One day, while sitting in my boy’s room I was staring at the various boxes of toys which were resting nicely under his table. I realized, he hardly touches any of these except for his cars and tracks. I kept wondering what to do – how to induce him in playing with them. After going through various suggestions and articles on the internet, and trying to implement them, I got very little success.

I tried to play with him, hid his cars (which lead to a major drama!!), tried bribing even !! But nothing changed. We were back to the hot wheels cars and track !

All kids have hoards of toys which keep piling up with time. I believe it is a good thing to discard or give away some toys – which they have outgrown, are broken or they don’t play with at all. Hmmm…. they don’t play with – it does not mean that they have outgrown that particular toy.

Kids tend to stick to particular toys all the time. But what do we do with other toys like clay, active sand, puzzles, blocks, even books etc. – which actually build up their imagination and various other skills too?

Daily Busy Box comes to our rescue here. Have a box for every day – fill it up with random toys or make a theme for the toys – like alphabets / vehicles / animals etc..

Here are the books and toys which my son doesn’t even notice:

          

I took out all of them and arranged them into five lots, one for each day of the week – Monday to Friday. I left out Saturday and Sunday for free play / extra T.V. or outings. It took me about 1.5 hrs to divide all the toys and books. It is not necessary to use all the stuff. I kept a lot of books and toys in a box, out of his sight, which can be used for next week’s busy box.

And yes, for putting the stuff separately for each day, you can either buy new boxes and put the stuff in them – mark them from Monday to Friday. Or you may do what i did – just use whatever storage box / basket or big cardboard boxes you have available at home and put the stuff accordingly.

Here are the pics of the stuff included in the five busy boxes:

In this box, I brought together the stuff related to trains – blocks, Thomas train toy, a book.

In the following box, I got together his book on Firefighters and included the rescue vehicles along with it.

Here, I brought together the stuff related to animals – peg board, plastic animals, books and clay moulds.

I made this box for Friday, so it had a little more stuff to keep him busy.  I included two types of blocks and active sand instead of play dough. Even the books were chosen in a manner to keep him occupied more than usual.

I divided all the stuff from Monday to Friday in the following manner: 

1. 3 books – Story, rhymes, activity
2. 1-2 coloring books
3. Blocks
4. puzzle (jigsaw or peg board)
5. kinetic sand / play dough
6. two random toys earned from McDonald’s, Gems or Kinder Joy

This is just an example to help you sort out your kiddo’s toys. I tried to ensure that all toys are given their due and played with 😉

We are on our fifth box today – Friday busy box, and things are going smooth till now. Ram has been looking forward to his daily box everyday after school… hope it stays like that 🙂

---