This week's shelves

What with floods and crazy holiday times, Lolly's shelves had become a bit of a catch all of chaos for whatever she had out playing with at the time.  I've recently done a sort and put away, and put out some new things that she is enjoying!  Again, excuse the grainy phone shots, my lovely camera is still mouldy :(  Here is the bench I'm using as her shelves since we did up the lounge room.  It works well and is a good height for her, and gives three roomy sections underneath.

On top we have her money tray, some animals in a bucket, a lock box, her horses, a container of padlocks and keys, and one of click-together eggs.  Underneath are her stacker blocks, her tool box (Christmas pressie from Nanna and Pop!) and some toy library puzzles.

I got this lock box from the toy library - she LOVES this!  It's interesting for the different locks, and she treats it as a "stables" for her various plastic animals. 

Hiring this sort of thing is great, it only engages a child for a short while (relatively), I hire it for 2 weeks and by then she will be pretty much over a toy like this one.  I love the toy library!  We also hire a lot of puzzles from there, same thing, they remain a challenge for such a short while, then she isn't interested any more, making me glad I didn't pay for them, other than a small hire fee!  It was $9 to hire the lock box for 2 weeks, compared to around $90 to buy one!

Here are her two horses (lol) and egg shapes she likes to put together, and put stuff in (though she has not chosen this at all since I put them out "officially"!).  I also got the idea to do padlocks and keys with Lolly from a lovely blog - One Hook Wonders.  Lolly loves keys, and is working out locks, but I hadn't thought to add something to her shelves before until reading Nicole's blog post.  Thanks!  As per her recommendation, I'll put a matching sticker on the lock and key it goes with.  She's been keen on these so far, but I the two small ones are too fiddly for her little hands, and the locks on them are quite hard to do.  I'm planning to get some more large locks soon for this activity.

Money matters!

Here's a close-up of the tray I've done in response to her love of coins and money!  It has her little cat purse (thanks Nanna!) and a small piggy bank that can be opened underneath that I got on sale for a dollar!  She likes this, and stacks the coins and makes patterns with them as well. 

I recently bought her more ocean animals, which live here, but which get played with at the sink every day!  And a new set of dinosaurs due to her recent addiction to Harry and his Bucketfull of Dinosaurs.  And also a bucket :p

Along the bottom of the bench I've got some new puzzles from the toy library.  I've noticed Lolly is less interested in puzzles now, and more into imagination games with her range of plastic animals and dinosaurs.  She's okay if I do them with her :D

Her stacker blocks are in use a lot, more as "stables" for a variety of animals.  She lays them out in patterns and puts things in them (she's loved putting things in things since she was a tiny baby!) - too cute!

Barn and bucket for small plastic animals.

This is across from her shelves, and normally has two chairs set up at it, too (they are on semi-permanent duty as "stable" doors ATM nearby - lol).  The white container is for more plastic animals, but she LOVES these so much that they are always in buckets and other containers around the house as she plays with them.  Oh, and that's my vacuum cleaner.  lol.

Down next to the bench, I've got her Poingo Dora book, which was a Christmas present for the girls (Dora for Lolly and Elmo for Snail!).

She quite likes this, though apparently we got the old system, not the new one - lol.  It's pretty good, lots of interaction, games and words, and it reads the books to you!

So that's our shelves at the moment, it's nice to have new things out to play with, and a glimpse of what Ms Nearly 3 is interested in!