Do you leave all toys accessible to the kids at all times? I swear most days, they take out every toy I own and play with nothing! It gets to the point where you can't walk through the room without stepping on toys. And then of course, no one wants to clean! I have stackable clear drawers to hold matchbox cars, dress up clothes, wooden blocks, duplo blocks and kitchen stuff. Dolls, books and larger trucks are on shelves. Dollhouse has all the stuff in it. Train table has little people garage, house etc on it. But they tend to take everything out of the stackable drawers and then move on to something else! Ideas???

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The same things happens here! I got rid of a lot of toys a couple weeks ago thinking that would help...... it didn't, so I'm going to be getting rid of more toys this weekend.

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I have all my toys in see through plastic bins. They get to choose what to play with and when they are done they pick up and put the bin away before choosing another one. If they do not pick up they do not move on to anything else until they do so.

The ones who do not understand this yet, have a toy box with a mix of items and everything just goes into the toy box when it is cleanup time. When it is cleanup time and time to put the toys back into the toy box I get them to "help" My 11 month old and 16 month old dcks think its a game. I hand them the toys and they put it in or they pick them up and hand them to me and I put them in. I teach them how to clean up this way and they are learning how to pick up for later as well.

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All my toys are separated into bins. No one is allowed to move from one activity to another without cleaning up the first thing they took out.

I do allow the kids to use blocks with the cars or the kitchen stuff with the dress up stuff and basically in whatever combined way they choose, but they have to put it all back where it came from. If things start looking a little too mixed up, I will ahve them do a quick clean up and go back to playing again.

I have a competely separate infant/toddler room that has bins of toys but alos has a toy box with a bunch of random mixed up toys. The toddlers are notoriaous for dumping and messing but putting it all back is simple when it all goes into one bin.

The toddler room is the only room I have that has a big mixed up toybox of "stuff".

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I've been doing daycare for almost 14 years and it seems like I still haven't found the perfect set up or way of containing things! The hardest ones I honestly find are my preschoolers.....they make horrible messes!!! Maybe I'll try the buckets again with tops. I had hoped the stackable drawers would work and maybe it's just that I need to be more strict about how many drawers they have open at a time. Today, there's no preschool so I have 8 kids (one being a baby) but the other 7 just trash everything! I guess I just need to crack down on them and the amount of stuff they take out.

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I move my dck's through stations, when it's time to rotate they clean up their station and then switch. They are always excited to go to the next station so they clean pretty fast. Then we we have free play I try to time it before snack time. Then when I say it's snack time, as soon as you clean up we can go eat they move really fast

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I have everything in plastic baskets on shelves, I limit what is gotten out at one time because it's less to clean up at one time. I have a group of all 2 1/2 and younger (all boys), I have found that it doesn't matter how much or how little I allow out at one time they don't play with any of it!!! They dump, scatter, and then want to move on to something else. I haven't found anything that holds there interest for more than a minute or two. OH YES I HAVE....****nning around and screaming....they LOVE that LOL

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I used to allow all toys to be accessed at all times and the result was just as you describe, toys everywhere! I think kids get overwhelmed with too many choices. So I started putting out only sets in little baskets I got at the thrift store, more Montessori style. At first I worried it wasn't enough toys but it works great! The toys actually get played with and clean up is WAY easier and the bonus is I have enough toys to rotate every week for 4 weeks so no one gets bored. Try it, you'll like it

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I recently began rotating out toys as well and it is much, much better. The children get more involved in their play and cooperate so much better.

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When I had all older kids (3-4yrs.) they all played great with all the toys and did a good job of picking up. When I have more Toddlers-2's & 3's I have to have fewer toys, fewer bins of toys (they just get dumped), and more self-contained toys like big trucks, bead mazes, dolls -without tons of food in the kitchen, etc.

I also have everything sorted and in bins. I also encourage clean as you go. If too much is out they must put some away before more can come out.

I have to save things like my awesome Melissa&Doug village building blocks for older kids who will build with them, not dump & walk away.

Also, my state requires 3 activities to be available per child.

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