We accumulated so many toys, books and activities that I thought of a way to organize it in order for us to evenly interact with each one. I saw a similar idea about toy rotation, and thought it would be perfect for our needs. Toy rotation is also recommended by a Montessori method to keep a child interested in the activities and not to be overwhelmed with choice. I tried to organize each bin to have a few books, a sorting activity and some developmental toys. Scarlett is excited each morning when we get a new bin out, and I get curious myself what’s in today’s box 🙂 So I thought I’ll share a look inside each bin. I’ll add them one by one as we go.
Monday box
Scarlett started to use this water painting activity since she was about 15 months old but I know kids that started to use it earlier, it really depends on each child. But now when she is 17 months old, I see that she is really excited to discover colors. The brush pen has to be filled with water, and as a child brushes on paper, it reveals colors of each illustration. I just love that it’s mess free and easy to be put away. The activity book has 4 pages with cute illustrations.
Bead mazes are great to help child develop fine motor skills. Also, following Montessori principles, wooden toys are great to have around to develop a child’s taste to toy aesthetics. This one has great colors. I show Scarlett how to get beads from one side to another, she doesn’t really follow my instructions yet but she sits there for the longest time playing with beads.
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Wooden peg puzzle
We got this one in Target on sale. I was reading “Dr. Montessori’s Own Handbook ” and she recommends using puzzles that have little handles on it, so I made sure to get one with handles. I can see that every week Scarlett gets better and better in fitting puzzles on the board.
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Baby socks converted into sensory bags
We filled baby socks with sensory material: rice, pasta, beans, oats, and Scarlett plays with them by touching them, throwing them, putting them in boxes, walking on them.
These flash cards are the best that I found so far. It’s important for flash cards to have images of objects, not illustrations because it’s easier for a toddler to identify the objects. I also place objects that we have at home near the matching flash card. We play with objects, and I repeat their names a few times. There was a lot of research about flash cards for babies and toddlers. Look up the Shichida method and Glenn Doman method for learning with flashcards. They recommend fast flashing – showing flashcards fast to the child – thus stimulating right side of the brain. We usually alternate. Sometimes we do fast flashing and sometimes we take our time.
Amazingly beautifully illustrated board book. Great for nighttime reading.
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Emotions activity
You can either make this activity yourself or download printable files below. You can make it by cutting out 4 circles of paper and drawing a face with different emotions on each one. I drew a happy face, angry, sad and surprised and taped them together to be connected. As I was showing faces to Scarlett I was making those faces myself. It was really funny today to see Scarlett make a surprised face with her mouth open 🙂
Pdf files for emotions activity are available here:
I made different posts for each other container since this post was getting too long.
Commented on another post of yours and now getting sucked into all your posts! Haha! LOVE this idea as my son gets bored with toys easily! Also would like to clean out some clutter and this could help! Curious how you use the boxes. Are these the only toys your daughter plays with all day? Do you give her the box and let her choose what she wants to play with or do you take it out yourself and have her play with that one thing for a time and then give her something else from the box? Curious overall how your day looks (play times specifically) perhaps you’ve posted this and I’ll keep looking 🙂 Excited to have found your blog! Thanks!
Thank you for kind words, Kristen! I try to put away all toys in the boxes, there may be one or two around but most of the toys come from the box I pull out in the morning. I try to have activity time with her, the best time is usually after her nap, this is when we sit down and I pull out activities from the box. We never go through all of them at once though, Scarlett is hyper active and gets distracted very easily, so they are mostly spread out over the day. I’m not sure if you read my post about Shichida method, but as per that method, activities can be as short as one minute long, it’s just important to switch them so the child is not bored, and they should total about 30 minutes a day. This idea made me feel better. We definitely do about 30 minutes of organized activities spread out during the day, and the rest of the time is playing, going outside, reading and sleeping 🙂
Hi I adore your website… unfortunately i am not able to buy your ebook because I live in Germany and I am only allowed to purchase on the German website. Is there any other chance to get it like Im sendung you in advance via pay pal the amount and you send me the ebook via pdf. I hope we find a solution?. Thanks a lot Aida
Hi Aida! I’m so glad you like it! Of course, we can arrange it. I’ll send you an email now.
Thank you so much for sharing this! I am now planning my son’s day around these activities and it’s definitely helping me to figure out which toys will benefit him developmentally and which toys are turning into clutter. Now with these structured activities he seems interested longer and it’s helping me to plan out his day better. Thank you so much again! I’m very excited to have found your blog! 🙂
Hi Adrienne, thank you for kind words! I’m so glad it helped!
I love your ideas for toy rotation. I have a 17 month old and a 7 week old, so I’m looking for new ideas to keep my little entertained. I’ll be starting this rotation soon. I do have a question, how do you sort the daily boxes? It seems like you have some bigger toys in some of these, so I’m wondering what kind of box you use for storage.
We use these storage boxes: AmazonBasics Foldable Storage Cubes – 6-Pack, Grey
, which are stored in a shelving unit. They are about 11″x11″x11. Hope it helps.
Thank you so much for all of your tips. I’m gathering my supplies and boxes now. I have a couple of questions: How often do you switch out the things in the boxes? And in one of your posts you mentioned reading about Montessori, can you recommend a book?
Hi Kate! I was slowly adding new toys/activities to the existing boxes until I saw that Scarlett had no interest in some activities, and this is when I would get rid of them. I didn’t replace all content of the box at a time, I hope you understand what I mean.
As far as Montessori book, I recommend reading this book, written by Maria Montessori herself: https://amzn.to/3uF0rW8. This way you get to read her ideas without someone’s interpretation. Hope it helps! Thank you for reading my blog!