Toys for visiting small children

[Rob tolfts]

My Wife's two nieces are visiting this weekend (2.5 & 5 years)

We thought we'd take them to the Horniman Museum, but I thought it would also be nice to get a toy or two for them to play with at our house.

I started looking at the Toys R Us website & gave up around page 16,

so any thoughts of something not too expensive, that they might enjoy playing with for at least long enough for me to have a cup of tea.

R.

[Lynne]

Go to the charity shops. Saw someone buy a lovely castle there for ?5 yesterday.

Toys R Us makes me want to lie in a darkened room and whimper. Mountains of plastic at enormous cost.

[Jeremy]

Yep - my mum always gets stuff from charity shops for the kids.

Or also ask in the family room classifieds section here for any unwanted toys (offer a small amount, bottle of wine, donation to charity, etc).

Both my daughter (2.5) and my niece (5 I think) LOVE playing with dolls and prams... despite efforts to give them gender neutral toys, it's just what they seem to like. Also shopping/supermarket toys, the VTech "laptop" toys. And obvious things like crayons, simple jigsaw puzzles, balloons, bubbles. Plenty of books.

[LondonMix]

If you really want to get them something to do, I'd suggest a few puzzles and coloring books at that age as they can get serious mileage out of both.

However, you don't really need to have any toys in your house for a weekend visit. Before having kids, our friends would stay over with similar aged children and they'd just use their imagination. We also have pets that they can play with though so that might have helped.

Kids get bored of toys very quickly and can turn almost any random object in your house into a toy or game so I wouldn't invest in any toys that are too specific / can only be used as one thing.

Have fun!

[Glitteryfridays]

I agree with the charity shop visits. The one on LL has so many toys and cheap books. A farm with some toy animals keeps my girls entertained for hours. Might be a good idea to purchase a storage box too so you can keep the things you buy for their next visit.

[Pugwash]

My mum used to keep a plastic tea set, picture colouring books and pencils, glitter and glue which came out regularly when her great grand daughter came to stay.

[omagem]

As an alternative to toys you could also get some biscuit cutters and do some gingerbread men/shapes. With the dough making, rolling, cutting and decorating (and eating!) it can keep kids entertained for quite a while.