I'm a bit of a compulsive furniture re-shuffler, every now and then I get an itch to rearrange a room and it must be done that very minute. This particular minute was after breakfast on Friday (anything to avoid doing the breakfast dishes). I had the idea to make a little playhouse for the girls using the ikea storage shelves and the play kitchen to make a cubby corner just for them.
This kind of project is quite good because it means I have to clean my floors, rescue all the stray jigsaw pieces and rice cakes from beneath the sofa, and tidy up the play kitchen. So it's win win.
I put a thick rug down as a carpet for the house and then boxed it in using the kitchen and shelves, leaving a gap for a door. Next came my favourite part - turning the little corner into a house! I put Poppet's two plastic chairs in there but was lacking a table so blu-takked a tray to a stool, and it is transformed into a bistro table! I stuck up a couple of pieces of Poppet's artwork to finish it off.
I took one of the plastic tubs out of the Trofast storage and turned the space left into a postbox as Poppet is a big fan of posting. I just blu-takked a sheet of paper decorated to look like a postbox onto the sides. This post is beginning to look like it is sponsored by Blu-Tak! (its not).
She has her own collection of letters and postcards for playing (they are getting pretty dog-eared now)....for some reason she insisted on posting the letters from behind the postbox. We had to salvage the postbox on more than one occasion with the sellotape due to some over-vigourous posting
I cleared all the toys from the top of the Trofast and substituted them for various kitchen toys like her wooden vegetables and eggs and also lots of food boxes and pots from the recycling tub to encourage some imaginary cooking. I've been getting lots of cups of tea and pizza made for me.
I found an old telephone and put that in the playhouse too, it has been so popular! Poppet spends ages phoning people and having the funniest imaginary conversations ("Papa? Don't poo in pants"). I recorded one but can't figure out how to get the video from my camera to the computer.
Poppet eventually insisted on a door so we used her play tent for a little while and the girls had lots of fun crawling in and out.
The girls have spent lots of time exploring their new corner, and as a result the kitchen is being used more than it ever has. Where the kitchen was before it was a bit boxed in by the sofa and meant that both girls couldn't really play with it at the same time. Now it's a lot more open and Little has been exploring it for the first time. It's perfect for her practicing her standing up skills (and her pulling everything out the cupboards skills). In the future I hope I can transform the corner into other things like a shop, a cafe, a doctors, the list is endless! It has been so good for encouraging imaginative play and also the girls playing together.
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| Poppet washing her hands |
