Playroom Ideas - What are Your Ideas?

This concludes my series on Revamping the Playroom.

Here's a short summary:
Add a Mirror to the Dress-up Area
Magnetic White Boards
Reading Nook
Flat Surfaces
Organizing Your Playroom

All of these ideas grew out of reading the book: Child of Wonder (by Ginger Carlson). So, if you liked these ideas, I encourage you to read the book. She has a whole host of other ideas on how to foster creativity in your children.

Now, it's your turn. What are your playroom ideas? I'm really excited to hear what you suggest!

Playroom Ideas - Organizing Your Playroom

a continuation of my posts on revamping the playroom...

I would be remiss, here at Organized Mommy, to conclude my series on revamping the playroom without talking about organization!

As you know, I like to keep things really simple.

1) A place for everything and everything in its place
- Make sure your playroom has a home for all the toys. Either add storage, or remove some of the toys. When in doubt, remove some toys rather than adding storage.

2) One in one out
- For every new toy, get rid of one toy. Have your kids help you choose which one. Hand it down to another kid you know or donate it to charity. It's good to purge right before those times where you are expecting an influx of toys, like Christmas and birthdays.

3) Keep toys visible and accessible
- Having fewer toys makes this easier (see #1 and #2). Traditional toyboxes are the worst kind of toy storage! It is chaotic, overwhelming for kids to find something, and ensures that they will dump out lots of toys before finding the one they want. I prefer this Tot Tutors toy shelf. For items that don't fit in the toy shelf, I like these fabric bins. We have two bins for dress-up items, and one bin for AB's baby toys. Books go on a regular book shelf, and other larger toys are lined up along the wall in specific places.

4) Designate one bin for each toy or type of toy.
- One bin for blocks, one for legos, one for the kitchen play set, one for doll clothes, one for puzzles, etc. That way, kids can see what toys they have, and know that each of their toys have a designated place. Very Montessori.

5) Leave lots of open space for kids to run around
- Having fewer toys makes this easier (do you sense a theme here?). I dislike it when playrooms have a big table in the middle. I would move it off to the side and leave the center open. I think that kids are a lot more creative when they have more open space.

How do you keep your playroom organized?

Playroom Ideas - Flat Surfaces

a continuation of my posts on revamping the playroom...

A surprisingly great suggestion in the Child of Wonder book is to provide kids with plenty of flat surfaces for activities and play. The reasoning is that flat surfaces allow kids to set up projects and come back to them at a later time.

The idea is to encourage your kids to work on longer term projects - longer than a single play session. Doing so has many benefits:
* trains them to have a longer attention span
* teaches long-term goal setting
* defers the satisfaction of completion to a later time - conditioning them against instant-gratification
* allows them to complete more complicated projects than they would otherwise attempt

I think this suggestion is simple, yet subtly brilliant. It never occurred to me that I could help move HB toward more independent, longer term play simply by giving her some extra open surfaces. I'm the kind of person who likes to have things cleaned up, so I usually go through and put all the toys away every evening. I didn't realize that in doing so, I might actually be stifling some of her creativity. Now, we have a few surfaces designated as "don't clean up" where HB can leave things out as long as she wants. She knows that she can set things up and they will be there for her later.

There has been an unexpected side benefit of this set-up. Sometimes HB would resist going to bed when she was engrossed in playing with one of her toys. Now, she is perfectly happy to leave the toy on her table and go off to bed willingly. Somehow, knowing that the toy will be there for her in the morning is all she needs to stop playing and go to bed. Gotta love that!

Here are some suggestions the book gives for longer-term projects
* a large mural which can not be colored/painted in one sitting
* a big puzzle
* models, like large Lego structures, model airplanes, etc.

What other longer-term projects would be good for Toddlers? I would love to hear your suggestions. Please share in the comments!

Playroom Ideas - Reading Nook

a continuation of my posts on revamping the playroom....

Another new feature of our playroom is the reading nook. The Child of Wonder book suggests having a cozy quiet place where kids can sit to read. To make our reading nook, I re-purposed some cushions and throw pillows from a window seat in our previous house. Placed on the floor along the windows, they form a nice cushy nook where HB loves to read books, play with her dolls, or otherwise just have some down time.

HB has found some other wonderful uses for her cushions and throw pillows. They've become a great prop for dramatic play! She takes them out to the center of the room to become a pirate ship, or stones to step across a pond, or just piles them up to jump on.

You don't need to spend a lot of money to create a great reading nook like this. Here's how:

Look for throw pillows at discount stores like TJ Max, Ross, and Marshalls. They can sometimes be found for less than $5 each.

To make the floor cushions, you will need:
* bedding foam - I got a twin-sized foam mattress topper at Bed Bath & Beyond for $10.
* pillow shams - look at the discount stores or the sales racks at the linens stores. I got three shams for $2 each.

