We are fortunate enough to have the room in our house to have designated spaces for the girls' toys and play items. We have a "playroom" in our loft upstairs. I have transformed our entire upstairs, the loft, hallways, and walls into different play areas for both girls.
I have found that Mckenna plays really well when her toys are organized and "staged"
It sounds kind of silly to say that I "stage" her toys, but what I mean by that is that I have created various little play areas for her within the playroom. Creating play areas seem to help her focus her play, cuts down on the cries of "where is this piece/toy", and gives the playroom a bit more structure.
So today's post is all about our play areas....
The most popular play spot is the dress-up area. We have TONS of dress-up clothes, however I only have 4-5 dresses out at a time.
1. That is all that fit on the pegs.
2. She seems to wear the same one over and over again.
3. They all end up on the floor if they are all out.
She is welcome to any of them at any time, but just has to ask for me to get out the others.
I store them in the guest room closet.
In order to create this area I bought and painted a wood peg hook rack at Michaels and painted it and glammed it up with princess decor. I screwed it into the wall. I added the Princess vinyl, a floor length mirror, and Voila... dress up area. The mirror is "glammed" up with scrapbooking stickers. The white bin is home to crowns, glass slippers and wands. We have TONS of dress-up accessories. The rest are in a basket in Mckenna's room. (Norah likes to dump them and I don't like to pick them up.)
Next to the dress up area is the Princess Castle tent (Where Norah likes to hide.)
Every princess needs a castle to play in.
Moving along to the next play area... the kitchen/house area.
I love our play kitchen. I did WAY too much research before buying it. But it was worth it.
The far little right piece of black counter is a seating area. It has a little stool that goes there.
(The stool is probably in Mckenna's room, so she can climb to reach something.)
The green bins house all of our play food, dishes, pots and pans and tea party accessories.
The bins have labels on them, but I need some new labels. They are hard to read and now to Mckenna is able to read some basic site words, they need to be clearer to read. We will be working on those site words then! Ha!
Norah loves playing with the kitchen! She likes to open and close the doors, walking along it and putting toys inside. It's cute because they "cook" together!
(We have a little grill set that is currently in a different play area. Sometimes I add it to this area so that they have a seating area too. Right now with the baby toys it just makes it too crowded.)
I created this "doll house" area after Christmas when Mckenna got this Cinderella Castle. She LOVES to play with it. She loves little figurines and has a whole cast of characters in the castle at all times. (I laugh when I see Captain Hook, Ursala, and Raja (from Aladdin) all hanging out together in Cinderella's Castle.)
She also loves the Melissa and Doug Wooden Castle that is on the floor on the right side. She mixes and matches the characters between the different houses.
Norah is starting to take an interest in Little People. She plays with the farm, the little house and castle. She likes to copy Big Sis!
The blue and pink bins house storage for our Little People, Princess Barbies, Mr. Potato Head and friends.... and our collection of
Me Readers.
Next is the baby doll area. This is one of two doll areas in our house. The other is in
Mckenna's Room. Here we have a little nook with the doll beds, high chair and the strollers. Most of these pieces get moved out and around when the girls are playing with them. Food from the kitchen also gets brought over for the babies to eat.
I try to keep a basket or bucket of all the doll accessories (bottles, bibs, etc) on the TV stand back behind the high chair. It's usually dumped out and on the floor!
A few months back I hung this shelf to house stuffed animals. It is a wood crate from Michaels that I spray painted blue. The stuffed animals don't seem to get played with a lot, however they do get thrown around everywhere. Makes. Me. Crazy!
Right now this collection of baby toys and books is right in front of the TV. These get moved around a lot between my room, Norah's room and the playroom. We have more, but these are her favorites right now. Do you have the ball popper?? It is LOUD!
View of the room looking from the top of the stairs.
View from outside the Master Bedroom
TV area
This is the opposite side of the upstairs. The door on the left is the kids bathroom and the one on the right is the guest room. The tree is made of felt and has apples for apple picking. The hopscotch rug comes and goes. Sometimes Mckenna is into it and sometimes I am tired of flattening it out!
View across from by the apple tree
The middle door is our Master Bedroom. The door on the right is Norah's room.
This is our little art station/play table where we do our downstairs activities.
Most of them involve/need a table.
Thank you for visiting and reading about the different play places we have in our house.
I have written several other posts that involve play activities for our house.
