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Train sets, a role-play kitchen, dolls, toy cars and animal figures are among the items that 38 two-year-olds at Ilminster Avenue Nursery School in Bristol have unanimously decided they can live without, following a month-long experiment which saw all toys removed from the classrooms.
The 225-place nursery school, which includes a specialist unit for children with severe and complex learning needs, opted to trial the tradition – that has taken place in many German Kindergartens since the 1990s – of putting away the toys for a month or a term and becoming what is known as a Spielzeugfreier (toy-free) setting.
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