New Toy Tuesday

I'll be the first to admit, we have a lot of toys for Riley.  Definitely not as many as some people I've seen though, that's for sure.  Total we have 4 small/medium sized bins of toys.  And finally today I went through and removed half of them- labeling them too "baby-ish" or pretty lame/useless in terms of doing anything useful for Riley.  Aside from being a chew toy, of course.

Anyway, as I was sorting through all her toys, I thought of all the things she likes to play with that aren't really toys, and I also got this idea to each week try and make her some kind of new toy from something we already have, or something that's pretty cheap.  Nothing over the top or too fantastic, but something new for her to play with, and hopefully something that might help her development.  So each Tuesday I hope to share what we've come up with!  It won't always be a toy some days it might be an art project or an activity but it will almost always be with ingredients/tools we already have laying around the house, with the goal of something developmentally appropriate/stimulating!

Today's toy?  Pegs in a jar.  Creative, I know. :)

Basically, I took a glass baby food jar, rinsed it out, and collected different color laundry pegs and put them in a jar, and put it out to see what Riley would do with it.  She noticed it right away, and pulled all the pegs out one by one.  Totally simple, totally basic, but with this simple toy we were able to use fin motor skills while talking about colors and counting.  We also worked on signing "again" and "help," since she couldn't seem to get the pegs back in the jar without a little help. 

She played with me and this little jar for over half an hour straight!  Total cost? $0.  Difficulty? 1 out of 10.Easy peazy.