areas of the toy area to make little specific corners, ie a reading corner, family corner with dolls and kitchen, an area with blocks for construction. 

Rotate your childs toys. Lets me honest, our children most often have way too many toys. Rotating their toys works extremely well to keep their interest.  I would store away in a cupboard different toys and rotate them out every few weeks, swapping them for something else.  Often when the same toys are available day in and day out children often get bored.  When the toys are rotated and you bring out something different it renews their interest and they will play with it again.  This also helps to avoid having a massive clean up if there are less toys available.

So what toys could you include in your childs’ play area?                                                                                                        

•  Puzzles  

• Books 

• Family corner items - kitchen, dolls, dressups (your old clothing, hats, handbags or op shop stuff) plates, cups, utensils, pots, pans.

• Construction play - duplo, lego, blocks

• Playdough - rolling pins, cutters etc

• Plastic animals - sea creatures, dinosaurs, farm animals, pets

• Art materials - pencils, crayons, textas, chalk, paint, glue, paper, scissors.

• Musical instruments - home made or bought - drum, keyboard, shakers, triangle, xylophone

• Cars, train sets, roads, diggers etc