Solutions for Sensory or Discovery Play for Babies & Toddler Small World Play

Pretend Play with Small Worlds and Sensory Bins

This craze right now concerns me. They are fun to gather props for, build and rebuild with your kids and make playtime with your child a blast. HOWEVER, I am concerned about a few things. The first is the idea of dollar store or toys with skinny or spindly arms and legs and the use of fillers that are not appropriate and not intended for baby or toddlers.

The popular Toob, Safari LTD., Schleich, or dollar store small animals and other and name brand animals characters are manufactured with a warning that they are a choking hazard for babies and toddlers. And websites with less studied or less savvy owners are recommending them for babies and toddlers.

PLEASE-Use chunky or block animals and characters for baby or toddler Small World building. I often use pieces from chunky puzzles as well for babies.

And the very cutest fillers can still be hazardous to play with as well. Especially, when they are left behind unattended can become a choking hazard to your child.

SIMPLY DON'T BUY THEM. Use a Large playmat instead of fillers for babies and toddler play. Playmats can be flannel or felt (Below), preprinted mat(Above), table cloth or blanket (Top), foam printed mats and even printed rugs are all safer and better than fillers on a size limited tray or bin.

1. Babies and toddlers need large open play spaces rather than small boxes, bins or trays: because they do not have the fine motor skills for small stuff. It is a known fact that they play and paint more easily with large tools.

2. Plus they are going to put small things in their mouths that is how they explore.

SIMPLE RULE DONT USE ANYTHING THAT YOU DONT WANT IN THEIR MOUTHS.

Please be sure you use only age appropriate materials. Consider adding some building blocks rather than a messy filler in any bin or tray for babies

 Lego, Fischer Price Little People, Hape Toys, and Spark Create Imagine (Walmart) have had durable themed playsets and characters for years. All four of them produce toys and characters that are washable and grow with your child. Their size appropriateness is part of their label.
Lego is the most expensive option, however they all can be purchased on Amazon and at Walmart.

Second: the use of a small world or sensory bin play in place of outdoor play. Nothing is comparable to the benefits of outdoor play and really exciting life experiences.  

If you live near the ocean you, you should go to the ocean and play and learn there. We lived in Colorado so we used a small castle in her sand box to make a mini beach. However I did not make a farm sensory bin or small world because farms were all around her to learn from. For example, the excitement and thrill of exploring on a real hike or camping trip is much better then experiencing it with toys. However, taking home natural treasures found in the forest to play with the same small world toys make it more interesting.

Give your child real experiences (that they will remember) when you can. 

Create a yard with the capability of inspiring many joy filled moments. In the picture below, we had spots for a play garden, large loose parts, waterplay in the wheel barrow, the table to gather her things on, play on or do art on, and playsets for the sandbox or play garden.

She also had active play area with climbing structure, waterplay and a trampoline.

On the other side of the grill is a garden that I enjoyed being in, purposely leaving her tons open ended play areas close by. Next I want to point out Hope had an adventure guide, her dad.
Who by the way, is the very best imaginary play playmate EVER. The conversation here was to be about comparing play sand to real sand at the beach in Florida. Hope re-directed the play to playing out the "Little Mermaid" story. They played for over an hour really connecting to each other. Don't miss out on that opportunity to just chat and play and connect with your child. HAVE SOME FUN!!!!

Don't just hand them the tray or container of toys and expect them to explore and learn on their own. Make them excited about their new playthings and time with their parents.

 Small Worlds and Discovery baskets are created for them to explore, pretend and create with. However they are also really great for building language and social skills as well developing independent play skills.

Be excited to sit down and play with them. Especially when you are bringing home a new toy or art supplies. Be their adventure guide as they immerse their imaginations into the "mini world of play".

The benefits of sensory bins and Small Worlds (at an appropriate age) are more than just touching and experiencing new things. It provides a creative environment of sensory play that helps develop play skills, language development, fine motor skills, social skills, brain development and helps kids complete a cognitive task.

Superscript

What is Small World Play?

Just like it sounds, small world play is any type of play that allows children to use their imaginations to build mini worlds and adventures while playing with small toys. These can range from anything abstract like small rings, blocks and nature items to figurines, train sets, dollhouses and building sets. However, the goal is to set up a scene, world or place. This helps children establish the bigger picture of their imaginative play.

While it’s fun to play with a pirate figurine, if a child is able to create a ship to sail, an ocean to cross, another boat to battle and the harsh winds to avoid, they’re able to get deeper into their narrative, which helps them develop a sense of self, stronger vocabulary and ability to think creatively.

