Grandmas Treasure Basket

Ever wondered why your grandchild is more interested in the packaging, rather than the expensive present, that you have chosen so carefully?  The truth is that plastic is dull, boring and not very stimulating for a small child.  Research has discovered that young children learn best from exploring everyday objects from around the home.  Handling and making contact with the outside world, children begin to make their own choices and decisions.  This type of play even has a name, Heuristic Play, and was a term first coined by a child psychologist in the early 1980's.

Sounds good to me and I could save a fortune, so I decided to give it a try.

I purchased a linen basket from Dunelms and filled it with anything I could find from around the house, coloured ribbon, paper, cardboard, beaded necklace, whisk, wooden spoon, sponge,wooden brush, leather purse, bath plug. As long as it wasn't plastic, in it went!

I decided to call it Grandma's Treasure Box, this sounded much better than my daughter's "Poor man's toy box" suggestion.

The idea is to select a small number of objects, into a smaller basket for Soli to explore.  The objects only come out under close grandma supervision, and Soli is never left alone!  The TV goes off, the room is cleared of any plastic toys and Soli is allowed to play without too much involvement from me.

Soli loved it and spent over thirty minutes exploring.  I included some natural autumn objects, a pine cone, dried leaves as well as an orange.  Soli particularly enjoyed playing with the orange, rolling and pushing it around the room.  He enjoyed rubbing his hand against a wooden shoe brush and dropping a beaded necklace from a height, listening to the sound it made, as it landed onto the wooden floor.  Once Soli became bored I put the objects away, for another day.

Soli having fun with Grandma's basket, lots of treasure to explore, leaves, cones, fruit,wood and jewellery.

When Grandad asked me what I was writing about, he wasn't well pleased  "You mean I could have given Soli a cardboard box, instead of a Porshe 911!"😞

Car vs cardboard box.  Ha! I think on this occasion the car won 🙂💝