Is Your House too Small for Your Kids to Play? Here are 3 Simple Tips You Can Try.

Do you believe in unstructured play but you live in a small house or a small apartment with no backyard and little space to let kids run around, explore and play? Living in a small house shouldn’t be an obstacle for a child’s need to play.

Here are some ideas on how to tackle this problem.

1. Allocate time for outdoor play

Kids will be kids, they have lots of energy in them and they need to let that energy out. The best way is to allocate and commit some time for them to let that energy out with some outdoor activity every day. It’s hard if you don’t have a backyard to let kids play and run around. To overcome this, scheduling outdoor activities every day in your family’s schedule might be the answer. 

Let the kids go to the park, play at the playground or just go for walks together as a family. It can be for 30 minutes or 1 hour per day in the morning or late afternoon or in the evening, whichever time fits for your family.

Children under 5 years old actually need 3 hours of active play per day, the more the better. If you can commit to that is good but do what works for your family, every child is different, they might have different nap times, and every family dynamic is also is different, some might have only one child, while others need to care for more, so always do what works for your family. If 30 minutes is all you can do, then do it. It’s better than nothing. Focus instead on being consistent.

2. Let them make a mess

No time to get the kids outdoor? Then, take a deep breath and let kids make a mess in the house. Parents need to compromise messy houses for their child’s development. Children learn through play, let them explore and be imaginative. It’s okay to let go of the tidiness of your house and let the child make a mess. Just remember, a mess can always be clean and tidy up. The neutron connections that happened in your child’s brain during play? Priceless.

Letting kids make a mess, doesn’t mean you should let them do anything and let them run wild and destroy the house. Tell them the boundaries that you’d like them to follow like “no drawing on the wall” or “no playing in the kitchen” and tell them the reason why they’re not allowed and the consequences if they still do. Teach them responsibilities like putting their toys away after they’re done.

3. Encourage loose part play 

Loose part play is when kids play with loose materials and it’s an open-ended play. The materials can be used in numerous ways like moved, lined up, redesigned, combined, be taken apart or put together. It’s child-led and there’s no specific way to play. This type of play is very imaginative for children because the materials they use can be anything they want them to be. The materials can also be just things inside the house. For example, they can use boxes, which can be anything they want it to be, a train or a dollhouse, whatever their imagination takes them.

If you feel there are not enough materials in the house for the kids to play with or prefer to invest in toys instead, you can choose to buy open-ended toys for your children. Open-ended toys are designed for children to use their imagination. Examples of toys are wooden blocks, magnetic tiles, wooden rainbow blocks, peg dolls etc. This type of toy is usually quite pricey but they can be played by any age, so the price is worth considering as it can be used for a long time.