No problem.
My comment was:

I don't allow kids access to anything in the shelves or the surface area of the shelves.

This means that the kids can't just get into our 24 bins in the shelving units I have without invitation and they can't use the top of the shelving or the shelves themselves to play on.

When we have something we are going to have them do that is housed in the bins in the shelving we bring that one bin out and put it on the floor. They are not allowed to use the container in their play.... just the contents of the cubbie. Once they have removed (one by one... no dumping) the contents of the bin we remove the bin and put it back. When it's time to clean up the bin comes back out... is put on the floor... they refill it and WE put it back. The only exception to that is when we have our "pack leader" assist.

They are trained as soon as they can walk to leave the shelving units alone. We house a number of our collections in there and the bins themselves were pretty pricey. The bins are also hard plastic so they can be broken or cracked posing a safety issue for the kids if they are played with and a big replacement fee to replace as they are currently only sold in packs of twelve.

A number of the collections in the bins are also for specific age ranges. We want to make sure that whatever is being played with matches the children we are getting them out for.

Kids are attracted to anything that they can play with standing up. They have a tendency to go for the easiest thing to get to with as little motion as they can do. My kids are much more interested in the containers, the shelving, and the "table top" of the shelving than they are the collections.

I don't have "table top" play for general free play. I don't have free access tables in my rooms. I have two pieces of equipment that have small (one square foot max. flat area that are only used for those particular toys... toy tool bench and Melissa and Doug piece of crap kitchen)

I teach them a method of playing on the floor where the floor is their table. We have carpeting that allows building directly on it so we want their play to be at floor level. We do use a large grid duplo table for duplo play because they are too light weighted to build off the floor. We only allow duplos on that table and it is not a flat surface (grids are bumpy)

The beauty of the "floor is your table" play is that the kids get up and down off the floor hundreds of times in a normal play time. This is an amazing way to get a lot of great exercise when they play. When what they are doing is on the floor they don't sit at the toy for long... they get up... bend over... get on their knees... lean to one side... lean to the other... etc.

When you have shelving available to them.. in my experience... they first want to "tear up" or "take down" anything on the shelving. We hear this OVER AND OVER year after year from frustrated providers who complain that they are just dumping out the stuff, cluttering the floor, and then a lot of adult involvement to get it put back. Often the answer is that just a little is put on the shelf at a time.

When you do these methods the kids then use the shelving as their table or their climber. They use any bins to turn over and stand on. They want to put the bins in and out over and over and use the bins to haord the toys they don't want the others to have.

They also use the top of the shelving and play "over their heads" on the surface and use the height of the surface to drop things down.

I've cared for over a hundred kids in my career and I know for sure that dumping, tearing up, tearing down, playing with bins and containers by pulling them out and putting them back in are skill sets that are VERY easily learned and don't need daily practice. Most infants figure dumping out and are master dumpers by age one. Most kids learn shortly after they start walking how to tear down a shelf of toys. They can tear up a book during the first year. By the mid first year they can pull bins out of the cabinets with ease. By the end of the first year they can put it back.

These skill sets are REALLY low level skills that nearly every very young baby and new toddler can do and do SUPER well. I don't think they need practice daily with dumping, tearing down, tearing apart, disasembling, etc. I'm confident by watching my crew play year after year that they GET IT and are actually GIFTED in it at a very young age.


So our play rules don't include fostering these already easy and well practiced skills. Now we do have a few toys for the infants like a big cloth block with a velcroed top that has three shapes that you can unlatch the lid, dump out the three soft blocks, and put them back thru their shape slot. I don't mind having small numbered items like that that the babies can play with. I just don't have larged number dumping toys. All of these kids here at my house now are over 18 months and every one of them could go down and completely dump out my entire 24 shelves in less than a few minutes. The kids two and up could replace the empty bins into the shelving within a minute or two. They could turn over all of our bins. They could tear up all of our books.

They already have the skill set for these developmental tasks so I'm confident they are coming along well. I keep our play rules to the next level which is focusing on the CONTENTS of the containers... removing the contents one by one... playing with them on the floor... returning the contents into the contaners and then us returning the container to the shelving.

THAT'S the skill set I'm after. That's what my kids do with shelved toys. Because there are so many different containers with so many little collections they have something new and different all the time. We try to mix and match what they are doing so by the end of the month they have had a shot at all of the different toys.


I do allow the "pack leader" of my group (the eldest child who was raised here) to choose the bin of the day quite a bit. She is also allowed to remove and return the bins with our direction. It's a "special" for the eldest in the group. She knows where everything is at a glance so it helps me to pick out the collections and she (being raised here) is very careful with the bins and is capable (with supervision and direction) of getting them out for whoever is using them. She doesn't have free reign to them but she does like the honor of being the bin girl.

We have her apprentice (2nd eldest pack leader in training) do it now and then because eventually she will become the pack leader so she is practicing 'helping" when the leader isn't here.

So by assigning rules and "special" to it we make the bins and shelving workable and long lasting. The children VALUE the toys in the bins. We make the contents of the containers the most important aspect of them and the ability to get them in and out something that's only done with direction, supervision, and as a privledge that is earned after four/five years here.

These are one of the number of "rules of play" we use to keep everything running smoothly and everyone calm and playing appropriately with the stuff. They are all played out by nap time and take a good long deep afternoon nap. They are also PHENOMENAL toy players and amazing builders. They are sweet to each other and don't fight at all. This one baisc foundational play way along with our other rules of play keep everything running smoothly and everybody happy. It involves very little adult involvement other than visual supervision which we are doing anyway

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