Tips for happy, clean and safe toddler play

Here's some advice to help you liven up your toddler's play sessions, as well as ensuring her safety, and your sanity with some tips for cleaning and storage.

How you can help your toddler play?

You can't teach your child to use her imagination, but you can encourage her natural gift for fantasy by trying some of the following:

• Play a variety of make-believe games with your toddler.


• When you tell a story act out the characters' parts and make up all the different voices. If your child has a favourite, suggest that she takes that part for herself.


• Play games of “What's this”. Get your child to shut her eyes then gently stroke some object across her skin. She's got to guess what the object is.


• Help your child in her imaginary world by giving her some glove puppets - either bought ones or brown paper bags with faces drawn on them.


• Provide good fantasy toys like dolls; children of both sexes love dolls because they're so easy to incorporate into their imaginary worlds. Stuffed animals, house cleaning sets, tea sets and gardening or carpentry sets are also ideal


• Start to stock a dressing-up box. Put in some of your old shoes, shirts, skirts, dresses, hats and scarves. Have some special cheap jewellery as well. If you can find some authentic uniforms from second-hand shops so much the better. Make a cloak from a length of fabric and attach a clasp at one end.


• Play at being an animal. Get down on all fours and move about the floor making all the animal noises that you know. This will show your toddler how to do it.


• Play telephone conversations. If you've given your child a toy telephone, pick up the real phone and pretend to have a telephone conversation with her.

Safety tips for play

• Keep her well away from any kind of pool containing water. No matter how small or shallow it is, even if she can swim, she should never be left unattended.

• Any game that involves metal implements is potentially dangerous, e.g. metal buckets and spades or toy pistols. So is any game with sharp or pointed instruments, e.g. bows and arrows or toy knives.

• Never let your toddler go anywhere near or handle fireworks or matches.

Storage tips for playthings

• Always keep any plastic containers with lids for storing blocks, marbles or small toys. Those made for ice cream or margarine are ideal.

• Use brightly coloured labels for easy identification of what's inside your containers.

• Large glass jars are good for storage because you can immediately see what's inside them.

• Never throw out any shoe boxes - they make good beds for dolls as well as houses or barns.

• Loop a plastic mesh basket over the taps in the bath to store all bath toys.

• Use a flat-topped chest for storing larger toys. This can double up as a table.

• Your child's toys are bound to get strewn around your home. Try to keep a basket in each room to make for quick and easy tidying up.

• Keep a special bag or box of toys in the car.

Cleaning and preparing toys

• Always buy machine-washable stuffed toys.

• Alternatively use a carpet shampoo and brush to clean stuffed toys.

• Try to buy plastic toys that can be put into the dishwasher when they are dirty.

• If plastic toys have got out of shape, you can soak them in hot water and then re-mould them with your fingers.

• Clean and deodorize smelly toys by sponging them with a cloth that has been wrung out in a solution of baking soda.

• You can dry-clean your child's soft toys by shaking them in a bag containing a generous amount of baking powder.

Dr Miriam Stoppard

New Babycare
Copyright © 2009 Dorling Kindersley
Text copyright © 2009 Miriam Stoppard

Posted 03.11.2010

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