What-If Jar and Playmobil Toys!

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Toys. All kids love them. As a parent, I love them too, but not all toys are created equally. We all know what it’s like to pick out a special toy for your child’s Birthday or Christmas only to have it played with once and then sit in the toy bin untouched. My favorite toys capture my kids imaginations and they play with them forever, adding to the pieces with things we already have, and asking each other if they want to play it together all the time.

This year for Ford’s birthday, we got him the PLAYMOBIL Take Along Police Station and it has been one of my favorite toys we’ve ever bought the kids, and one of their favorites too.

Hover over the image above to be able to click links and shop for PLAYMOBIL toys!

I headed to Walmart to buy it, and loved the selection of different real-life sets (like police-men and firemen) and fantasy sets (dinosaurs, pirate ships, and Ghostbusters). I also loved that all the sets have the same kind of figures so you could mix them up and play with them in any set you buy. Right now all three of my boys are obsessed with all things police, so I bought the PLAYMOBIL Take Along Police Station and the Police Cruiser.

To go along with our new PLAYMOBIL set, I made this “What-if?” Jar that I wanted to share. I love to encourage my kids imaginations and one way we do that when playing is to make up fun prompts like “What if a dinosaur showed up and started chasing everyone?” or “What if all the sudden it started raining?”. My kids always think it’s so silly and get excited with the crazy ideas of what could happen, and then they take off with their imaginations. Sometimes it helps them to play longer when they have gotten bored. Since Sawyer can read now, I made this jar full of fun “What-if” prompts for my kids to have if they want to grab one. Now it’s become a game, and they are always grabbing a paper from the jar because they think it’s so funny seeing what crazy situation could happen and then making their toys respond to it.

Supplies: The only supplies you’ll need is a jar (here’s one similar to mine) and some paper, and your imagination! If you want to, you can also get some vinyl to make a cute “what if?” to go on the outside like mine has.

A What-if? Jar is easy to make! Simply print or write your “What if?” prompts onto slips of paper. I typed mine on the computer and then printed it off, and cut the paper into 1 1/2” strips. Here are some ideas that I did:

-What if a tornado came?
-What if all the sudden it was night?
-What if they all turned into chickens? (sounds silly, but my kids LOVE this one!)
-What if Batman showed up?
-What if a volcano erupted and hot lava was coming?
-What if it was Christmas?
-What if the bad guy escaped?
-What if the bad guy was a T-Rex?
-What if all the people were wearing rolling skates?
-What if all the people could only sing?
-What if a lion showed up?
-What if all the police cars ran out of gas?
-What if the police men all had super powers?
Use your imagination and come up with some of your own! The sillier ones are my kids favorite!

After cutting them, I rolled up the strips and put them in the jar! I kept adding until our jar was all full. I added the vinyl decal to make it extra cute, and then we were ready to play!

My kids love their PLAYMOBIL Take Along Police Station, so it was the perfect toy to try our “What if” Jar out on. Because the set is so detailed and is such high-quality, it makes it easy to use your imagination and my kids love that it is so realistic. Each police man has accessories like a hat, walkie-talkies, phones, handcuffs, and more. Even the motorcycle has it’s own hazard light and accessories that go in the back.

So while they were in Rhett’s room playing, I grabbed the jar and we tried it out!

Sawyer and Rhett loved all the play ideas, and immediately took off with the idea that a volcano had erupted and the lava was headed for their town.

Our “What If?” jar has been really fun and would be a fun way to mix up any playtime. Sometimes we do “what ifs?” after reading a story to practice our imaginations. I’ll give Sawyer a “What if” and ask him what he thinks would happen next in the story if that happened. It’s fun to hear kids imaginations and the crazy stories they can come up with! It’s also a great way for kids to play together with a similar idea in play and PLAYMOBIL toys are great for helping develop social and cognitive skills!

PLAYMOBIL has a great website to go along with all of their awesome toys and more ideas of how to make play time even more fun. Check out all the fun here and come back and tell me which PLAYMOBIL toys you think your kids would like best! (My kids have already added the Take Along Fire Station to their Christmas list!)