In other posts, I have talked about reasons why it might be OK to own fewer toys, and how to choose the best toys, and shared a link to my handout on choosing toys and activities which build a variety of skills and multiple intelligences. I’ll share here some examples of how this plays out in our home with our three-year-old.

(Note: I’ve included Amazon Affiliate links in case you want to buy any of these items, but truly, I’m advocating for NOT buying much stuff!)

Word Play (Linguistic / Verbal Intelligence)

We only own about 20 kids’ books – filtered down over 20 years of parenting to the ones that we love the best and want to have in the house at all times. But we go to the library a lot! (Multiple times a week, picking up a big stack of books every time. And we end up reading them all multiple times. My boy loves to be read to, and loves to read to himself.) And we go to story-time at the library every week.

We also have magnetic letters for the refrigerator (which we use all over the house) and duplo letters. Lately, my son has been using the letters and a big drawing of a coconut tree  to re-enact one of his favorite books (Chicka Chicka Boom Boom) over and over again. You can see the picture above…. the drawing is nothing “fancy” – I think his grandparents just pulled some packing paper out of the recycle bin and drew on it with crayons – but it’s kept him entertained for hours, and when he’s done, it’s back to the bin.

We have a Kindle Fire tablet with Kindle FreeTime installed, so he plays lots of ABC games, and watches educational videos (and not so educational videos) about the alphabet.

Our best language tools? His abuela (grandmother) who speaks to him in Spanish. And his Belo (grandpa) who reads to him for hours on end. And they both spend a lot of time practicing writing numbers and letters with him and other hands-on learning games.

Doing the Numbers (Logical – Mathematical Intelligence)

Everything we have more than one of is a math toy! We can count how many blocks we have, figure out whether we have more trains than balls, and so on.

We have 12 rubber ducks that have appeared in our lives over 20 years of parenting (I don’t think I bought a single one). These are great for bath time math time. We sang “Five Little Ducks went out one day” lots of times – it’s a good way to learn the basics of subtraction – one duck doesn’t come back – now there’s four little ducks…

The only special math tools we have are:

• • a set of Duplo numbers, which we’ve used for counting, number recognition, and a number line – we had a library book called Hopping on the Number Line which led to the game of having toys hop back and forth on the number line as we did the math problems out loud (if froggy starts on 2, and hops 3 spaces, where will he land?),
  • Unifix Cubes, which are a fabulous math teaching tool, though so far all he does with them is sort them into 10 stacks of 10 matching cubes, then lines those up in spectrographic order red-yellow-orange, etc. (My boy is a big fan of order and repetition.)
  • Some numbers we shaped out of pipe cleaners
  • Some old birthday candles – you know the candles shaped like the #1 and the #2 and so on that when you put them on the birthday cake and blow them out 20 seconds later, barely any wax has melted so you keep them instead of throwing them away? My son found those and loves them!
  • A great app called Bedtime Math. Every night at bedtime, we read a story problem and solve some math puzzles related to that story.

Putting the Pieces Together (Spatial Intelligence)

We have a couple of kids’ wooden puzzles and a couple of jigsaw puzzles. We have a big bin of duplos (notice how our letters and numbers listed above do dual duty as part of the Duplo collection?), and wooden train tracksto assemble (and a big collection of wooden trains – half are used and abused – purchased at a consignment store and the others shiny and new purchased by Grandpa). At many of our local libraries, they have puzzles that he works with when we visit, and at his BC classes, they have lots of shape sorters, puzzles, and small manipulables to practice with.

We also “find” lots of things for him to learn spatial skills with: mixing bowls, measuring cups, plastic dishes for practice nesting things; sticks and rocks to stack into tall towers, an empty bottle from the recycling bin and some dry beans to drop in….

Moving & Grooving (Bodily – Kinesthetic Intelligence)

We own 5 balls of varying sizes, a kids’ baseball bat, a Strider bike, and a climber built of QUADROthat was a hand-me-down from a friend (Quadro is a fabulous combination of building toy and playground equipment! We’ve had ours for 20 years now, in near constant use.) We also go swimming at least once a week, and go on one or two one-mile hikes a week and go to the playground a lot. When we’re out in the woods, he happily balances on logs and climbs trees and scales rocks.

