It's been a while since part one of this post, but if you remember I was talking about a conference I went to last year where I and many other mothers were talked out of believing that waldorf toys had to be expensive. Now as I've said before we are not "real" waldorf followers, but I have read many books on the subject and the ideas I've incorporated into our home life have been amazing. Waldorf principals help me understand my child's develpment in a holistic way and have been an amazing source of knowlege and insight into living peacefully together as a family. So in light of the fact that I am not an expert on waldorf methods, what I am really talking about here are the natural, open-ended toys that have so much play value for our children. And since we are on a very tight budget, like most families, I have had to discover ways to bring these items into our home as resourcefully as possible. One thing about waldorf is that there are so many specialty shops on line, so many beautifully made, lovingly handcrafted toys that are as irresistible as they are unattainable! To be able to purchase a few gorgeous items per year and "make do" for the rest has been our plan, and so far so good.
Here are a few more frugal ideas if you are looking to bring more natural and open-ended toys into your home, too:
I have been pining for a dollhouse like this or this, but meanwhile Ivo has learned a lot by using his blocks and play silks to build houses of his own. He gets to experiment with different building structures and make everything to suit his purpose. He makes big tall houses for his stuffed animals and little tiny ones for his gnomes. The house is always just right. The Tree House in this picture was a birthday present from Ivo's first birthday. It has a lot of "wow" factor, and young people always go right to it when they arrive at our house, but the houses Ivo builds on his own, like the one on the right, are played with much more, and for longer periods of time.
Two kind of odd items that I have found offer hours of play for very little money are big embroidery hoops and big pieces of wood. The pieces of wood here are from Home Depot and cost between fifty cents and three dollars each. They are used mostly for building larger structures like forts and balance beams. We also use them a lot for making ramps and racetracks for balls and toy cars. The embroidery hoops can be thrifted easily (ours were 3 for $1) and Ivo just loves them. With a playsilk stretched over the frame, it becomes a funny hat, or a big, fun thing to wave around --very popular around here, and two together make a fine pair of pretend snowshoes. Sometimes they serve as the roof and walls of a little house, like as below:
The wooden forms we use for our gnomes come two in a package for 99 cents. They can be dressed in any manner of scraps, or left plain. Ivo loves that they can stand up by themselves so easily.
These storytelling sets have been our Unplugged Projects for the past two weeks. Last week's theme of "red" gave us the starting point to make a flannel board set for The Little Red Hen. Flannel boards are so easy to make, so versatile, and lots of fun. This one is just flannel stretched over an old bulletin board (you can even use a piece of carboard) and voila! A great book to get started on this is The Flannel Board Storytelling Book by Judy Sierra. It is expensive but I've been able to get it and other books like it at our library. The Unplugged theme for this week was "box", which for us became a shadow puppet theater. I think shadow puppetry might be my new favorite hobby. Here is a fabulous link to a tutorial for this project on youtube. We used this guy's method of tearing simple paper shapes for some of our puppets and they were adorable. And if you do a youtube search for shadow puppets you are in for a good time and lots of inspiration. Here's a peek backstage at our Chateau de Shadow:
(it was a story about two mamas and two babies in the forest together, saying "are we friends?" many, many times)
Over on the left here is method I devised for storing our homemade playsilks and other dress-up items. It's just a board with wooden clothespins attached with elmer's wood glue. It's been great for keeping our dress-up items out and accessible, and since Ivo likes using the clothespins he is usually happy to pick them up and put them away.
We were lucky enough to find a great vintage wooden play kitchen at St. Vinnie's, but even still I have lusted after the waldorf wooden kitchens like these. Well, that's not going to happen any time soon, especially since we get to play with one just like those at our children's museum every week. But if you are looking for a frugal play kitchen that uses more imagination than batteries, here are a few links I think are just wonderful:
Ideas for making a play kitchen from a simple wooden shelf
A sweet little kitchen made from an old microwave cart
Here and here are two variations on cardboard kitchens (seriously! These are awesome, don't be scared by the word cardboard!) The second one is my favorite, and the comments on that post are full of clever ideas for stocking your play kitchen,
Modeling with salt dough is a great tactile activity and can be used to make play figures and the scenery to go with them. We've made a few sets of animals like the ones below, and Ivo loves to use it to make trees for his dolls and animals.
The little dollhouse above I made out of wool felt and calico cotton. The ceramic figures are from a local potter, and the tree is all Ivo, baby!
Well again I've rambled on and on! This is certainly a topic I care about a great deal. I would love to spend a truckload of money in support of crafters who believe that children are worthy of beautiful things that speak to the heart and encourage imagination. And I know I could easily spend thousands of dollars outfitting the perfect playroom. But honestly I don't think my child would be all that much better off for having it. I think we do just fine on our shoestring budget, and I like to think that we would still enjoy "making do" even if it weren't a matter of necessity.
If you've read down this far, again I will say thank you, you're much too kind! And I would love to hear about any ideas you've had for providing your kids with creative play items that suit your family's budget. Or, you could even tell me a story about how you completely blew your budget and splurged on something amazing. I certainly don't want to be known as the pious budget lady. I can still be talked into a good time once in a while.
