Our August Toy Rotation

Whenever I post a story of the playroom on Instagram, I tend to get a lot of questions about toy rotation. Questions about what kind of toys Molly has, and how we go about storing them, as well as the play room in general. The play room itself is located in the conservatory of my in laws house. It was made the play room after Molly’s 2nd birthday unintentionally, but we all bloody love it!.

We have always done toy rotations. Ever since Molly was a baby I would only have a certain amount of toys out and available at a time. I would then change it up every few days or so, so she (hopefully) wouldn’t get board of them. It has worked wonders, and even more so now that Molly is older. By rotating toys, you keep the selection new, fresh, and concise. There aren’t too many choices. And, every time you rotate the toys, it’s like they have all new things to explore.

How many toys for a toy rotation?

The best way to do a toy rotation is to not have too many toys out at once. Also, grab yourself a shelf! The concept behind a toy shelf, particularly in Montessori parenting, is that toys are presented in an easy, simple, de-cluttered way for your child. All the pieces needed for each toy are all together so play is easy. It’s also low, at your child’s level, so they can easily help themselves to the toys they want. We just use a few Kalax units from Ikea as we already had them. But you can use any shelf you like.

The good thing about having a shelf is that you only put out how many toys you can fit on the shelf without overcrowding it and making it look messy.

Our set up…

We have 3 boxes where toys aren’t on the shelf. We have one that is for Molly’s train set and small world toys, because there’s so much of it. If I decided to set it up, I will set it all up on the coffee table for her play with.

The dollhouse and the play kitchen stay out all the time. Just because they get used daily, but they are also our 2 largest toys!

Then next to the kitchen, Molly has a basket full of all the felt play food. There is a lot of it, so it is easier to have it all in there from the time being. In an ideal world, where we have a huge house with a playroom, I would like to have a little market stall stand where all the food would go. But alas, we don’t…yet!

We then have 2 cubes where I display 2-3 items in each. At the moment we have 2 wooden stacking toys and a basket of wooden animal dominoes. Then in the other there is a wooden shape sorter, hammer things and skittles.

The box next to that is basically all of Evelyn’s toys. She doesn’t have an awful lot and most of it is all of Molly’s old baby toys. When she is able to sit up by herself, I will then set up a little area for her and her stuff.

On top of the shelf we currently have a wooden crate full of books. We then have a space for Molly to use as a table. This is where she plays with her toys and does her drawing. Next to this we have her Winnie the Pooh alphabet abacus as we are teaching her the alphabet at the moment.

When we start our homeschooling journey in September, we will have a different theme every month. The shelves will be set up according to each theme! I am so excited to start properly dipping our toes into home education and share it all with you guys!

How Often to Rotate?

The toy rotation honestly depends on your child, their age, how often they are home, how big your shelf is (you may have one that holds more or less). You may set up toys that your child loses interest in within a few days, some set ups may last weeks! We tend to change things up every month. But come September it’ll be once a week.

The toys that we are not using downstairs in the playroom are stored away upstairs in Liam’s dad’s office. They are in a kalax unit, in boxes. Every so often I will go through all the toys and work out ones that aren’t age appropriate for Molly anymore, and keep them to one side for when Evelyn will play with them.

Toy rotation doesn’t have to be hard, or restricting. There are so many benefits to it – plus, clean up at the end of the day is always a million times quicker!

Do you do toy rotations?