One of the things I love about being a mom is enjoying my children’s delight in simple things. Here are our two little boys (1 and 3) enjoying a cardboard box and some of the different things that it can be.
A car or train
A drum
A hat
A jumping platform and also pulpit, judging by the preaching and singing going on.
I nixed the idea of using it to sled down the stairs and put the camera away before the older children confiscated it to create a castle using scissors and markers.
Who says that kids are expensive or hard to entertain? What are some of the best non-toy entertainers in your home?
You may also enjoy:
Storage containers ! or bubble wrap (supervised) , shoes , and buckets !
[Reply]
My children use my cooking utensils when they play with clay. They also use my cookie cutters!
[Reply]
… a few pots and some spoons to play the drums (unfortunately some time at 7 am at the weekend…)
[Reply]
My boys (ages 1 and 5) raid the recycling almost daily for toys. They can spend HOURS throwing around a plastic one-liter bottle. I have no idea why this is so entertaining. Also, they love when I have a lidded coffee can in there so they can pull out spoons and drum on it. Boxes are high up on the list, too.
[Reply]
My kids love empty ribbon spools and thread spools. They are great for building and rolling and stringing them on a shoelace. My little one just likes to collect them all in a bucket, carry them around the house and hide them in a new place (like under the bathroom sink or through the slats on his crib…)
[Reply]
a bucket filled with water and old (not good!) paintbrushes. My kids will “paint” for hours. The siding on the house, the sidewalk, each other. All the money spent on outside summer toys and they’re happy with old paintbrushes and water
. Inside the house, boxes are definitely at the top of the list! Followed by anything I might CURRENTLY be wanting to use in the kitchen.
[Reply]
Kimberly @ Raising Olives Reply:
June 12th, 2010 at 4:06 pm
I was just telling Mark the other day that I want to have old paintbrushes available to let the kids “paint” with water outside. Still haven’t done it yet.
[Reply]
My son can’t get enough of the couch cushions!… and yes I only have one toddler at the moment… and I’m sure by the time the 2nd son can trample couch cushions the game will be terminated for sake of preserving the couch!
[Reply]
Kimberly @ Raising Olives Reply:
June 12th, 2010 at 4:07 pm
This is a BIG deal in our house too!
[Reply]
Our favorite non-toy entertainers are:
- baking with mom
- old junk mail (play post office)
- plain paper or poster board and markers/crayons, with lots of tape(the kids make stores and items to trade or places to visit. Currently we have a mask store, a flag store, a circus, an animal rescue center, a jedi training center, and in the past we’ve had a theater, puppet store, barnett college, a castle, pet store, and more)
[Reply]
I remember as a child, because of my vision impairment my parents bought one of the biggest TVs on the market (well, biggest before you hit that bracket where the prices jump up for no reason except for the assumption that only businesses buy that big)
Anyway, this was when we had the big bulky CRT TVs that were as big in the width as they were in the length. And it came in a box. A HUGE box. Just the fact we could fit inside a closed box amused us.
It lived in the playroom for probably about 6 months. It was most memorably a vets office, but i remember it being a train, a cargo hold, a cafe, a toybox (we were the toys!)
We had so much fun with it, but in the end it broke at the corners and fell apart, at which point we turned it into a slide and a room with a door until it was just too old to hold up to our abuse anymore. I believe at the time I was 8 or 9, my sister 7, and my youngest brother just a year or two old.
[Reply]
Ditto the bubble wrap, boxes and couch cushions. My kids also enjoy blankets, pillows and empty paper towel tubes. I do let mine slide down the steps in a sleeping bag. (Do I get “yes mom” points for that?!?)
[Reply]
MomStarr Reply:
June 9th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Yes, you get points for that!!! Our kids have ridden the couch cushions down the stairs. Both of these are probably not very good ideas.
[Reply]
Kimberly @ Raising Olives Reply:
June 12th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Yes, points for both of you!
My excuse is that our stairs curve 3/4 of the way down and that wall is already very, very sad. Probably from Nicholas pushing his Little Tikes Cozy Coupe down the stairs about 25 times before he figured out that we didn’t like that game.
[Reply]
Let me think. In our home;
Laundry baskets
exercise ball
bowls and spoons
[Reply]
Wooden spoons. They become swords, wands, shovels, catapults, flagpoles, microphones, you name it.
[Reply]
Boxes are popular around here, too. My husband put in a window AC unit in our room the other day and my 6 yr old took the styrofoam inserts and created a track with all the different stations.
[Reply]
Shaving Cream!!!! It smells good and is supper cheap and fun to mold, or scribble, or bathe toys in.
[Reply]
Mine would rather play with a box than any “real” toy too. They also love playing outside with sticks, pine cones, rocks, landscape tie scraps, weeds. . . Pretty much they play with anything that DOESN’T have Fisher Price on it. As a matter of fact, we’re giving away most of their toys because they never get played with.
[Reply]
Ditto to most of the above. My kids love to make their own toys. The other day they made drums from old ice cream buckets, and used bead necklaces (from parades) to sling the drums. My boys are forever shaping palm frond stems into all manner of swords, daggers, javelins, etc. And brooms! They become horses. Taken apart, the handles become lances, while the broom part gets held on their heads to look like Spartan helmets! Blankets and clothespins are used to turn their bunk beds into cool tents.
[Reply]
Boxes are the best!!
[Reply]
My 16 month old loves my broom and dust pan. Sometimes he just carries them around, but other times he pretends to sweep. And he ALWAYS “helps” me when I clean the floor.
His other favorite right now is a pair of empty, 1.5 liter, plastic soda bottles. I don’t know why. Mostly, he carries them around and stands them up next to each other. Sometimes he drums the floor with them. Go figure.
[Reply]
Hi Kimberly,
My kiddos love to use living room pillows!
The carpet is the water and the pillows are the lilly pads!
I pray all is well with you!
Warmly,
Georgiann
[Reply]
Kimberly @ Raising Olives Reply:
June 12th, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Thank you Georgiann.
[Reply]
I have to hide the boxes if I want to reuse them! My girls also use wood clothes pins to make all kinds of things. Chairs on their sides are walls or doors into the world of make-believe. Receiving blankets are good for being a turtle or just to have long “hair”! I could go on forever.
[Reply]
Boxes are great! I just noticed that you have one month left before the baby is due! How exciting!! Praying for you that all goes well.
[Reply]
Kimberly @ Raising Olives Reply:
June 12th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
It’s less than a month now, whoot, whoot!! I can hardly wait!
Thank you for your prayers.
[Reply]