3 years old!

[anna*]

Dear heavens I can't believe my baby is about to be three! She's 3 at the end of October, and then of course it's not long to Christmas, so looking for ideas for her. For one or other we will possibly give her my old dolls house and get some new furniture/people for it (the original stuff was all eaten by mice). But maybe will leave it for next year. She LOVES small world stuff, family units. And crafts (although obviously the co-ordination isn't there yet for anything fiddly).

  my baby is growing up!!

[*Ali*]

I can't believe it has been 3yrs since our littlies were born either!

Have you tried the maxi hama beads? Colby is able to do those now and really enjoys it. Much easier than the small ones because they are much bigger and also the boards are transparent so you put the pattern underneath and can see exactly what colour goes where.

Does she like dressing up? What about some of those sets of dressing up costumes?

Do you have a doctors kit? Playing doctors with each other (or me) or soft toys is a winner here too.

[cath~]

Scooter?

A few non-toy ideas:

one of those poncho style towels for after swimming
Something else for swimming eg noodle
set of cookie cutters and apron for cooking
umbrella
Bag/backpack (eg cute animal one)
Wash bag
Small chair
Bean bag
Apron for crafts
Selection of craft bits eg Pom Poms, coloured paper, glitter glue, pipe cleaners, tissue paper squares, scissors, paints, chalks, sparkly oil pastel crayons (we had a Set from the ELC and they were great)
Night light
Cushion

[C&B&E]

I know, where did those babies go?! Evelyn loves her dolls pushchair, little pop up tent and tunnel, garden trowel and garden spade, and copious amounts of playmobil  . I'm sure you've come across them but the Safari Ltd Toobs are great and have all sorts of things for small world play (oceans, space, etc).

[Erin M]

Just popping this over to Activity.   

[creations]

DS got a big duplo hospital at 3yo, if you are giving the dolls house it may be too similar in terms of small world play but if you choose to wait another year for the doll house then something like that could be worth looking into. He absolutely loved following the instructions (with a bit of help when he first turned 3) to make the hospital up in a number of different ways and since then we've used the pieces to go 'off plan' to make all sorts, farm barn, train stations, airport, hotel etc. Once it's built we use small world bits from other toys such as toy animals for the farm, little character toys for hotel guests etc so it's quite adaptable.

balance bike
mosaic stickers
jigsaws
musical instruments (ocarina, harmonica, recorder - we got DS a zither which he can now play tunes on)
picnic basket set
letter/number/shape stamp set
chunky threading beads
big tub of stickers - DS has animals and like to make 'scenes' on blank coloured paper
cash till for playing shops, post office, cafe
sweetie shop (he was given this, I wasn't all 'that' happy about it being a sweetie shop but we filled the tubs with shiny stones from a garden centre, large marbles, various pasta shapes.  I made lots of hand made paper sweetie bags to go with it)
weighing scales (the balance ones with big buckets are fun for water, sand or dry objects such as toys and pasta to be weighed)
second the dress up stuff too