The activity boxes can be whatever you wish honestly. I have 6 I rotate currently.
My two year old is sensory and loves tactile things to play with. My 4 year old is highly imaginative and I can give him sticks and he builds a hockey rink and plays the game out in his mind with sound effects and everything.
I don’t think there is a wrong way to do it, I just avoid technology and putting too much in them.
A nice side effect is I buy them less toys because by the time they get to the last box, it feels brand new to them even if they played with those toys 20 times prior.
That bit of it shocked me, we spoil kids too much with new stuff, just make them use what they have in a way that feels new.
How much do you monitor them? If I tried to leave my twin 2 year olds alone for an hour, one would probably strip naked and play with whatever is in his diaper, and the other would do her best to destroy whatever she could find in the room. She especially loves to dismantle books.
The first couple times are tough, like toilet training. Sometimes to learn you gotta pee on the rug. And when you (the parent) aren't there to react, the novelty of their disaster-play goes away - surprisingly fast. Little brains work faster than I think we give them credit for. Their bodies are not strong but that brain is some kind of magic sponge.
He's never done this while we're there. Only in the middle of the night. He wakes up, doesn't cry, and plays. Sometimes when we come in in the morning it's a literal shit show.
With the two year old I stay nearby in the other room working and have a monitor. The 4 year old does whatever. My two year old verbalizes before things get destructive, but I only had to deal with it a few times before he settled into it.
The activity boxes can be whatever you wish honestly. I have 6 I rotate currently.
My two year old is sensory and loves tactile things to play with. My 4 year old is highly imaginative and I can give him sticks and he builds a hockey rink and plays the game out in his mind with sound effects and everything.
I don’t think there is a wrong way to do it, I just avoid technology and putting too much in them.
A nice side effect is I buy them less toys because by the time they get to the last box, it feels brand new to them even if they played with those toys 20 times prior.
That bit of it shocked me, we spoil kids too much with new stuff, just make them use what they have in a way that feels new.