Our shelves in April

A mammoth post on our shelves this month!

They normally look this this (a little crowded!):

I've got (from left of picture) on the top shelf:
- A basket with a rainmaker and bell shaker on (for Snail, mostly, though both girls get going on them sometimes). 
- Snail's spinning top she got for her birthday from some lovely friends!  Both girls love this!
- A tray with a set of ocean animals and fish (after our Aquarium adventures)
- Lolly's horse collection
- The green basket contains a set of Link 'Ems, a building toy I now can't recall the proper name of, or I'd link from here (lol).  This is a close up:

- then a basket with her new blocks, they are awesome, and construct marble rolling castles!!  A present for her birthday from the same awesome family that got the top for Snail (xo).  They are Viola building blocks and you can get them here.



 She loves this!  It is out several times a day, with requests to build castles.  She has learnt to construct simple sections so the marble rolls into the collector, and is gradually making them more complex.

On the bottom shelf, from left, are her stacker blocks (mostly used as horse stables these days), some more horses, then her tools sets, next to the plastic bag of marbles for the blocks, and finally her bug catcher, complete with bugs! and a bucket of dinosaurs.  Oh, and on the end there is a felt board that my sister got her for her birthday, which she is enjoying.

The shelves are a little crowded at the moment, we've been renovating our kitchen, and the rest of the house is full of boxes and things that are going to other rooms, so the playroom is a bit of a disaster.  We've been relying on our shelves for fun things to do lately!  We are planning an exciting family room upstairs, so more on that once we get furniture moved and things going!  There will be a library area, play area, and study up there very soon!

I thought I'd include a pic of her "homework" table in the study next to my desk.  She is very keen on sitting here with me doing "work", which is mostly cutting out dinosaur pictures, colouring with crayons, using stickers, using simple stamps, and making cards to send to Nanna and Pop.  Excuse the mess, she is also fond of chucking everything she is finished with on the floor!  She drags the bin round to cut shapes into.

Serious face!

And this month I've set up proper shelves (finally!) for Snail, normally I was just storing her stuff on a small table or on the floor so she can reach it, but we went to Ikea for a simple cube unit that she can still reach everything.

Old "shelves" for Snail

Snail modelling the new shelves!

 I have her wagon out, filled with soft toys, her snail block toy, the Backyardigans car (it sings a song, she LOVES this!), a stack of toys for Lolly until we get the playroom done (more on these in a future post), and her counting hammer toy (she has out in this pic).  On the shelf behind her are some musical instruments.  Her bubble machine goes on here, too, but it's out on the table at present.  I've added a work table for Lolly in the corner. 

She was very interested in putting this shelf unit together, and can reach all of the things on it, so I'm hoping it will work for us when she's back here Friday!