We love it so far and it is just the thing to keep little people productively occupied while I am feeding my twin babies. They would all make a serviceable light box without too much fuss or cost, depending on your level of handyman ability. They range from altering an Ikea children’s table to putting strings of LED Christmas lights inside crates. If you don’t have a light table but would like to make one, there are several simple “light table hacks” as they are usually termed on Pinterest. I’ll be posting some more of these as we change what’s available. I wasn’t sure we would use it that much, but after searching through Pinterest I now have enough ideas to keep us going for a very long time. We tried a few different materials just to see what looked good and my 2 year old spent some time sorting out all the pink items her “best ones” as she called them. Of course the boys had a car involved within the first 5 minutes and a Duplo man or two soon joined the mix. These magnetic construction tiles glow beautifully and pretty much anything plastic or acrylic looks attractive with the light behind it. We added a couple of different materials for the children to experiment with to get them started and it was a hit. We have been blessed this week to acquire a new light table through our local secondhand buy, sell and trade list – for free!! It does have a crack along one edge of the glass (thus the piece of wood we clamped along one side), but other than that, all it needed was to have the legs cut shorter and a new fluorescent light fitted to make it a working entity (thanks Dad □ ) I thought for a long time that our coloured small building blocks were a white elephant, but since I have started presenting them differently they have been well-used. We love this mirror as a backdrop to many different play set-ups and the green cloth covers the bricks at the base of a bricked-in fireplace that provides a natural frame for different invitations to play. The way toys are presented makes all the difference. When it is time for what is available to be changed over and those activities you tucked away come back out, it’s like Christmas all over again as the children rediscover toys they haven’t seen in a while. Often the unexcited moan will be quickly followed by a great play session with something that has not seen the light of day for quite some time when left on the shelf amidst a sea of other choices. Set out some new combinations of old activities, and put a flexible routine in place that includes times when children are playing where you direct them to play, with what you tell them to play with. Take 50% of what you have available and put it in storage. Having them all out at once makes for a lot of mess and clutter and often everything seems “old news” to the kids with nothing being used. A small, often inexpensive addition that renews interest and revs up the use of an activity that we already own will often prove to be a better long-term investment. Perhaps some mini fishing nets and plastic sea creatures to make a new display in our water trolley outdoors. Or some farm animals to expand our Duplo collection. Perhaps this will mean searching Pinterest for ideas of items to add to our wooden block collection such as some river stones and other found materials. This principle has stayed with me as a home educator and as I am tempted to buy a new construction toy in particular, I remember that my children will be better served by a small addition to a much-loved activity that we already own. While it was tempting to have the latest and greatest thing, adding something new to an old favourite sparked renewed interest and expanded the possibilities of play, rather than purchasing another frustratingly small collection that was limited in its uses. She suggested that rather than purchasing a new construction set or toy, it would be a better investment to build on to a set that I already had. As I made my yearly purchases she gave me some advice which has been proven by my experience over the years to be true. When I was an early childhood teacher an experienced sales rep from a large educational supplies company used to visit me periodically.
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