Whenever I catch up with my mummy girlfriends our conversations are often about finding a healthy work/life balance. We all try our best to come up with fun activities that truly engage our little ones in play. Whether you’re a stay-at-home mum, you work from home or you commute to your job, it’s not always easy to find time to think of new ideas to feed your little one’s imagination. Try slowing down and watching them play… as I recently discovered.

Spending quality time with my two cherubs is something I’ve been trying to do more of lately. I had to admit to myself that I was trying to do too much and that All Abroad J, my toddler (who’s going through the terrible twos), wasn’t getting the best out of his mum. Let me give you an example: during my first ‘slow down day’ I was on my way outside to the clothes line. I walked past my little man playing with his Thomas the Tank Engine trains on his play table. The table is reversible and one of the panels was on a slant. I promptly ‘fixed it’ for him and got on with hanging the washing. All Abroad J didn’t say a word, he just looked at me with a confused expression on his face.

The next day it was the same scenario, my little man was playing with his trains and I noticed that the panel for the table was again on a slant. As I walked towards him with the intention of straightening it, All Abroad J was holding Thomas and precariously dangling him over the edge – except this time he said: “Look, Mummy, he’s on the cliff!”. As I took in the scene I quickly realised that my son had ingeniously lifted the panel and placed it in a way so that he could create his own cliff face. No wonder he’d looked so bewildered the day before when I ‘fixed’ the table for him!

I’m not going to pretend that I immediately got to work on the cardboard creation above. The truth is, I told my husband about our little man’s engineering attempt, so last weekend we cut up cardboard box after cardboard box and transformed them with a wide-eyed All Abroad J – who’s now the proud owner of his very own homemade Knapford Station with train track, cliff edges and all.

For another DIY idea you can make a Special Time Box, which I wrote about in this post. Have you created something with your little ones that other mums and dads could easily make? Please share it with us! Take a photo and upload it to the AAB Facebook page.

All Abroad J is wearing a Petit Bateau vintage striped T-shirt and briefs, available at Bibaloo.