Sometime back a sales person that’s selling kids educational toys and brainteaser asked me “How do you let your child play with toys? Are your toys classified or do you keep everything in one big toy box? Do you let the child play with every single toys at one time?”  I told him that all my toys are classified. He said that , that should be the way and many families didn’t know that and tend to put all type of toys together and the child is to play with all of it at one go.

To me it’s logical and common sense to sort out and categorized the toys accordingly like masak-masak one box, blocks in other container, rattle separated etc etc. That’s how my mum did it years ago with us and it’s neater. I just know that that’s all I should do and easier for me to clean up too and I have not given much thought about the “theory” behind it. Moreover I don’t have a very big playroom or a big toy box to dump everything into one, but to think of it even if I have a designated play area or play room for my kids, I will still want to classify the toys. Just couldn’t stand every single piece of toys been shrewd all over the house.

My children has been trained to make choice of what they want to play each time and they will have to keep the earlier one before the can proceed to the next group of toys.

I do a read up about kid’s play and toys. The reason why we should classified the toys is that the child can spend time concentrating on playing with one toy and is not confused with other surrounding toys. Too many toys around the child may be too overwhelming for them and make them over-stimulated, unappreciative and have difficulty concentrating on one toy for long.

Another obvious reason is that children are more likely to use toys that they can easily see or retrieve. If everything is dumped into one big toy box, the child can only view and reach the few on top. Classifying it into boxes make it easier for them to access. It makes it easier to be rotated regularly too. For a child, out of sight is often mean out of their mind. If they can’t see their favourite toys, they most likely will forget about it soon. It is much better to bring them ot periodically so that they can appreciate it. It’s truly an refreshing and renewing experience for them. I usually see a spark in their eyes when I bring out some toys that have been kept a way for a while, though it might be something they have been sicked playing before.

Classyfing the toys and let your child a chance to choose what they want to play with. When they are given a chance to choose and make their own decision , we are also promoting the child’s learning and development and boosting their self-esteem.

Classifying the toys also help us parents to identify toys which may focus on areas in which a child needs particular exposure. You might want to classifying your toys into social, fine motor, gross motor, sensory categories and we can focus on one group of toys for that development in that particular area.