5 Things That Don’t Belong in Your Child’s Playroom
Like other rooms in your home, the playroom has a purpose: the facilitate learning through play. That means it’s important to build a room that meets your child’s needs for meaningful play. If you’re like many parents, your playroom has a few things in it that don’t belong. Here are some things to remove from your playroom.
1. Adult Furniture
Take a careful inventory of how often your children are using the furniture you’ve placed in the playroom. A full-sized table may seem like a good idea because you had a spare, but if the kids can’t reach it on their own, it’s just taking up space. Or that six foot tall bookcase – can they interact with that at all? Kids need furniture they can use.
2. Clutter
Clutter is visually noisy. It’s distracting and exhausts our minds. Kids are prone to this as well. It causes your child to rapidly move between play-tasks, rather than spend time experimenting. We tend to build clutter on shelves and our walls. Reduce the décor on the walls to something simple and elegant, rather than a piecework of decorations and art.
3. Unused Toys
Toys are good, but piles of toys are bad. At a certain point, having more toys doesn’t help your child have better playtime. It can actually make play harder by hiding the toys they want and creating more of that visual noise I spoke of above. They also make organization a nightmare. Move some toys to the attic for regular swapping or donate them to someone else.
4. Non-Play Elements
This is a tall request for some families without the space, but if you can manage it, remove anything that doesn’t have to do with play from the playroom. If the playroom is also half-office or half-exercise room, your kids with subconsciously associate the room with the other purposes and fail to achieve truly meaningful play in an honest environment. Further, their playtime will inevitably be reduced during those times when mom wants to work on the computer or dad wants to exercise.
5. Electronic Devices
Now I’m not saying TV and video games are bad. They can be educational and they have their places. Generally speaking though, there are more benefits to playing with actual toys than watching a screen. Toys can be played with in many different ways, whereas movies and video games can only be experienced in one.
Guest Blog by Karri Bowen-Poole, Founder of Smart Playrooms
Smart Playrooms is owned and operated by teachers with many years of classroom experience and expertise. They bring the most effective classroom organization techniques and learning strategies into your home.
Smart Playrooms works to encourage kids to get back to the basics of play, using their creative side for art projects and imaginary play. Stressing that less is more, they help moms focus on the toys that will add to the experience. Some moms ask them to help organize their home, but Karri and Chris really like the idea of using their educational backgrounds to create custom designed playrooms. Plus, this gives them a niche in the market. Former teachers setting up your playroom – what could be better!
Interested in writing a guest blog for Sleeping Baby? Send your topic idea to pr@sleepingbaby.com.
All data and information provided on this site is for informational purposes only. Sleeping Baby makes no representations as to accuracy, completeness, current-ness, suitability, or validity of any information on this site and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. All information is provided on an as-is basis.