Toy building

[bussomforapillow]

In your house does Santa build/set up the big/fiddly toys or do you do it as the days go on?

We have done it as the day goes on previously, it passes time etc, but another thread on here has me wondering if it's a better idea for some to be ready built/set up to play with straight away.

But that means less unwrapping which is part of the fun? And also a late Christmas Eve for Santa!

Depends on the age of the children but personally there's no way I'd be building stuff on the day after a small child had unwrapped it. It's much nicer for them to be able to play with it straight away in my opinion.

Depends! Last year, I read a hint on here to open up and build Playmobil so we did and I’m so glad we did because my 4YO could open the box up and have all the pieces put together.

there was a big thread on this last week and opinion was very much divided. I spent many a Christmas eve building dolls houses, play kitchens, a playmobile castle etc. It depends on the exact thing and the child's age and ability. Scaletrix no, becaue that's easy and quick and part of the fun to build, the above examples, yes because assembling them took ages and wasn't part of the fun.

Depends on so much. Type of toy, age and stage of the child, their temperament...

Thanks all, DD is 4 this year and is getting schleich farm world bits so think it's a good idea to build it all first and do a little set up.

Do I just put it near her wrapped presents? If I put a blanket /paper over i'm thinking it will all fall over when she lifts it off? Could do a big bow?

Don't know why I'm overthinking this so much!!

Depends. Lego? It's part of the fun to build it. So I absolutely wouldn't build that.

A dollar house, I would build so it's ready to go

We've built up wooden dolls house, big playmobil and barbie dream houses in advance. Big bow tied round them but not wrapped.

You could set it up on a piece of cardboard, cut the bottom off a box, wrap it and then place over the farm.

Father Christmas brings 1 big coveted item that we place near the tree unwrapped so we normally go for something that can be played with immediately and that sometimes has needed building. We leave this unwrapped, sometimes with a bow but generally not.

Big wrapped box put over the top?

Brio - small set up in the middle of the living room with extra tracks and trains wrapped up.

Playmobil Castle - that bl**dy thing took us 3 hours to build, two evenings and lots of wine. It was hidden in the garage until Christmas. No way we would have managed on Christmas Day or even Christmas Eve assembly.
We had a large sheet over it and some additional figures wrapped and the grandparents also gave some extras to go with it.

Smaller Playmobil items stayed in the box and DD built it herself/with help.

Lego - stays in the box.

I actually miss this now my son is older, it doesn't feel like proper Christmas eve if I'm not up late struggling to assemble a play kitchen/trampoline/whatever. I would buy the extra wide wrapping paper and loosely wrap it if it was something really big.