Christmas is over and the presents are all over the house. You maybe drowning in toys and bits of Lego. You may have even heard, ” I’m bored!”

Your New Year’s resolutions include spending more time with family but doing what?

In the last few years, I’ve been writing about spending time with your under 5 kiddo doing activities that are open ended, developmentally appropriate, spontaneous, creative, not necessarily craft based, doing it for the sake of it and not for a specific product, using exploratory play, encouraging no-battery play, and finding and using interesting items we have at home.

This style of play with wooden blocks, sheets for tents, can seem strangely old fashioned and slow in a world of DS, Wii, Educational Toys & DvDs.

I’ve tried to show there doesn’t have to be an either or.  Just more of a balance. I don’t see the plugged toys having any problem with showing us their way but perhaps we all need a reminder about how important unplugged play really is with real examples.

Here’s that balance…………..

Join us for

Operation Playtime

– 12 days of unplugged play

20th January 2009

What I’ll do?

Each day I’ll be sharing a play activity you can adapt and try with your little one.

These are the activities you’ve read about and perhaps like me too, haven’t got around to doing them or certainly not as much as you’d like. Let’s carve out the time and try them together.  The activity isn’t as important as how the children and you do it together. We can let them steer and guide us for this activity- within safe limits of course.

What can I do?

Join in. Post your experiences on your blog. Put aside worries about getting things to look and be right. The kids will love to do it with you. I’m sure you’ve seen through these posts here at play-activities. It’s not about achieving perfection but instead the process often for both of us.

Add ” Operation Playtime” badge to your blog.

Come back and add your post to Mr. Linky. Visit, encourage and be inspired by others who are participating. Tell us about your experiences- what was fun and not so fun and perhaps if you’d do it again. Take photographs and audio to share with us. We can cheer and help each other on.  Bonus: We use the DoFollow plugin here so leaving a comment in the comments section provides you with incoming links from me.

Tell others. Share your play activities with your friends. If you use Twitter let’s use the hashtag #opt when talking about Operation playtime. You’ll need to be following @hashtags for this feature to work.

Follow me on twitter.

Why do this?

• We can spend a lot of time online. Here’s an opportunity to take purposeful time away with our kids and spend time together one on one time.
• Chance to show us and them alternative play activities to kick start their creativity.
• Start more unplugged play activities
• Begin conversations about play activities for little ones
• Share ideas.
• because how your children play or not should not be about guilt. But fun and your example bag overflowing with ideas 🙂

Contributors to Operation Playtime

Allison McDonald, parent and educator of No time for flash cards

Amber Passey, parent and educator of Because Babies Grow Up

Amy Anderson, parent, shop owner and educator, of Let’s explore

Shannon, parent and educator, of Teaching tiny tots

If you have an unplugged play idea you’d like to see tried, please leave the idea in the comments below.

So are you in? Will you be coming to play?