An Introduction to Toy Rotation
Toy/activity rotation can seem tricky at first, especially if your child/children have tonnes of toys, but it’s a proven way of helping them focus and enjoy the toys they do have much more, plus it makes cleaning up much, much easier!
What is toy rotation and why should I do it?
Toy rotation is offering only a limited selection of toys or activities for a period of time before rotating in new ones
Rotating toys brings new life to old toys they had previously got bored of. The limited options has proven to help children make choices and focus more for longer periods on the toys and activities available to them. Limiting choices also makes cleanup much easier.
How do I select toys and activities?
Observe and follow your child’s interests! Children frequently go through periods of intense development of particular skills or interests (look into sensitive periods and/or schemas) and the aim is to try to provide the tools they are looking for in order to self-teach.
What is your child practicing right now?
Trying to walk? Give them objects and furniture to pull to standing.
Dropping or throwing? Give them a basket of soft balls or a sticky ball game (you could even turn it into a way to introduce vocabulary for older children)
How many toys/activities should I have in rotation?
This is very subjective, but a good rule is no more toys/activities available than the number of months old your baby is, up to a maximum of 12. You may have different spaces in your home, though, so it is whatever works for your family aiming to give a variety of options, but few enough that the child can make decisions and cleanup is easy.
How often should I rotate toys/activities?
It’s totally up to you how often to rotate toys, but again I would suggest observing how long your child is showing interest in the toys and rotating once they are not actively playing with them anymore. Sometimes this may mean weeks between rotations, other times just a day or two.
How to store out of rotation toys?
This depends largely on your home and the space you have available to you as well as how many children you have or plan to have. At any one time there will be significantly more toys hidden away than out, and you will need frequent access to certain toys. It may work best to organise by age, type of toy/activity. You may have a spare room or closet to store items, or it might be in an attic, under the stairs or elsewhere.
How do you display toys/activities?
Instead of buckets or baskets of toys, Montessori emphasises the importance of creating set places for toys and activities that the child can see and access independently., most commonly on a low-shelf. This helps keep all the objects together, makes sure everything is visible to them and helps encourage them to tidy when they can see an empty space on a shelf. Toys with loose parts are put on trays, or baskets, with parts separated into a smaller bowl or basket.
For us currently at 9 months old we are doing a more intentional toy/activity rotation once a week on the weekends, and sometimes removing or swapping around items between main rotations. We don’t rotate every single toy/activity, only those she is not playing with. That can be because it’s too challenging for her and we introduced it too early, because it’s not challenging enough and she’s grown bored of it or just simply that it’s no longer interesting to her.
The great thing about toy rotation is that we’ve been able to repeatedly reintroduce toys she previously grew bored with, and she treats it like it’s brand new.
Throughout the week I will pay attention to what she is drawn to and what skills she seems to be practicing and try to provide more of that in the next rotation. Sometimes that may be some simple pieces of (cleaned) trash like an empty bottle or tupperware, other times it might be some sort of instrument she can shake, or hit, or different sorts of puzzles or fine motor activities.
A good recent example of this is that we have noticed Rowan ‘cleaning’ more by using aprons, diapers, cloths and even phones as rags to wipe the floor, windows and furniture, so we will introduce a practical life activity in her next rotation that includes a cloth and spray bottle with water (she may not be able to use it yet but she can explore it, and we can spray for her).
We use our TV stand as a toy shelf (note, you do NOT need fancy shelving to do this), normally with 3–4 activities on the bottom shelf and 3 activities in the 3 top shelves — these are the toys we rotate weekly. We let her access more open-ended and gross-motor toys always (playsilks, building blocks, pikler, walking wagon, doll and stacking cups).
Currently we store our out of rotation toys in one section of a wardrobe in our office — this is our only room that isn’t open planned that we can close off to Rowan. It’s currently four plastic boxes and some boxed larger toys, but soon once we have outgrown the current space (especially once we start getting more art supplies and sensory play equipment) we will have to move some items to the closet in the other room. This isn’t ideal, but we are living in a small condo and have limited places we can store items. I have organised the boxes by types and stuck a scrap of paper in the front with a list of sorts of toys inside.
Rotating has helped our home feel like a home, without too much clutter, and has allowed Rowan to really use and appreciate the items she has out.
