A couple of years ago, a friend brought her children over for a visit.

As she peeked into our living room, she asked me, “where are your toys?”

And to be honest, if you looked in there today, you might ask the same thing. We don’t have a designated playroom full of small bins. Our toys tend to blend in with the wood panelling a bit.

That’s because we tend to favor toys made of natural materials — wood, cotton, wool, etc.

And, we rotate toys. Usually just a few things are out on our shelves. Everything else we store, and we change out the big toys (like the stable, or the fairy house, or the car garage) every week or two.

But my kids dearly love their toys. They play with them for hours, and often find creative ways to mix and match items, like using a basket of blocks and a basket of small animals to create a zoo.

There are a few toys that we own that are very well loved. Every time we bring them out, there is excitement and new discovery. These are our “top” toys, and many of them I have purchased again for family members or friends with smaller children:

• Musical instruments. Family members were a little surprised when these made the holiday wish list several years in a row. But my kids love music. They put on CDs and play the instruments and dance. They bang away frustrations on drums, the shake away extra energy with a maraca. We have had a basket of musical instruments available to kids since they were babies, and they are always a hit!
• Puzzles. We often pull out wooden puzzles (and now larger puzzles with more pieces) on long afternoons. I still envision my kids as babies sitting at the table with an afternoon snack putting puzzles together with their free hand. Puzzles help with dexterity and problem solving, sure — but they are also a nice, calm, indoor activity when the weather gets cold.
• Blocks. Simple right? But I can’t tell you the number of hours we have spent here playing with blocks. Blocks can build so many things. We have made zoos and towers, cities and villages … blocks are useful for finger puppet play scenery and can be combined with other toys for endless fun.
• Play silks. We always have a basket of play silks handy to be used in play. From dress-up to creating “lakes” in a block village, playsilks can become just about anything — baby blankets, placemats, wings, hats … they are such a versatile toy!
• Dress-up clothes. My children love dressing up. They don capes to go to the grocery store, and dog ears to visit restaurants. We have a huge bin filled with hats, vests, glasses, ties, scarves … mostly old and thrifted. The kids loved getting dressed up and I am all for driving a princess and an adventurer to the library.
• Art stuff. Seriously, this isn’t a toy, but we spend HOURS creating with paper, yarn markers, crayons, beeswax, clay, beads … the list goes on and on.
• A play kitchen. Our play kitchen is always cooking! We have lots of pretend wooden and felt food, and the kids spend many hours cooking up recipes. Sometimes the kitchen is a restaurant. Sometimes it is a zoo kitchen making food for the animals, but it is always, always in use.
• A vet kit. This is one of only a handful of plastic toys in our house that gets regular use. But as a family of animal lovers, we are often caring for fluffy friends.

What do your kids play with most?

Oh, the rice box! How many busy days has it saved me? How many times have I pulled it out when the kids needed a calming activity and I needed a few minutes to accomplish a task?

I first heard about creating rice boxes a few years ago from a fellow homeschooling mom. She had several sensory boxes for her little ones — a rice box, a bean box, and even a cotton ball box.

Her children loved them, and I figured mine would too.

Little ones, especially, benefit so much from sensory activities. The ages of 18 months to 3 are the times I have used sensory boxes most, but my children still love them. Actually, I do too. It is really soothing to sit down and run your hands through rice, water, sand, or other materials.

The question I get most often, though, is about the mess. Because a sensory activity will really only work if you don’t dread the clean-up right?

What has worked in our home is to fill a long sweater box with rice, beans, etc. and lots of little tools like spoons, pitchers, different shaped bowls, cups, etc., little cars or boats and funnels — ALWAYS FUNNELS!

We then put the box on top of an old sheet spread out over the floor. (We have hard wood floors.)

We have ground rules: the rice or other material should stay in the box, everyone should be sitting or kneeling (no walking around with handfuls of rice, for instance). It needs to be said, once in a while, that throwing the rice is not allowed. Usually one reminder of that is enough, and older kids usually remember from last time!

We keep a little hand-broom and dustpan near-by for spills (and that kind of becomes part of the play), and when we are done, we bring out the big broom (if doing this on carpet, a vacuum would do the trick, of course!).

We also fold up the sheet as best we can and put “clean” rice back into the box to use again. If we have any “dirty rice” from the floor (we have pets and pet hair), we head for the garbage can. It’s important not to just scatter rice in your yard — for the same reason that people started throwing birdseed and blowing bubbles after weddings.

Really, there isn’t a lot of mess as long as rice doesn’t get thrown, and as long as the activity is sort of a “the rice box is open!” and then “the rice box is closing” kind of activity. I learned that from a Waldorf teacher — the open and closed thing — and it just helps to set some limits, which keeps the mess down.

The biggest thing, really, is to know that there will be a bit of mess, but that it is a nice, calming sensory mess, so in the end, it is probably worth it. My kids will play with this for at least an hour once a week, and if we add different materials (try snow in the winter!), the rice box gets used even more!