I took my boys toy shopping yesterday. Not to a specialty toy store and not one of the many department stores around town. No, our search for playthings took us to the local op shop. Now I have bought some pretty good bargains in the op shop toy section before but this time we walked right past the pre loved Elmos and Lightning McQueens and headed straight for homewares.
"What sort of toy can you get in the homewares section?" I hear you all ask.
Well, for a start, home corner toys are easy to find at the op shop and of course they all look so real because, well, they are. Take for example this fruit bowl.
This purchase was a find made by Little D. I had told him we were looking for things made out of wood. A great opportunity for him to practice some labelling and recognition skills along with sorting and classification. He recognised that part of the fruit bowl was indeed made of wood and said "This is wood Mamma, can we get it?"
Now I didnt want to clear the shop of every wooden item they had and I still wanted to make purposeful selections so I asked D " What will you use it for?"
"Cooking" was the very sensible reply and with that we popped it in our basket and kept searching for treasures.
We found them too. We found a large wicker tray, two wooden bowls, a vase, a beautiful little souvenir box from Vietnam, a wicker stand, our fruit bowl and my favourite, a little wooden framed hourglass.
We took our purchases home and laid them out on the table and then in true imaginative style my boys turned these bits and bobs into wonderful playthings, using them for anything but cooking. The wicker stand became a bed for our lion family. The bowls became hills. Leaves and ponds were added and our fruit bowl was turned upside down to create a cage for our animals
Little F spent an eternity trying to get the lion out of the cage so D found some smaller animals that would fit through the bars. Soon a wonderful safari slash circus slash zoo world had been created and the boys just extended further and further on their own play.
Our playroom shelves and toy boxes are full of real, everyday items like this and I think my boys' enjoyment from these things is well worth the effort of thinking outside the box when we go 'toy' shopping.
Oh and as a side note, this shopping expidition cost us less than $20 and I think my imaginative little men will get more joy from these purchases than they would get from anything I bought at the 'real' toy store for that amount.
And if they don't, I've got myself a really nice fruit bowl.
