Treasure Basket

Woo it’s been ages! Excuses first – we’ve moved house, just before christmas, into our first ever owned by us house.   Also we have a baby who hasn’t slept in any consistent fashion for months. I thought her brother was bad but she’s something else – either that or I’m looking back with rose-coloured spectacles!

I could tell you that I’m going to be blogging regularly from now on. Because I actually like writing and it is a fairly mess free, easy way to get some kind of creative outlet – but lets face it, my record speaks for itself!!

Anyway, treasure baskets – sometimes referred to as Heuristic play. There’s a good article about them here

The boy really liked his at about 9 months. So I decided to put one together for baby girl. The basic theory, as I understand it, is that modern babies have a lot of bright plastic things with noisy buttons and not a lot of access to  natural materials.

You can just put a load of household things in a basket – that’s pretty much what I did with the boy and he loved it. This time round I’ve decided do themed ones (I say ones but this is my first so we’ll see – I’m pretty good at starting things!)

For this wooden theme I got a selection of her actual toys, blocks and things we’d put aside for later, and wooden household things. The only things I bought especially was the basket (because I like the shape of it – I’m sure we have something that would have worked) and a wooden spaghetti spoon  (because it cost 50p!)

So far it’s been a big hit. Just organising things she’s seen before in a different way makes it more interesting.

If you’d like to see more themed ideas and you don’t want to wait for me to update – and let’s face it it may be a while – Counting Coconuts has some fab ones.

*Obviously I supervise more carefully than I do with her actual toys. I put the whole basket away and get it out at some point during the day. I also check for damage from chewing!

*I really need to look at clearing the background before I take photos!

Thanks for reading! 🙂

Treasure basket 2 – Metals

Treasure basket 3 – Balls