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Littledragon
07-16-2012, 11:01 AM
My son just had his first birthday party and he got a lot of awesome toys - little people farm with all the animals, a ball pit, a turtle with the shapes and stuff, and other little things. I would like for the kids to be able to play with them - my son would like to be able to play with his toys during the day. Initially, I was going to pack up some of his favourite toys in the morning and give them back to him at the end of the day. (My mom also said this would help for jealousy and allowing him to have HIS toys, since the kids play with ALL his toys).

But, I left all the toys in the living room this morning, still in their boxes, and the kids showed a lot of interest in playing with them, and so did my son. The thing is, I had some other toys in the past where pieces have gone missing. How do I keep all the pieces together? Like, for the farm, how do I make sure none of the animals and people go missing? I was thinking about tupperware bins with snap on lids, and allowing them only to be played with one at time and it being like a "Farm Time" type thing. But is that really practical? My kids are young, still unable to talk, so they can't tell me when they want something, and they're still at the age where they just like to walk around with stuff in their hands. They don't actually PLAY with things yet.

Anyone have any advice on how to handle this? What do you do?

Inspired by Reggio
07-16-2012, 03:42 PM
I do not have many of those style toys where if a piece goes missing it 'matters' cause aside from 'puzzles' most of my toys are open ended.

With puzzles I have a 'only one out at a time' rule and it gets put back together before another comes off the shelf ~ this helps with not loosing puzzle pieces.

What works in my program with the 'toys' is I took 'photos' of all the toys including the 'little pieces' if it is something with pieces and adhered them to the toy shelf where they go ~ when we tidy up it is like putting a puzzle back together and we all work together to make sure that the pieces end up where they belong ..... so I can take a quick look and see that the toy shelf with the music instruments has a 'drum handle' missing and we quick look for it before we finish tidying.

However even with the best organization things disappear into the black hole of somewhere and will be gone for months and than show up again or might never show up again ~ Value Village is a GREAT place to seek out replacement pieces in those 'grab bags' in the toy section you can likely find anything you are 'missing' from toys like this.