Now you may look at the picture below and think, “Wow. A cardboard mailing tube. And I should care because…?”
But if you’re a certain five year-old, you’d see that mailing tube, ask your daddy to cut the ends off of it, and then you’d christen ye olde mailing tube as “THE MOST! AWESOME! SUPER SLIDE! EVVVVVVVER!”
And see those Star Wars action figures off to the side of the picture? Super Slide casualties. Which is understandable, of course. The Super Slide is very tricky.
Now I certainly don’t wish bodily harm on the Stormtroopers. That would just be wrong. But I’m thinking that they’re gonna have to buck up, throw on an air cast, and brave the Super Slide again, because that sassy cardboard cylinder has provided HOURS of entertainment this week.
Hours.
In fact, I’m thinking of having it bronzed.
So. What’s the favorite non-toy toy in your house? Think it can go toe-to-toe with THE MOST AWESOME SUPER SLIDE EVVVVVVVER?
Holla back in the comments. I have a feeling I’m going to laugh my head off when I read them.
My 3 1/2 yr old LOVES looking at Thomas the Tank Engine catalogs. Or any of the toy catalogs that come around Christmas time. Great for long car trips.
Thankfully, he thinks it is a “book” and doesn’t ask me for any of the toys!
I agree with EVERYONE about the boxes and bubble wrap. My mom brings a stack of it every time she visits.
for the boy AND the girl in my house, it’s definitely two things – always together:
pillow shams and afghans. (let me clarify: every single pillow and pillow sham and blanket and afghan in the whole house.) All manner of tents and towers and castles have been built, propped, and anchored around here. And absolutely ANYTHING will do for an anchor: a door, a chair, a box, you name it.
and for all the work it takes to assemble these masterpieces, you CAN NOT take it down the same day. It must be enjoyed and played in for at least two or three days.
and it’s a bonus if they can get the dog to stay in there too.
When my twins were a little over two, I walked in the back door from getting the mail. I heard “catch me!”. In horror I looked up and saw a little flying body propelling off of the top of the refrigerator. I dropped the mail and caught her little body with relief–until I heard one second later, “catch me, too!”. Her twin hooked me by the neck on the way down and we all slammed to the floor. I lay prostrate with the breath knocked out of me while my twins sat on top of me and giggled. It was the best ride of their life.
In the two minutes that I had been outside, they had climbed out of their playpen, onto the hamper, up to the washing machine, and somehow gripped their way up to the top of the fridge. Anything climbable was their favorite toy, including me.
Unfortunately it is the boys’ mattresses. They are their superslides. Downside? We have to help put the bed back together. Ugh.
Also, the bed provides an awesome fort. Can’t say that I blame them, there.
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Hey! One of those tubes is sitting on our landing right now, clearly resting in between bouts of being a tunnel or a slide or a hiding place for legos.
Other favorites here: anything cardboard, bubble wrap (for me..er..I mean, for the 2-year-old), and my 9-year-old would love to play with packing peanuts but I just can’t allow that. The potential for Gigantic Mess is just too great.
My 10 month old’s favorite toy is the remote control. Unfortunately she has to fight daddy for it, but usually she wins! There’s a button that makes all the other buttons bright red and she loves to push that and laugh like crazy. When she learns how to turn the channels I think we’ll have to find a new toy!
We have an all-out war in my house about every other day. You see that is when the toilet paper roll is emptied and one little princess becomes the proud owner of a brand, spankin’ new telescope.
Hmm…let’s see.
Laundry baskets
Paper towel/wrapping paper rolls
Headphones – My daughter would wear them and say she is a movie star. I’m not sure where she picked up that.
Large boxes
Mud pies. The other night, my son wanted to bring them in, place some on his bookshelf and sleep with one. Um, no, not ever, son! Can you imagine the horror if slob and mud pie were to mix it up in the night?
NOTHING beats a cardboard box. My kids can make anything from a cardboard box. The latest was a sled that my daughter made. Too bad its summer…. oh, and we live in the Middle East- in the dessert!