Playing Well With Others (Interpersonal Intelligence)

Imaginary play and telling stories with characters is one way to build interpersonal intelligence. So we’ve got a few stuffed animals, but he doesn’t play with them a lot. We have a collection of finger puppets that we tell stories with and that he also uses at naptime to tell stories to himself. We have a toy picnic basket with fake food, but we don’t use it a lot, so I think it will soon go to our Buy Nothing group. He’s just as happy to say that a rock is a chocolate cupcake and a handful of bark is french fries.We also make things… one of this week’s library books was Trouble at the Dinosaur Cafe, and we made Model Magic dinosaurs to go with it – he mixes the colors and I do the sculpting.

We also make sure he gets lots of interaction with other kids – we spend lots of time at the playground, in free play with new kids, and meet friends for a weekly play-date which is all kid-guided, non-facilitated free play. (Kids learn a lot more about getting along with others and about conflict resolution when parents back off!)

Learning about Myself and How I Feel (Intrapersonal Intelligence)

As I say in the handout, this category of intelligence isn’t about tangible stuff. It’s more about interaction and emotion coaching, and also making sure your child has time for quiet contemplation and down time. When we go on hikes in the woods, there’s a lot of quiet reflective time as well as song-singing, story-telling, nature-teaching time. He also has “nap time” every day. He stopped sleeping at nap time a few months ago, but still will play quietly in his room for 90 minutes every day. OK, not necessarily quietly – he plays his piano, and reads his books out loud with LOTS of feeling and dramatic interpretation! But it’s a good solo time for him (and for me).

Song and Dance Routines (Musical Intelligence)

We have a box of miscellaneous musical instruments he can pull out anytime he wants. A few were purchased for him, but most are just items that have entered our lives over the years, like the plastic Yamaha recorder I had as a child, and the plastic Yamaha recorder I had to buy for my daughter’s class when I couldn’t find my old one… We also have a very old electric piano that’s in his room and he spends part of many “nap times” exploring the piano.

We listen to a lot of music together (one older sibling loves Broadway show tunes, one loves vintage jazz, Abuela loves classical and Spanish music) and sing songs A LOT, and enjoy circle-time songs at BC classes and library story times and hymns at church.

Fun with Flora and Fauna (Naturalistic Intelligence)

As you can guess if you’ve read other posts on my blog, we spend a lot of time outdoors. Camping, hikes, zoo trips, farmer’s markets, walks to the library and the pool. The only “tools” we use outdoors are a bucket and a shovel. (But, when we forget them, a stick and a rock can fill in as digging tools, and an empty Starbucks cup from the car makes a fine bucket.) Some day we’ll find our binoculars again, and pick up a new magnifying glass.

Expanding Horizons (Magic / Imagination / Religion / Cultures)

We have a big box of miscellaneous dress up – old Halloween costumes from his sisters, sunglasses, silly hats, etc. In all of our books and the videos we watch together, we aim for showing lots of diverse cultures and experiences, and we go to a church that talks a lot about diverse beliefs and appreciation of the sacred in all forms.

All the Pretty Colors (Artistic Skills and Appreciation)

This is the one area we have an abundance of STUFF.

One cabinet in the kitchen is over-flowing with art supplies: Model Magic clay, no-spill watercolors, pom poms, pipe cleaners, paint, paper, glitter glue, stickers, markers, crayons, beads, scissors, and so on. When he and I are in a relaxed, mellow mood, we pull these out and get to work.

I try not to do much art when I’m in a cranky mood, or when I won’t have time to deal with any mess that arises. I have to confess that I can have a hard time when he’s being really messy or “wasting” art supplies, or “messing up” art supplies – like when he dips the red-paint-covered paintbrush into the yellow paint. Because I know that about myself, I make sure that he has plenty of opportunity to do art in spaces that are designed for kids’ art and where it’s OK to make a mess. So, this year, he’s enrolled in Creative Development Lab, which is all about exploring and experimenting with art.

Do we have it right?

I feel like we have found a good balance… we have enough stuff at home that he is very capable of entertaining himself for a long time. And we make things a lot and find thins in nature, which gives him new toys and also shows ingenuity. Plus, we get out in the world a lot to explore the things we don’t have at home. I try to avoid owning “stupid” toys that I don’t like… they do enter our home sometimes if my kids go to a birthday party and come home with goody bags, or have lunch at McDonald’s with dad. But most of the toys we own I think are worthwhile.

William Morris once said “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” It’s a rule I try to live by for myself, and I think it also applies to my child’s things… but maybe there it’s something more like “Have nothing in your toy box that you do not know to be creativity-inspiring or believe to be a joy to play with.”