Late last month (27 or 28 Feb), I put together a treasure basket for home use. I never would have thought that I would be the kind of mum who would put together a treasure basket. But, partly inspired by my super-mom friend, and having learnt about them, I ended up doing it, albeit it later than my procrastinating self had planned.

Baby-Ao has played with treasure baskets at the local community playgroup for several months (since October). Initially, when he couldn’t sit up, I would hand him random items from the treasure basket for him to inspect – not quite conforming to the “theory” behind heuristic play, but I thought it was better than nothing. Then when he could sit up, but couldn’t quite reach out to grab items from the treasure basket, again, I would either hand him something from the basket, or put a small selection of random objects around his feet, so he could easily reach them.

I had never really known about heuristic play, sensory play and treasure baskets before visiting our local community nursery. To be fair, I had never been even remotely interested in children before, so I never really gave children’s play any thought. I suppose, at the back of my mind, I would have assumed that children played with soft toys or commercial toys.

But having learnt more about heuristic play and treasure baskets, I thought it was a great idea, and decided that I wanted to have one at home, for Baby-Ao to play with in the afternoons (when the playgroup is closed). I vastly prefer sensory play compared to commercial, plastic, all-singing and all-dancing toys, which I often find too complicated, puzzling, and kind of annoying – I frequently don’t even know how to operate them, they seem to make noise constantly at the slightest touch and I don’t know how to shut them off. Besides, I don’t think that my baby should only be exposed to artificial, plastic textures. And it would also be easier to maintain – swapping out items in the treasure basket as needed, instead of filling our little flat with toys.

So, here’s my first treasure basket.

I bought the actual basket itself from a specific ‘treasure basket’-provider, because I figured that there’s probably a good basis for the treasure basket ‘guidance’ that it should be natural (sensory), round (so that there are no corners and baby can easily turn it and access all of it equally) and of a certain dimension – at least 4″ depth, ~13″ in diameter (I assume there must have been a study as to this being the optimal size for a good number of items while being manageable for baby).

But all the items in it were “found” items from around the home, except for the cones and seashells, which The Boy and I had expressly collected from France over Christmas, for the treasure basket (which I had been planning to start).

The items in my first treasure basket (from left to right):
1) cushion: the supporting cushion from the ErgoBaby Infant Insert that I bought for Baby-Ao
2) pink draw-string bag: this was the bag in which a gift (a snake soft toy) was
3) wooden ‘A’ sign: part of a baby gift (came with the hat which was the gift)contained
4) off-white lace baptismal cap: The Boy’s hand-me-down cap from his babyhood
5) small football: a gift from the Christmas party at our local community playgroup
6) 3 seashells: collected from beaches around Brittany over Christmas
7) small tube made of thick cardboard: the delivery container for some essential oils that I bought online
8) wooden massager from BodyShop: a gift from a friend
9) 1 pine cone & 1 cedar cone: collected from the roadside in France over Christmas
[the next items all came as part of a baby grooming gift-set]
10) loofah scrub
11) small hand-held wooden mirror
12) wooden hairbrush
13) wooden two-sided brush (I have no idea what the brush is for!)
14) rectangular basket (in which the above grooming kit was packed)
15) yellow ribbon (which was tied around the gift basket)

As you can see from a video with my Little Buddy playing with the treasure basket, Baby-Ao really enjoys the treasure basket, but his attention span is alarmingly short!

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Some resources / background reading on heuristic play / treasure baskets:
1. Heuristic play theory
2. Sensory play theory
3. Treasure basket guide