Melanie Nilles

Don’t dish out the dough for expensive toys. Here are some tried and true and CHEAP favorites that preschoolers often prefer to those fancy toys:

1. Play-Doh. It can keep a kid entertained for hours, especially if you invest in a set with different shapes.

2. Bubbles. Bubbles. Bubbles! Kids love blowing bubbles. They’re cheap and they’re fun. And it’s a great outdoor activity, especially when they chase the bubbles. Whether you blow and they chase, or they blow the bubbles, themselves, it’s worth a lot of fun.

3. Balls. Bouncing balls can provide a long time of imaginative play, from games to simply bouncing on a large ball, kids get creative and find many uses.

4. Crayons and paper. Kids love art! They especially love to scribble and it’s a great way for them to practice holding a writing utensil, which they will need in order to start writing skills.

5. Scissors and paper. Preschoolers LOVE to cut things. Be sure you give them only kid-safe scissors with no more than 2 inch blades and blunted ends. Give them paper and let them have at it. But don’t turn you back, because they like to experiment on things other than paper.

6. Brown paper bags. The small sandwich bags are perfect for little hands to use them as puppets. Give them some crayons and let them draw faces and make their own puppet show!

7. Paper towel rolls. The inner rolls can be made into anything with your imagination, but most often, what a preschooler will want most is to look through them like a telescope. They can be pirates or stargazers, or even jedi

8. Sand. The sandBOX or TABLE to contain it will cost more but playground sand is fairly cheap, as are the toys to make castles and anything else kids can imagine.

9. Water. A tub or basin with just a couple inches of water and some cups will turn into a mess, but it’s only water. And kids love to play in water.

10. Pots, pans, mixing spoons. We already have them in our house, but these transform into drums, microphones, and myriad other imaginary items.

11. Boxes. Kids love boxes, especially when they can sit in them. With imagination, boxes turn into cars, buses, boats, and slides (especially if you have a laminate floor )

12. Bubble wrap. At least while they still have something to pop, preschoolers love stomping or jumping on it.

13. Cannisters. Either the old Quaker Oatmeal cannisters or those that nuts or formula come in make great drums. Maybe not for adult ears, but kids love to make noise.

14. Puzzles. Not all preschoolers like them, but if you start out easy, many will grow to love them. You can also make your own puzzles with pictures, cardboard, glue and scissors.

I hope this gives you parents out there some ideas. From my experience as a daycare provider, these are the “toys” that I have found to keep kids entertained far longer than expensive toys. (The other toys kids like, but which cost more, are wooden blocks to build with, Duplo’s by Lego(tm), Mega-Bloks, and other similar building blocks.)

So, save your money on toys kids will only like for a short time anyway.