Old curtain rings
We were clearing out the shed…and I found a bagful of wooden curtain rings. Looks like a bagful of new, exciting dangly things I can attach to the pram with a string, says I to myself. (Pram danglers lose their allure quite quickly. An on-the-ball mum would revise and replace twice a week.) Presto, once rinsed and repeated, a dangly chain of ringy things to chew and wave and jingle…
Does her cot hang low?
Do things dangle to and fro? Have you tied them with a knot? Have you tied them with a bow? I refer to the base of the side bars. There’s no reason your baby’s room should be interesting only if she’s IN her cot. Attach anything with a hole in it or hook on it to the base of the side bars, and she can explore them while you change her nappy (once you have given up changing your little wriggler on the cot-top changer, that is) or simply while crawling around her room. Ours has some soft toy animals repurposed from her baby playgym, some Sticklebricks, some buggybooks, a ball…
Surprise jars
Use any sturdy, transparent, screw-lid container, and fill with something visually interesting. Beads, buttons, ribbons, a Duplo man, a dried flower…then (if the contents are potentially fatal to your twisty-fingered child), stick the lid on forever by squirting glue into the threads before screwing it on tight. Another good idea is to part-fill with water, and add a squeeze of Fairy liquid. Shaking it will cause chortle-inducing froth that slowly settles. For opaque containers, fill with objects that rattle, such as dried chickpeas, rice, and so on. (The Body Shop body butter containers are good for these.)
Cheap Toys For Children 