Your Play Space

If you have young children then you’re bound to have a lot of stuff, especially toys. Finding a way to organize and present those toys to your children plays a critical role in the quantity and quality of play. In a perfect world your kids would have a designated area of space in your house where all of their toys are available to them. Of course I know that a separate playroom in every house isn’t an option, but even a corner of a room or a shelf with accessible items is helpful.

There are some details about a play space that seem obvious and, therefore, don’t require a lot of attention- things like accessibility and safety for example. In my previous post we talked a lot about the quality of the space, or having toys that are multi-dimensional. Another detail that I believe is really important to get into is the quantity of toys in your space.

Many times I see play spaces jammed with every toy a child owns. This is really not helpful.

To start with, this often leaves little room to really create and explore, but on top of that it’s complete sensory overload. When my house is messy, it’s often hard for me to focus. Can you relate? I really believe the same goes from kids. Too many toys and clutter can really hinder creativity and overload the senses. At the same time, you want to find the perfect balance for your quantity, since too little can also have the same effect as too much.

Here is a peek at our space. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s very practical. I keep our blocks, duplos, magnatiles, legos, and additional base toys in our gray boxes shown below and always have those available for the kids to use. Our top shelves and larger toys around the perimeter rotate out. I have no real system for this other than just paying attention to what gets used and noticing if my kids are in a playing rut. And, when I say rotate out, I mean completely relocate the toys to an area where they won’t be seen. For me, this is my basement that’s unfinished and not really used by my kids.

Photo by Katie Emanulson Photography

One last thing I really have noticed that’s valuable in our play area is our floor space. We opted to have the center of the room stay open for play. Although we do have a table available for the kids (this was recently updated to a larger size due to our kids outgrowing their youth table), they most often are found on the ground while playing or creating.

Photo by Katie Emanulson Photography

Photo by Katie Emanulson Photography

I think it’s important to make something clear- your entire house is a learning and/or “playing” space for your kids. My kids learn math in the kitchen, spatial awareness at the dining table, and brushing their teeth even helps with their gross motor skills. When I refer to play space in this post, I simply mean the area in which most of your toys are kept and used.