Designed to encourage children to play in an open-ended manner, small world play allows children to dream, problem-solve and experiment all while honing important fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination

GETTING STARTED WITH SMALL WORLD PLAY

Children as young as 2.5 years old can engage in (simple) small world play and start telling their own stories. Keep an eye out for symbolic play that starts to emerge (when they can pretend a crayon for example is an aeroplane) and parallel to that language that starts to develop. And you’ll be ready to go!

Here’s what’s next:

• Decide on your theme. Choose a subject for your small world that the child has experience or at least an interest in. (For a first small world animals are often a safe bet as most children have some knowledge of or interest in them or you could try and act out a favorite story like ‘Going on a Bear Hunt’). I kept Ziploc bags on the top of the refrigerator for each theme that we were working on.

• Collect your materials. Be inspired by what you have in your toy box, in your kitchen, garden or anywhere else within reach. Part of the fun of small world play is setting the scene! Children love to be involved in creating small worlds and like to hunt for items they might want to use. Remember that you can add elements of sensory play too (like sand, water, play-dough, straw, uncooked rice, rocks, …) and that you might (will!) need a box or tray of some sort to contain your items.Again, only provide materials that not a choking hazard and age appropriate. Best Stuffed Animals for Babies & Toddlers

• Set the scene. The younger the children are, the more simple you want to keep your small world (with maybe one element of sensory play and using items they can easily manipulate themselves). It’s easy for little ones to be distracted or overstimulated. Less is more in this case. The older children are, the more elaborate small worlds can become.

THEN PLAY!

If you are both new at this you can start simple. If you’ve built a farm scene for instance, you can start by feeding the animals, cleaning the barns, let the farmer check up on them etc. You can use simple actions and simple words (go on, make some animal sounds!). I’m sure children will join in fairly soon and you can play alongside each other for a while mirroring his (her) actions and following his lead (if he wants the cows to go to sleep: night time it is!) until they are ready to play on their own.

It’s good to keep in mind that all children are different. Some children only need a little help getting started and will be completely absorbed by their little worlds for a while. Others rather not play alone or lose interest quickly. That’s all ok. Don’t be discouraged (after all the effort of setting up this amazing small world!), you can leave it out for a couple of days and chances are they’ll want to revisit soon.

In general: as the child grows their play will evolve, become more abstract (being able to play out scenes from movies and story books they are not necessarily familiar with) and the play will become predominantly child-led. (Milestone!)

If you’d like some inspiration before getting started, you might want to have a look at some awesome small worlds across the web CLICK HERE.

Small world play is an excellent tool in the development of well-rounded children. They act out stories they’ve read (or had read to them), they act out social situations and practice handling emotions, they make up their own stories and exercise their creative muscle.
Having an outdoor small world play area just adds to the benefits. The sensory experience of real plants and dirt, the fresh air and sun on their skin. No doubt about it an outdoor small world play area, or “fairy garden,” is a childhood must-have.

We used all materials that we had on hand for our small world area.
The barrel planter that we made our literacy inspired fairy garden last year. The old tires that were storage for our outdoor toys last summer. The dirt that we dug up when we installed our in-ground trampoline.
We first arranged the barrel and tires, then filled them all with dirt. We could have easily left it all as dirt, or spread some grass seed out in the dirt, but LittleMan expressed a preference for flowers so we planted a few of those instead.

Then we gathered some large rocks from around the yard. We painted the rocks a mint green and added black roofs, windows, doors using paints that we had left over from previous projects.

We lined up the rocks to make a little neighborhood.

Nearby we put a bin of plastic toy animals, hot wheels cars, and action figures. We didn’t buy any new toys for the area, but rather re-purposed dozens of old toys that we’re collected throughout our children’s lives. Taking old, forgotten toys outside is an easy way to breathe new life into them. We also kept on hand the wooden roads we made last year for our hot wheels cars.
I printed out some sun and cloud clip art images on cardstock, cut them out, laminated them, and duct taped them to clothespins.

These little sky-line images can then be hung from a clothesline tied between two trees, just above the small world play area. So far these have been very popular and an excellent way to encourage the younger children to practice their fine motor skills. I may in the future be adding some airpane and bird clip art images to the mix.

All together there are many ways this area can be played with, and over the course of this past month I have seen as many as 7 children working together to build farms, zoos, and tiny towns.

If you’re looking for something a little bit smaller, or maybe a little more indoor friendly, check out our DIY small world play area from an Ikea Expedit.