Sanity Saving Indoor Play Toys

One of the things I was most worried about moving from the west to the east coast was transitioning to spending significantly more time indoors.  With a little boy that never. stops. moving.  Despite having a bizarrely mild first winter here, we've had our fair share of bitter and windy days that have had us holed up indoors and racking our brains for ways to fill the time.   Here are some of our favorite toys to help you survive the days when you simply can't get outside, and all that toddler craziness still needs somewhere to go.

1. Quadroplay: This is a super versatile building system.  It works indoors or outdoors, perfect for sliding and climbing and hiding, and comes in sets in all sizes and quantities.  Explore the possibilities.

2. Fort Magic:  Along the same lines, Fort Magic is an open-ended fort building and construction toy kit.  It has won a myriad of awards for good reason.  There are a lot of toy options in this space, but one reason I think Fort Magic is consistently at the top of the list is because the set is large enough to really allow for creativity.

3. Foamnasium 4 Piece Gymnasium: This is a great find if you have a three and under crowd.  Crawling over and under and around, without having to worry about hard falls or nasty tumbles.

4.  Balance Beam:  This was a fun playroom addition.  It's a little shorter than you might imagine but it's still worked fine for our purposes.  I'm always interested to see the different ways that my kids use this: lining up action figures to shoot down, as a bridge over an alligator filled swamp, part of an obstacle course.  A little imagination goes a long way.

5. Gorilla Gym: This fits into the door frame and provides a little bit of everything.  Swinging, climbing, flipping, exercising.  I like that it's compact and can be used by a wide range of ages.  I don't like that it reminds me that I'm in my 30's and have yet to do an actual pull-up. Ever.

6. Jungle Jumperoo: We're going to jump on bandwagon here, no pun intended.  We finally caved at Christmas and got one of our own.  My two year old jumps up and down chanting the words "So happy, so happy, so happy."  Every kid that comes over loves it.  The accessories are nice additions, especially the swing.  My five year old is obsessed with Indiana Jones right now and he is constantly asking me to play the movie's theme song as he swings through the Jumperoo over and over.  And over again.  Just a note- they have really good sales on these pretty frequently.  Over the holidays we got ours for about 25% off and free shipping (which is usually $80).  So if it's something you're interested in, keep an eye out over holiday weekends.