The kids usually love our old dead cell phones or our old dead remote controls. The boys have also always loved the roll in the middle of the paper towels or the roll in the middle of the toilet paper. They use these in similar fashion to how your son uses his. Boys are very inventive with their tubing.
An empty under the bed plastic storage container. I actually just put pictures of how they “play” with it up on my blog…
Miller’s favorite non toy in the house is the vacuum cleaner attachments and he wears me out with them…when i get that cleaner out he starts taking the attachments apart…aghhhh!
TAMPONS…yep. They discovered that they swell up to 5 times their size and they have awesome cords to swing them with. Then the use the cardboard pieces as building blocks. This was my first time leaving a comment although I have read your blog for a year now! Love it! And I actually saw you in passing at Deeper Still in Atl and I was so shocked I saw you… I couldn’t say, “hey, I know you!” for the life of me. It is a small small world. Janice in Dublin, Ga
Cardboard tube!! Right up there with the bubble wrap from boxes. It makes a wonderful dance surface. Much better than the ones that play real MUSIC when you dance on it. The plastic bubble wrap not only pops if you stomp just right, it also provides texture and bounce to the bare dancing feet.
Oh, little cars go through those nicely, too. When I got my two chairs from Ikea, you should have seen the fun that the kids had in those big old boxes!
Our most favorite non-toys were anything you could swing on. Like the refrigerator door. Or the cabinets. Or the shelving in our closets (until he pulled one down on top of him). Our son is now 18, but all of our heavy oak cabinet doors are warped due to his hanging on them.
Well, my children are all teenagers now, but they still get creative. My 17 yo son just returned from working with my BIL this summer. My son made Mr. Plank to entertain his young cousins. He is a piece of a plank, about 6×3 inches tall, with a goofy face drawn on him. He doesn’t do much, according to my boy, just sits and watches – he’s a good listener. But my nephews loved him. A piece of wood. He has also entertained these same cousins by getting everyone under the table and shaking the table, making “space ship” sounds – they traveled the galaxies together for an afternoon. The little boys had a blast – and I think the big boy did too! ;)
When my son was 2, he began speech therapy. His therapist had a bean box–a big old plastic box FULL of dried pinto beans–kind of like a rice table but in a box and easier to clean up. She would bury toys in it, and Thad would have to say the name of whatever he found. He LOVED it, so we replicated the bean box at home.
After much playing, the bean box went the way of the do-do and was forgotten, then dismantled.
Our son is now 7.
This summer, we repainted our house to put it on the market. My husband was taking off all of the outlet covers when I heard hysterical laughter. We had one cover that had a round hole for a stereo wire–which we’d never installed–and it was the perfect size in which to put a dried pinto bean–and at the perfect height for our then two/three year old son to reach–and it had been in a little corner behind the couch which was a PERFECT place to hide. Inside the outlet box, behind the cover, were enough dried pinto beans to make some Tex-Mex.
So, I’d have to say a box of dried pinto beans and a wall outlet.
First time commenter. Love your blog and I love this post!
My two girls (4 and 2) love to play with tissue wrapping paper. Their favorite thing to do is to spread it all over the floors and declare the house has been decorated. They also spread them all over and say they are their gymnastics mats. Then proceed to do somersaults for at least an hour.
Runner up is cardboard tubes (paper towels, toilet paper, wrapping paper)….perfectly used as telescopes or swords.
My triplets favorite toy for a long time was a big bag of frozen juice can lids. I saved like 100 of them thinking I’d make a memory game or something with them (still a good idea). But I never got around to it. They used those lids as play money, letters to mail, made paths for their cars and dolls, everything. They were all over forever.
Runner up is a quilt – the designs are great for driving cars on!
My youngest son, aka whirling dervish, loved my mom’s cell phone and fax machine. He somehow knew the difference between the toy ones that we tried putting in his path and the real thing. Only the real thing would do.
I don’t know if you’ll actually read this comment, since I am MANY days late in responding, but my son gets all upset when he sees an empty toilet paper or paper towel roll in the trash. Ever since his daddy annointed them “ta-doo-ta-doos” he has been hooked!