I love toys. My children love toys. Absolutely, but… For some reason children, babies in particular, take great delight in playing with just an ordinary old box. Boxes, card board, wrapping paper… Jimmy is always happy banging two ordinary wooden spoons together – think he might be a drummer like one of my brothers, as a baby Ali was always banging sticks too! Obviously toys have their place but having a play with these types of materials is obviously great fun too.
I was remembering when Florence was tiny and my friend and I used to take our little ones to a baby club on a Tuesday where they would always have plenty of what we would call a ‘manky basket’, manky because it was full of manky odds and ends. A bag full of bits and pieces of nothing special really but things which were shiny and had lots of textures. They absolutely loved playing with them despite our slight snobbery and I think half the fun was the rummage through a bag to find what was inside and drag it all out… then put it all back in again.
A 6 month old Florence at the ‘manky basket’ play group.
We’re staying at my Mum’s at the moment and I mentioned to her that Jimmy just loves a rummage too so she got him a cardboard box to put some of his bricks and smaller toys in. Well he had great fun chucking things in and out of it. He even used it to get him to a standing position before letting go and standing alone for a few seconds – his new trick!
Jimmy enjoyed this simple play so much that it prompted me to make him his very own ‘manky basket’. I found an old safe bag of mine without a long handle he could get over his head and gathered some bits and pieces from my Mum’s house that I thought he’d like.
The basket and the bits which are an old TV remote with the batteries removed, an old water bottle filled with water, food colouring, sequins and glitter, some old brushes, coloured straws, an old loo roll, some off cuts of material, some very short pieces of ribbon, shiny cardboard pieces and an old CD. I also gave him a very hard cork but quickly removed it when he started biting pieces out of it…
Jimmy had so much fun rummaging in the bag and playing with this simple, cheap and easy to make game that I just wanted to share our fun in photographs.
Even Florence got in on the action and really enjoyed playing with the little bits, sharing with and showing them to Jimmy. We now call it the ‘monkey basket’ instead of ‘manky basket’ because Florence thought that was what I was calling it… It’s a nicer name so we’ve gone with it!
It was a fun playing time and now all the bits are back in the basket ready for the next time we want to play. I think I might add some other bits and bobs to it for a slightly different adventure next time…
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