One of my favourite subjects toys and the other house clearing Anyway toys, I seem to spend a lot of time pondering toys, do we have too many or not enough? At the moment I don’t feel like we have an awful lot of toys and things to do for ds1 who is 5 and wonder if a lot of the toys we have he is out grown. Living in a tiny house though makes me feel like we have loads.

Last year we only gave the boys toys at Christmas and then that was not many and a playsilk each and that was it for the whole year. Do you give your children toys during the year? How do I get him to play more rather than jumping from one piece of furniture to the next or am I expecting too much at this age?

Happy weekending everyone.

Ah the expectation of play, it’s a tricky one. Used to drive me nuts with DD1 (now 5.5) that she didn’t engage with anything and I mean ANYTHING in that imaginative way that I think characterises childhood. She was and still is, a doer. She wants to join in adult activity or be doing something physical. It’s only since going to school that she has started “playing” games, but it’s never alone she needs someone else - friends or sister to play with.

I finally reconciled myself to this being her (rather than something I was getting wrong) fairly recently; her sister (nearly 3) will play alone for hours with simple vague wooden figures her dad has made or even assigning personalities to all the shoes in the house. It’s just them.

I think if the jumping around is doing your head in then it’s outside time. Does he have much in the garden that he can be physical with?

IME the child who likes to play will play with what they have around them. I’m tending to think very few toys is a better option, but it depends on how you keep your house - I twitch slightly when I go into a bedroom of anyone of DD2’s friends and see so many toys that the kids don’t seem able to focus on them but instead “play” at getting everything out and making a mess! It doesn’t seem like a calm environment conducive to deep play. On the other hand Steiner kindergartens tend to have quite a lot of toys (like big collections of pine cones, shells etc) but everything is in it’s place at the beginninng and at the end of the session.

Firstly I think jumping off furniture IS COMPLETELY NORMAL for a five year old boy. Secondly they jump off the furniture less if you can get them several hours a day outside jumping off logs/trees and climbing up logs trees rocks etc. Evolutionarily these are tiny little trainee hunters we have living with us - they need to be physical because it’s what they were born to do! They also need to take risk otherwise they find it where ever they can!

Toys wise I’m finding that at 5.6 J is changing a lot. When he’s in the mood for toy play it involves vast layouts of bricks combined with his playmobil - whole cities emerge on his bedroom floor. He also adores his wooden castle and will combine that with playmobil knights and disapear for most of the day. I do find though that for J inspiration is very important to influencing his play. The knight obsession started after a castle trip when he was off school ‘sick’ , followed by watching Mike the Knight on Cbeebies. Until that point the castle had sat unused - I don’t think he really knew what to ‘do’ with it.

I’ve spent several years feeling frustrated that J never ever did any drawing/colouring etc. Then suddenly a couple of weeks ago he discovered the joy and he will now do it for hours and the house is littered with masterpieces that he won’t let us throw away! So sometimes it’s just developmental…

Yeah, Rye and mindie given the chance will roll around, climb and jump all over my furniture.  As it drives me batty because I only have a tiny lounge, and the mental risk assessment I am constantly doing, tells me it’s an accident waiting to happen.  So instead I often take scooters and the children down to the park, which not only has great paths for whizzing around a really quite large park, but lots of different climbing frames, slides, swings etc.  That is our get out, but I’m not in the mood to venture far park. 

I do also have a wee park 30 seconds from my door, which is a useful retreat when the kids need some more outdoor time, but it’s nearing pick up time, or it’s the evening.  (Rye and I often wander over for half hour after minded children have gone).  However, I do find parks can stunt the children’s ability to play within natural surroundings, so I do ensure we often go to places where there isn’t play equipment - and so they have to make up their own games and use the environment around them; be it the beach, both the sandy and the shingle one, the forest, and for walks on the Downs.

And like PCC, I do find that Rye does needs inspiration to fire his imagination.  The tree house does get quite a lot of play, but a lot of the time it’s Rye wrapping around the crane string around cars and hefting them up and down.  So we’ve been enacting fairy tales on the tree house, and since doing that I’ve noticed much more imaginative play happening.  Rye is also very much into building and creating at the moment.  Loves using his connecting straws, and various blocks - although not the tree blocks so much - he’s liking uniformed blocks, lengths of wood.  Rye has always enjoyed art and crafts so that figureds a lot too.  Playdough is very popular here.

But that time outdoors is crucial for their behaviour to be tolerable and my sanity lol.

Sorry I have just realised I haven’t replied to your messages. I have been thinking about it quite a lot and thought I had. Thank you for all of your replies, I have found it really interesting reading about other 5 year olds. Thank you too for reassuring me on the active 5 year old thing.

Really lovely to hear what other 5 year olds are up to.