If your kids are anything like mine and get bored easily despite having a sea of toys in their bedroom, then it may be time to start saving your kitchen roll tubes. It’s amazing how these few random household items can easily become instant toys and reduce the risk of the phrase “mummy, I’m bored” being uttered ten times every hour.
Kitchen utensils
If your children are complaining about having nothing to do, then empty your utensils drawer and create a music station. A wooden spoon and saucepan instantly become a drum set and the salt and pepper shakers (particularly peppercorn pots if you have one!) make great maracas. It gets noisy, but at least they’ll be entertained for a bit!
It’s also a great way to help them start learning about kitchen skills in the hope that they will become budding chefs and eventually start making you meals as a way of saying thank you for all the times you cooked them dinner and they refused to eat it.
Bowl of water
A bowl of water is a surprisingly educational item for young children. See what toys and items you can find around the house and place them in the water to see which ones float and which ones sink. We tried it out with a mixture of toys and everyday household items and also had fun seeing which objects would balance on the bowl.
Kitchen roll tube
This one amazes me. Being an adult, I guess we don’t see the fun in boring everyday items the same way as children do! My kids love messing about with kitchen roll tubes. Whether it’s putting one to their mouths and blowing raspberries down it or using it as a telescope, they somehow manage to be entertained by it even more than they are by some of their actual toys.
In fact, they love kitchen roll tubes so much that we eventually transformed one into a proper telescope. Our daughter had great fun painting the tubes.
A sheet of brown paper makes a great treasure map to go with it!
Just a few tubes will provide at least half an hour of piratey fun (for the child and husband anyway – I don’t do role play!).
Bottle of water
We had some great fun with this one! This was an activity set by my daughter’s nursery in the midst of lockdown in 2020, so I can’t take credit for discovering it. We filled a bottle full of water, made a hole in the lid and went outside to see what shapes we could make on the ground. It’s a great mark-making activity for young children! And it keeps them entertained for at least half an hour. No complaints here!
Cardboard box
One of the top instant toys for children. Whenever we get a big item delivered and the kids see the huge cardboard box, they get so excited. Probably more excited than they do at Christmas.
It’s amazing how such a simple item can provide so much fun! And that it can seem to transform into anything that the kids want it to be. So far we’ve had a house, a hideout, a bed, a mini-theatre for puppet shows and even a submarine!
So next time you’re thinking of throwing out a new (or old) cardboard box or kitchen roll tube…don’t! You’ll have a set of instant toys that will come in handy for keeping the kids entertained on a rainy day!
