What to do with bottle caps...

Why do we even get sucked into buying toys?  Toy manufacturers jobs are to make us parents feel as though our kids need to have this or that so they will be smarter, do more, get ahead...etc.  It's mind boggling.  This time of year, I start to get questions from clients about the best toys for their child for the holidays.  There is inevitably some relative who thinks that the child must have the latest talking robot alphabet learning signing fine motor classical music development toy. 

Day after day, we find that less is more in our house.  Magda Gerber espoused the idea that an active toy makes a passive learner and a passive toy makes an active learner.  So true.  We are a home of non-battery operated things, we have few toys out at once, all the art supplies are accessible to small hands at anytime, and the kids find ways to make complicated games out of the darnedest things.  This morning and last night the big hits were a bunch of bottle caps and sweepers.  Kept them occupied for a looooooong time.  And they were cleaning up!  Of course, dumping the caps back out again to clean them up, but still...