treasure basket

Busy at play

Over the last month I have noticed Nate really taking an interest in toys with different shapes and natural textures, particularly wood. He spends hours rummaging through the treasure baskets at our local children's centre. I spoke about his interest in these objects with someone at the centre and learned that treasure baskets encourage heuristic play. Heuristic play is where children play with objects from the real world - natural objects with different textures, tastes and shapes. A good article describes it here.  

And for the past few weeks I have been eyeing up this treasure basket for Nate, but oh my gosh, it is so expensive at £75 - I simply can not justify purchasing it. 

So last week I decided to start making my own, cheap version of a treasure basket. It is not as beautiful or as perfectly complete as the pre-made basket, but it is cheap and, you know what, it's great! I think it's going to take a while to build up a full basket worth of goodies, but here is what I have so far. 

I got the basket from TK Maxx for £5. It's not round, but it is shallow and has a nice liner in it. I would have preferred if it did not have handles though because Nate keeps picking up the basket by the handle and tipping the contents out, but oh well. 

I also bought a children's baking set at TK Maxx for £2, which included a small wooden spoon, a metal whisk, a rolling pin and 5 cookie cutters. I bought bells, a wooden boat, a wooden bowl and a set of plastic nesting eggs (I couldn't find any wooden ones) from Mothercare for around £7. And the rest I found from around the house - an old scarf, some large pieces of potpourri, a toilet paper roll (which I have since removed - it quickly got chewed into pieces - bad idea!). 

And there you have it. A treasure basket for under £15 and Nate loves it. Here are some shots of the first time he played with it. 

Too cute!