Still following her Frozen obsession, I made this feeding game and presented it to Nina without instructions. There is this scene in Frozen II where Elsa is feeding Bruni with snowflakes from her hands – and while reading the film-based book, Nina lingered in this part for a while, pretending to feed Bruni with snowflakes from her hands. So I decided to make her this.
Well, yes she is old enough to understand what to do with it without instructions, but I am also interested to see what ideas she will come up with. As she gets older, I try to give less instructions with toys, only when necessary – and true enough she came up with different ideas while playing with Bruni.
First thing she did was of course, feed Bruni with the snowflakes. But even in doing so, she was making up stories as she went – she started asking him how many snowflakes he’d want, and feeding him with the correct amount. She also made up conversations using vocabulary like hungry, full, big, small, a lot, a little. And then she asked me how many snowflakes in total did I make. I watched as this humble DIY toy came alive in her hands.
She kept coming back to it throughout the day. Eventually she realised that I printed different kinds of snowflakes, but some of them are similar to each other. It was very interesting to see her observe the snowflakes, completely unprompted. She started doing a matching game, and discovered that there are more than 2 snowflakes with the same pattern. So she started sorting them into groups. I am pleased that she came up with all this on her own!
After sorting the snowflakes into groups, she started saying that the different patterns mean different flavours of snowflakes. Hence, another round began of her asking Bruni which flavour he’d like to eat before feeding him.
This is a great example of the notion that you don’t need flashy, complicated toys to engage your child. Simple, open-ended toys will stimulate their imagination to find ways to play with them.