Small Play Made Accessible
It’s been a while since I posted. Since then my life has changed…a lot. I am a mother of a toddler. With this big change has come an interest in child’s play. “Play is the work of the child” as Maria Montessori once said. I’ve delved deeply into blogs and Instagram accounts devoted to making the most of child’s play. With this inspiration and my reconnection to play, I have decided to add some of my projects to my website. I figured I could add some other ideas to this blogosphere of play and toddler learning.
What made me truly passionate about play was buying my daughter a Fisher-Price Little People house. I had one as a toddler and it was the toy that made my stories come alive before I could write. My toddler loves this house. On the first day, she spent 2 hours playing with it. All the toys and activities suggested by blogs or subscription companies advertising on Instagram could not hold her attention nearly as well. Of course, every child is unique in their interests.
The funny thing about this basic toy that has entertained children for generations is that it is most likely looked over on “must buy” blogger lists because it is ubiquitous and pretty accessible. Also, it is colorful plastic which rules it out of the hip, austere neutral playrooms seen on social media. Plastic toys have been demonized by some for their environmental costs but also for aesthetic reasons. I believed that my child would have a room full of gorgeous wooden toys. That was when I was pregnant. Wooden toys don’t always hold up to the whims of a toddler aka throwing the way plastic ones do. Plastic sucks but there are other parts of life I would rather eliminate plastic such as single-use plastic.
We are not a neutral playroom or even a neutral house family. We live our lives in color. Colored toys don’t bother us. Aesthetically speaking, many plastic toys are bright, cluttered, and overstimulating. But so are toddlers. Ha! Even though we buy plastic toys, we tend to buy toys that are more simple and open-ended. Which believe it or not exist.
I got interested in small world play with my daughter. Small world play is using toy figures to mimic the world around us. A dollhouse is an example of small world play. Blogger families show photos of small world setups that invite their children to play with beautiful handpainted wooden peg people, eco-dyed blocks, and silk fabrics. These displays are eye candy for an aesthetic nerd like me. However, those displays are pretty expensive and time-consuming. I decided to do what we can with what we’ve got.
My husband set up this invitation to play using the house, Little People figures, and Disney figures. My daughter loved it the next morning.
This brings me to say that I realized that I could create invitations to play using the Fisher Price Little People house. I could take the idea of creating displays to encourage my daughter to play with her Little People figures. My husband also got into it. Every time we create a display it’s like Christmas morning for our toddler. We all have fun with it. This idea is much more accessible.
