Frugal toy ideas

[Cheshire]

My 7 month old is tired of her toys (she has her older brother's hand-me-downs).

I don't want to spend a fortune on stuff she's going to out grow really fast and I'm looking for ideas. She has been really pleased with the plastic measuring cups lately.

Any frugal ideas? Just looking for more basic toys and not all the light up, loud music playing crud you find at the stores lately.

TIA!!!

[EmsMom]

i used to put my dd in her high chair and open a kitchen drawer. Of course I was meticulous about anything pokey or otherwise dangerous. She had a great time examining the plastic spoons, measuring cups and garlic press, etc. She would pull one out and play with it for a while before throwing it onto the floor. And it was free. I would think that if you want real toys, a quick holler out to friends and relatives would get you anything you need right quick!

[jessaroo]

blocks and balls are good and so are kitchen gadgets. GIve a child a cup and another object to put into the cup.

I would not pay much money for anything as their interest tends to be what other people in the household are using.

[hopefulfaith]

My kids got serious mileage out of my kitchen cabinets/drawers.

Also, rotate toys! I kept half out and half hidden, and every few weeks, I'd switch. Everything was new all over again!

[Vancouver Mommy]

When dd was little she enjoyed ten empty tissue boxes for a long time.

[honeybunmom]

I put some dry beans in a small plastic container for my son the other day since he really enjoys his maracas. I agree with the kitchen drawer/cabinet. I usually give him a wooden spoon and take out several pots and lids. Add some measuring spoons to that and he has a ball.

If you can knit, there are a lot of free patterns for knitting balls. Get some jingle bells from the craft store and you've got a tactile/aural toy for the babe. I stitched a ball together from wool felt and stuffed it with wool batting and a bell.

At that stage your baby will probably enjoy putting things inside of each other, so, if you have any nesting bowls for the kitchen, you could probably get some milage out of those, too.

[FraggleLover]

Originally Posted by honeybunmom

I put some dry beans in a small plastic container for my son the other day since he really enjoys his maracas.

My boy likes his too. Different beans and rice make different sounds. I had a couple of spice and herb bottles that i used

[orangecanoe]

If you're at all crafty, you might try buying some blank habatoi silk squares from Dharma Trading and making your own silks if you don't already have some. You just dye w/ a packet of koolaid + vinegar in a coffee mug and set the color in microwave for 2min. You're coming up on the peek-a-boo age and hiding toys under and such.

For double duty wooden teether and then later pretend play, we love Little Alouette teethers on Etsy. We have some of the dinos and animals and now that we're past teething, they still see a lot of use by all the kids. They also have great small blocks.

[Geigerin]

I have a good friend with a 9 month old, and she's had a little basket full of odds and ends in her living room for a while now. There are very few 'kid' toys in the house. I love what she uses to stimulate all of the senses:

*A used spice jar, filled half-way with brightly colored beans (look like orange lentils...idk what they are...lol). She loves to shake it and make noise with it.
*Two different ribbons, about 6" long. One is very silky, the other a velvety texture.
*Wooden spoon.
*Metal measuring spoons.
*A tiny whisk.
*Corner of a wool receiving blanket.

There are more, but I can't remember the others right now. Her daughter is teething, and another thing my friend does is break out a bag of frozen corn from the freezer, and the little one will gnaw on that for comfort.

These are great, frugal ideas. All things you can find around the house, maybe with the exception of the tiny whisk. Hope those ideas help!!

[yitlan]

Our local YWCA and university sponsor a toy library. See if there's one in your town. You can trade out toys monthly. Ours even has books and resources for parents and childcare providers and materials that I use in my homeschooling. Here's some info about ours:
http://www.inspiredabq.com/calendarnews/0210.htm

[Thalia the Muse]

A pot of lukewarm water, a tablespoon of dishsoap, a strainer, and a giant drop cloth to sit on. ;-) This was my daughter's FAVORITE thing (although we live in Southern California, so we skipped the drop cloth and just did it on the front porch).

[elbow]

The large size yogurt containers. Wash them out and let her stack them and knock them down. Hours of fun trying to get lid on and then off. If you save about 10 you can bowl with them too.

[LaughingHyena]

clothes pegs, the old fashioned wooden ones without a spring.

• Simply taking them in and out of the box/basket and chewing them at first
• posting them into empty plastic bottles and trying to empty them out again (occasionally I had to cut apart the bottles to retrieve them)
• pegging them around the edge of a strong cardboard box
• painting them so we could sort them into matching coloured containers
• painting the cardboard box and pegging the coloured pegs in the matching sides
• pegging out dolls clothes
• pegging their artwork onto a line
• one day I intend making peg dolls

We have had a lot of use from our cheep pack of wooden pegs. Some days I even got to use them to peg out the washing but don;t do it with ones the kids have painted. Trust me it's not a good idea to use painted pegs on damp washing

[cschick]

It's a good time of year to get some cheapie outdoors games that can be used indoors for now and then taken outdoors for use by the kids once summer comes. Things with foam balls, foam rings, etc.

Target has some mainly foam-based outdoors games in blue boxes, I noticed they put them out recently. I have bought one or two this time of year both winters past. They were "cool" and got us through the bored-with-toys/bored-with-indoors time of year right now, and then went outside and got played with all summer as well.

[xmysticprincessx]

Garage sale season is coming up soon!