Sep 30

Sep 30 Open-Ended Toys: Peg Dolls, Semi Circles and Wooden Balls

We recently added a set of peg dolls, some wooden balls and building boards to complement our existing open-ended toys in the home.

I added the semi circles to widen the possibilities and iterations that he can do with his building. As of now, Kimi still needs some help in building structures using the existing rainbow stackers and the semi circles. He is a lovely assistant though, finding and passing to me the next stacker or the semi that matches the stacker. Once we are done with the structure, he would usually get either his basket of animals and his basket of wooden blocks or his basket of animals and his tray of peg dolls. He will then look for a place in the structure for each item and once found would then carefully place them there as if telling them that this is now their home.

Sometimes he will envelop the structure with his train tracks, sometimes he just leaves it as is.

Sometimes he will play with what he built but most of the time he will not. I think he is already contented to see it still standing tall. Whenever he gets a chance to, he will drop by and do a check as if making sure that everyone still has a “home”. Afterwards, he will dash back to whatever it is he was doing prior.

Sometimes it will take days before he knocks the structure down, sometimes the structure will be up just until right before he retreats to his night’s sleep.

Sometimes he does not need anything elaborate - just him laying the semis down on the table or on the carpet and placing the matching peg doll on them.

The wooden balls are great addition, as always. I do not think any child can have too much of it. It can be used for a lot of purposes and plays. As of now, Kimi is using the balls for his mini ball runs. He has a plastic ball run gifted to him when he was a baby and I can see that he is still actively using it hence the decision to indefinitely keep it out.

He can spend at least a good 30 minutes just dropping the balls here, watching them go down and collecting them so that he can do the cycle again.

Now that we have the semis to serve as platforms and bases, we are now able to do a working ball run. Sometimes, Kimi still has to nudge the balls though for them to realise their potential. After the balls take their flight, he will see them through until they reach the end of the ball run.