Baby Play Space

Little started crawling a little while ago and pretty much straight after she also figured out standing and is now pulling herself up at every opportunity......we have laminate wood flooring downstairs so needed to make the family room a bit more baby friendly to allow for this newly mobile baby!

Inspired by some amazing posts on baby play spaces here and here, I set about creating a space that would allow Little to have some fun and explore her environment. I gathered all of our rugs together  along with an alphabet foam playmat and covered the floor, this gave a variety of textures and colours for her to crawl/fall on.

I ordered some acrylic mirrors (from an Ebay shop called Adult Passions, ahem) that I just blu-tacked up at floor level.  These have been the favourite addition to the room. If you get one thing for your baby I would really recommend some mirrors. Little loves staring at herself, reaching out to grab her reflection, lunging in for kisses and head-butting herself. She makes a beeline for them as soon as she is in the room.

Mirror fun!

There is a little reading nook in the corner to encourage Little to become familiar with books and hopefully she will love them as much as her big sister when she is older. I put out a padded blanket, some pillows, a soft toy and a collection of board, textured and cloth baby books.

Little having a read

I also put out the treasure basket we made earlier, and about 3-4 other 'play centres' to encourage Little to crawl and engage with her toys. I usually put out a select few different toys every day which keeps them novel and ensures she doesn't get overwhelmed. It's nice to watch her crawl over to investigate each toy and figure out what she can do with it!

Treasure Basket

Play centres dotted around the room

Every day I get out the wooden toddle truck and pile the blocks up into a few small towers as Little loves to knock them over and pull up on the truck. Sometimes Poppet will build up the towers for Little which is lovely to watch as its the first time the two of them have started to play together. Although Poppet gets quite annoyed when her little sister attempts to knock them down too early!

The room makeover has been a real improvement and has made it much easier for me to get things done as Little can happily occupy herself here for a stretch of time. I've been surprised by how much Poppet likes playing here too!

Poppet: 2yrs 5mos

Little: 8 mos