Fold over the foam to make a double-layer and cut rectangles the size of the sham pocket. It helps to cut the foam just slightly larger than you need so that the foam fully fills out the sham. After stuffing the foam in the sham, you can stitch the opening shut if it does not stay closed by itself. This was not necessary for the shams I bought.

If you have wood floors, it helps to put a grippy pad under the pillows so they don't slip.

Playroom Ideas - Magnetic White Boards

a continuation of my posts on revamping the playroom....

Another big hit of the new playroom are the magnetic white boards. These are not your stale corporate-looking white boards, but colorful squares in pink, purple, and green (they also come in blue @Target for $7.49 each). I love them if just for the visual pop of color that they add!

This is what HB loves to do with her whiteboards:
* cheap magnetic locker mirrors allow her to see herself in her dress-up clothes.
* magnets allow her to display her latest art projects
* LeapFrog Magnetic Alphabet Set and Leapfrog Word Builder allow her to learn her ABC's and three-letter words.
* White-board markers allow her to practice letters, or just decorate her space.

Older kids may want to use white boards to keep track of their weekly calendar, homework assignments, or wish lists.

Note: these particular boards were not strong enough to hold the word whammer, so we kept it on the fridge. But the alphabet letters stay up just fine. Perhaps a thicker board would hold the word whammer too.

P.S. We also love this Tot Tutors Toy Shelf from Target (pictured next to the magnet boards). Great for keeping toys organized, yet visible to the kids for playing. When they go on sale, you can get them for as low as $35.00.

Playroom Ideas - Add a Mirror to the Dress-up Area

a continuation of my posts on revamping the playroom....

One of the biggest hits of the new playroom is the dress-up corner. Amazing, since it was so easy to create! All it took was a mirror, two fabric bins underneath for storing dress-up clothes, and a couple of command adhesive hooks on the walls for hanging boas and fairy wings. Wa-la!

We always had a good selection of dress-up items that HB loved. But, she would never play with them for very long. The mirror is the stroke of genius which changed that. Now she loves dressing up, seeing how she looks, and dressing up again! The Child of Wonder book assures me that always seeing herself in the mirror won't turn her into a narcissistic adult. Quite the contrary. Seeing how she looks in the different costumes allows her imagination to expand.

So, add a mirror to your playroom and see if your kids love it too. The book also suggests using a mirror in front of a puppet theater so that kids can be both the puppeteer and audience all at once. We have had good results by adding a magnetic mirror to our fridge so that HB can make sure she has sufficiently wiped her face after dinner. Allowing kids to self-verify the results of their work is very Montessori. She also likes to take the mirror off the fridge to use it to exploring familiar items with a different perspective. Just make sure the mirror is plastic if the kids are going to be mobile with it. We got a bunch of cheap magnetic locker mirrors in the $ bins at Target that are great for this.

Getting your Toddler to Play More Independently by Revamping the Playroom

With a borderline colicky newborn at home, we found ourselves becoming a bit neglectful of our toddler. I came downstairs one morning to find my husband asleep on the couch with HB just sitting in front of TV watching Backyardigans episode after Backyardigans episode. Totally understandable since we both were up nearly the entire night with a screaming baby. But, since when did we become one of *those* parents who just park their kid in front of the TV?!?

I decided that we could no longer use exhaustion as an excuse to not parent HB the way we intended. How many months were going to go by before we were "well-rested" enough to start engaging her the way we did before the baby was born? I decided that we had to suck it up and put an end to the lazy parenting immediately. But, we were still really and truly exhausted. The reality of a second child is that you just don't have the same amount of time to devote to the first child like you did before. A colicky baby makes this even worse. It's not the end of the world; it just requires an adjustment in your parenting style.

I realized the key to our dilemma was to find ways for HB to play more independently for longer stretches of time *without using the TV*. We had a good selection of toys, but she wouldn't really spend much time with any of them without us playing with her. I turned to the book Child of Wonder (by Ginger Carlson) for some ideas. Many of the ideas in this book center around creating a playroom that is conducive to creative play. There are a ton of fantastic ideas here!

Armed with a list of ideas from the book, we decided to turn our rarely-used formal living room into a playroom for HB. Two months on, I can tell you that it has been a huge success! We now limit TV to two episodes each weekend morning and no TV on the weekdays. HB plays for long stretches by herself without needing constant input from us. The great thing is that it cost less than $50, took less than 1 day to set up, and we didn't buy any additional toys. We just made better use of the toys we already had.

I'm going to post how-to's for the ideas we implemented in the coming weeks. So, keep checking in to see my posts under the heading of Playroom Ideas.