Between school, clubs, homework, family life and screens, children’s days can quickly become surprisingly busy. Sometimes the simplest thing gets squeezed out: time just to play.
At Zanypig, we believe children should have plenty of opportunities to make, build, imagine, explore and simply enjoy themselves. Play doesn’t always need to be organised, educational or complicated. Sometimes all a child needs is a few well-chosen toys, a little space and enough time to decide what happens next.
Making a little more time to play can encourage creativity, independence, problem-solving and imagination, while giving children something else equally important: the chance to have fun.
Why Is Play Important for Children?
Play is one of the ways children naturally explore and understand the world around them.
Building a tower, completing a puzzle, inventing a café with a wooden tea set or creating something from a craft kit might look like simple fun, but children are experimenting, making decisions, solving problems and developing new skills as they go.
Different types of play can encourage different skills.
Creative play gives children the freedom to experiment and make their own choices.
Imaginative play encourages storytelling, communication and role play.
Puzzles and games can develop problem-solving, concentration and turn-taking.
Physical and sensory play gives children opportunities to explore movement, textures and cause and effect.
But play doesn’t always need a measurable outcome. Children also deserve time to play simply because they enjoy it.
Make Space for Screen-Free Play
Screens are a normal part of modern family life, but creating regular opportunities for screen-free play can encourage children to entertain themselves in different ways. You don’t necessarily need to ban screens or create elaborate activities. Instead, try making interesting toys and activities easy to reach.
A basket containing a puzzle, colouring activity, small craft kit or favourite game can be much more tempting when children can see it and choose it for themselves.
Our screen-free toys for children can provide plenty of inspiration for activities that encourage children to make, solve, imagine and play.
Let Children Decide How to Play
One of the easiest ways to encourage creativity is to choose toys that don’t dictate exactly what a child should do. An open-ended toy can become something completely different each time it comes out.
A wooden play set might be a shop one afternoon, a café the next and part of an entirely invented world by the weekend.
This freedom allows children to create their own stories rather than simply following instructions.
Explore our wooden toys for imaginative play for toys designed to leave plenty of room for children’s own ideas.
Make Something
Crafting is a wonderfully simple way to encourage children to slow down and concentrate on one activity.
Depending on their age, children might enjoy colouring, sticking, sewing, decorating, model making or creating something they can proudly display afterwards.
A ready-made craft kit can also make life considerably easier for parents because everything needed for the activity is already together, rather than discovering halfway through that the glue disappeared sometime around 2022.
Our creative craft kits for children include plenty of screen-free activities for children who love making things.
Solve Something
Not every child wants to sit down with paints and glitter. For children who enjoy a challenge, puzzles and games offer another form of playful learning.
Jigsaw puzzles can encourage concentration and visual problem-solving, while children’s board games introduce skills such as turn-taking, planning and working things out together.
Browse our jigsaw puzzles for children or discover board games for family play for activities that can be enjoyed independently or together.
Encourage Imaginative Play
Give a child a toy kitchen, dolls house, doctor’s set or collection of little figures and you’ll often discover an entire story taking shape.
Pretend play gives children the opportunity to recreate things they have seen in everyday life and invent completely new situations of their own. The beauty of role play is that there isn’t one correct way to play. Today’s toy café might become tomorrow’s restaurant, shop or rather chaotic five-star hotel.
Explore our role-play toys for children for toys designed to encourage storytelling and imagination.
Don’t Underestimate Simple Toys
Children don’t always need toys with flashing lights, instructions and twenty-seven different functions. Some of the toys that offer the greatest play value are remarkably simple.
Wooden figures, building toys, puzzles, dolls, soft toys and pretend-play sets leave room for children to bring something of themselves to the game.
A favourite soft toy for children, for example, might become a bedtime companion, passenger on a family trip, patient in a pretend hospital or guest at an imaginary tea party. The child creates the play rather than the toy doing all the work.
Play Together Sometimes
Independent play is valuable, but playing together can be just as important.
A quick board game after tea, doing a puzzle together on a rainy afternoon or helping build an imaginary shop doesn’t require an entire afternoon. Even twenty minutes of shared play can become one of those small parts of family life that children remember.
Try letting your child choose the game or activity. Adults don’t always need to lead. Occasionally our job is simply to turn up and accept that the four-year-old has invented some extremely questionable rules.
Build Play Into Everyday Routines
Making more time to play doesn’t have to mean finding another empty hour in an already busy day. Look for small opportunities instead.
After school, leave out a puzzle or craft activity.
Before tea, encourage a little independent play.
Turn bath time into playtime with [fun bath toys for children].
Keep a family game handy for weekends.
Pack a compact activity when travelling or eating out.
Little pockets of play throughout the day soon add up.
Choose Toys for the Child, Not the Stereotype
Children’s interests don’t fit neatly into pink and blue boxes. Some children love dinosaurs. Others want to make jewellery, build rockets, care for dolls, solve puzzles, create art or spend an afternoon running an imaginary café. Often they love several of those things at once.
Choosing toys according to a child’s age, personality and interests gives them far more freedom to discover what they genuinely enjoy.
At Zanypig, we believe toys are for everyone and that children should be encouraged to explore whatever captures their imagination.
How Much Playtime Do Children Need?
There isn’t one perfect number of minutes that every family needs to achieve. What matters more is giving children regular opportunities for unstructured, child-led play alongside their other activities.
Some days that might mean an afternoon building an imaginary world. On another day it might simply be ten minutes completing a puzzle before dinner.
Try not to make play another target that parents need to achieve. The aim is simply to protect a little space for it.
Make a Little More Time to Play
Childhood can be busy. But amongst the school runs, clubs, homework and everyday routines, there is still something rather special about giving children enough time to wonder:
What shall I make?
What shall I build?
Who shall I pretend to be?
What happens if I try this?
Those little moments of creativity and imagination are exactly why we believe in making a little more time to play.
Explore our collection of children’s toys and gifts, including creative activities, wooden toys, puzzles, games and imaginative toys chosen to make playtime that little bit more special.
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