Budding Artists’ Atelier Part 2: Everything Else
In our Budding Artists’ Atelier Part 1 post we covered all the art details of the room, from a pegboard wall that made our favorite mediums easy to grab, to a collage made solely from our client’s kids’ artwork. Today we are going to walk through the other priorities for the room.
Purge old toys to make space for Hannukah presents
Create a new child-friendly organizational system
Implement a tidying chart
Out with the old and in with the new
Purge: We start every project, whether design or consulting, with a purge! This means combing through every last LEGO and baby doll bottle, until the space is free of broken, outgrown and lackluster toys. After doing this step, we can see the space more clearly and know exactly what items we need to factor into our organizational systems.
Holiday Replenish: It’s always a DREAM for us when a client times a project with the holidays because our toy recommendations can double as Hannukah/Christmas presents! (This also means all the new toys in the space are Little Kingdoms approved 😉). After a purge, we are able to identify gaps in a family’s play categories and suggest toys accordingly. The types of play we wanted to bolster most (aside from art) were gross motor, dramatic play, building and loose parts.
Gross motor- We suggested one of our favorite open-ended toys Stapelstein and a Teeter-Popper
Dramatic Play- Mailbox and DIY Doctor Kit
Building- Make Do Discover Kit
Loose Parts- A Rubbish Box
Child-friendly Labels
Words on toy labels are helpful for parents, but not for the pre-literate children responsible for cleaning up the space! That’s why we always suggest adding images on your bin clips, so children can locate their toys more efficiently AND put them back in their home after! After determining where each group of toys would go, we made custom labels and adhered them to their clips.
Playroom Specific Tidying Chart
Children THRIVE when given responsibility. They need to know that you think they’re competent enough to make clean-up happen. We created these one-of-a-kind tidying charts for our client’s kiddos, so they could take accountability for each task and watch as their repetitive follow-through resulted in a reward.
Wanna do this in your playroom? Simply choose 3-4 tasks that are definitely doable, put an easily identifiable picture of the task next to it, add boxes for a sticker/checkmark and pin it up in your space!
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