how do you keep older kids toys away from your babies?

So my four year old was happily playing with legos onour living room carpet yesterday, when I was suddenly gripped by fear as I realized that my twins will be crawling and grabbing at toys in the coming months! We obviously didn't have legos and other choking hazard type toys the first time around. Any suggestions for dealing with this issue?

 

I'm interested in the replies. We have our Superyard (with 2 sets of extensions) set up as the "baby" play space. No non-baby toys are allowed in there. Our 3-yr-old likes to get in there with the babies, but he can't bring any of his toys with him. This has worked pretty well until the last few months, when the babies have started to feel confined, and always want to get out of the Superyard. Now, I don't know what we are going to do.

I don't like the idea of making ODS move all his toys into his room, but we have moved alot of the risky ones into his room (ones with small choke-able parts). I'd like to keep the playroom a "playroom" for all the kids.

 

We did have all the older kids toys in their rooms. That didn't mean they had to play with them in their room, but that is where they were stored. They could bring things out, play with them (while I supervised babies), then put them away. I encouraged them to play with things like Lego on the kitchen table so it wasn't on the floor, then I just looked around really good afterward. I never came up with any real solution other than vigilance in making sure all pieces were picked up & put away or played with in their rooms if they wanted to leave them out.

 

I have a very good girlfriend who implemented a "no toys left on the floor" policy when her baby (now 15 months) began crawling - if her older two children (ages 4 & 6) leave their toys on the floor when they are done playing with them, she throws them away. And she is serious and follows through. It took about one day for her girls to get with the program - their house is pretty spotless and I am jealous. I have been too chicken to do it myself, but my older two are about to push me over the edge ...

 

I would make a rule that all toys with small pieces need to be played with on the table or in his room, and put away properly afterwards.
I did read on here an idea to put the older childs toys inside the superyard and have them play with them in there. That way the babies are not frustrated at being contained, the older child is not banished to their room when they want to play with small part toys, and the babies cannot get to the things that are a choking hazard.

 

My kids also keep all their dangerous toys in their bedroom. They either play with them in there (my oldest is 8 so he can supervise himself and my 3.5 yr old), or they play with them on my dining room table. I have a superyard stretched across my dining room so the babies can't get in there, and when my kids are done playing we make sure to pick everything up that fell. I have laminate floors so you can hear when a small piece falls and we always make sure we find it.

That's worked well so far. Although my husband found a small cherry from our Hi Ho Cherrio game, that I didn't even realize had fallen when my 3 yr old and I played it last week....so obviously it's not a fool proof plan. But we do keep ALL small pieced toys out of the living room so I feel like it's about 99% safe for the babies to play in there on their own (if I'm doing dishes or using the bathroom or something.)

 

I do something similar. I have a basement playroom and a family room on the first floor so I've designated the family room as the boys' space. It's gated and babyproofed and only safe toys are allowed in it. Any non-safe toy brought in while the boys are in there goes into a week long time out.