Why Open Shelving Might Be For You

Are you on the side of the internet where open shelving and displaying your children's toys is the new trend? Whether the people sharing these things know it or not there is actually good reason for having open shelving in your play space and it has Montessori roots.

Toy boxes with your children's names engraved on them that are handmade by a grandparent can be special family heirlooms, but well built play shelves can also become family heirlooms and bring their own set of benefits! Let's start by addressing the kind of frustrations that a toy box presents. In a toy box all of your children's toys are piled on top of one another. It is often hard to find that one toy they are looking for and it is generally very unorganized.

Because of these traits of a toy box, it often encourages children to dump the whole thing, get easily frustrated that they can't find a toy, leading to a possible meltdown and decreases play opportunities.When we take a look at a Montessori style shelf approach to storing and displaying toys you will notice it is easy to see where each item is, everything has a place which makes finding toys and cleaning them up easier and it is generally more aesthetically pleasing to the eye for both the child and parent.

Open shelving allows only a handful of toys to be out at a time. The amount of toys on the shelf may reflect the amount that the child is capable of cleaning up without being overstimulated or where the child is at developmentally. You might ask, "Where do the rest of the toys we own go if we are only putting a few out on the shelf at a time?" The answer to that is toy rotation, which you can find its own article on, on this website.

With open shelving any activities that we do with our child or create for them can be left out for them to revisit when they please. It allows all of the pieces to each toy and activity be in the same, accessible, spot for our child, which decreases their frustration when playing, because they don't have to go looking for pieces of their toy or puzzle. It is just all together in one place on their shelf. When the child can see all of their available play materials in one organized spot it often sparks their creativity as well as their imagination. Presentation is a key player and by using a play shelf, play can be all fun and lower frustration!