When you have a little one at home, you are constantly trying to find something, ANYTHING, that will keep them amused for a while. But at some point, all the toys in the house just become boring, old stuff that is not all that interesting anymore. It may get her attention for a few minutes, but she’s not willing to focus on it for more than 5 minutes anymore. This makes it almost impossible to get anything done around the house, whether it’s writing a blog post, vacuuming the floor or taking a shower.

So you start to think to yourself, “Time for more toy shopping.” But what do you buy? Who knows what will actually be a quality toy and hold her interest? And then you’ve spent a fortune on toys and your child still has nothing she wants to play with, it’s just madness.

But it doesn’t always have to be complicated or expensive. In fact, you just need to let your child explore a bit and find out what draws her attention. Sometimes you may hesitate to let them have the wooden spoons from your kitchen, or a travel-size bottle of shampoo. But if it makes her happy at that very moment and it’s not something that will wreck the house or chop off fingers, I don’t see the problem with letting your kids discover their own cool toys around the house.

For example, last week Mack discovered our old cast-iron meat grinder. It was sitting in a box under our extra kitchen table, waiting for me to find a new home for it. Mack found out that it not only makes awesome noises when you clank two pieces together, but it also was packaged with packing peanuts which was quite an exciting find. Before you freak out, it was actually just insets for the grinder, not the grinder itself. That was too heavy for her to get out of the box. 🙂

Once I discovered that packing peanuts are “da bomb,” I conveniently found a box that was filled with them and set Mack down inside it. Now those were some fun times. She loves it when I pick up a couple handfulls of peanuts and just let them fall over her head. I can tell we’re going to find snow fascinating. 🙂

There’s nothing quite like the feel of styrofoam peanuts between the toes. Actually, if I could find a box large enough, I might try this out myself. It’s a bit like those huge plastic ball castles they have at McDonald’s, but a whole lot cheaper. And more like sitting on air I think since you don’t sink in the styrofoam unless you’re moving around. (By the way, did you know you can actually buy mini-versions of those plastic ball castles?? I SO want one!)

The packing peanuts sit in our living room and I think the box will be providing many, many hours of fun in the future. Once she discovered that she could break the peanuts in half, a whole other game emerged. Plus she’s so cool about playing with them because she usually puts them all back too. You gotta love a toddler who already cleans up after herself!

I personally used to love playing with a can of nails when I was little…and hammering nails into boards. Yes, I was a bit of a tomboy…still am I guess. 🙂 Unfortunately the latter toy often resulted in me losing fingernails and even a few toenails (when I was crouched down to hammer and missed the nail…getting both thumb and big toe!) No worries, I was a few years older when playing with these toys. Not planning to let Mack have a can of nails yet although she was pretty thrilled about a box of screws we were using last weekend.

What sort of free toys did you love as a kid? And what sort of things do you come up with for your kids/grandkids to entertain them? Are planning to give any homemade gifts this year for Christmas? Or having your kids help with cards and decorations?