I have a girl and a boy and, despite being raised in exactly the same house, they have somehow developed completely different ideas about what constitutes a good time.
One will happily disappear into a sticker book. The other would generally prefer to be jumping off something, investigating a bug or finding a new and inventive way to get wet.
Occasionally they swap roles just to keep me guessing.
Over the years I've bought plenty of things that looked brilliant online, arrived with enormous promise and occupied one or both of them for approximately seven minutes before being abandoned at the bottom of a toy basket.
These are not those things.
These are things that have actually worked in our house — some for rainy afternoons, some for burning off energy, and some for those days when I am working, cooking or simply trying to drink a cup of coffee before it goes cold.
If the answer is yes, it makes the Mostly Sorted list.
Rainy-day sanity savers.
No elaborate Pinterest crafts. No seventeen different supplies. Preferably nothing that requires me to spend longer setting it up than they spend actually doing it.
Build Your Own Dinosaurs sticker book
Sticker books are one of my safest bets when I need something quiet, and the build-your-own ones are particularly good because there's actually something for them to create.
Dinosaurs get assembled from different heads, bodies, claws and various terrifying bits, which means the finished creations can become increasingly ridiculous.
Best of all, once they understand what they're doing, it requires virtually no parental involvement.
Quiet. Creative. No batteries. Excellent.3D miniature house sticker books
These are essentially tiny worlds made from stickers. Children build and decorate little rooms using furniture, food, plants, decorations and hundreds of miniature pieces.
They're more fiddly than a normal sticker book, which is exactly why I like them.
They take time. And sometimes, as a parent, takes time is the feature you're really shopping for.
Surprisingly absorbing.Usborne First Sticker Book: Space
Yes, there are several sticker books on this list. This is because I have discovered that sticker books are essentially a reasonably priced form of parental respite.
This one is full of rockets, planets and astronauts and works particularly well for children who love anything space-related.
It's also small enough to bring out for travel, restaurants or weekends when everyone has watched quite enough television.
An easy win for little space fans.TOPModel Dress Me Up sticker book
Essentially paper dolls for the sticker generation.
There are portraits to dress and pages of clothes and accessories to create different outfits. It's simple, very pink and exactly the sort of thing that can mysteriously produce a prolonged period of silence.
I am a big supporter of anything that produces prolonged periods of silence.
Stickers + outfits + peace and quiet.Sticker Rooms: Happy Home
Another create-your-own-world book, but this time it's all about decorating cosy little rooms.
There are hundreds of stickers and plenty of freedom to make each room their own rather than simply following one prescribed design.
Also, there are cats. That is obviously important.
Cute without being completely pointless.Reusable water colouring books
Painting with children is lovely.
Painting with children also somehow results in paint appearing on surfaces that were nowhere near the painting.
These are my compromise. They use water rather than actual paint, so the children still get the satisfaction of painting without me spending the following twenty minutes cleaning brushes, cups, tables and inexplicably someone's elbow.
Painting with significantly less regret.Things that get them moving.
There comes a point in most weekends when my children have been inside for quite long enough. Usually I know we've reached it because they're no longer playing with the furniture and have started using it as sporting equipment.
National Geographic stepping stones
These are brilliantly simple. Set them out as an obstacle course, jump between them, make a path, move them further apart or, inevitably, play the floor is lava.
They're useful indoors and outdoors, which makes them particularly handy when British weather has other ideas.
Simple toys often get played with the most.Wooden balance board
It's a curved piece of wood. That's basically it.
Somehow it becomes a balance board, bridge, rocker, ramp or part of an obstacle course depending on what they've decided to do with it that day.
I particularly like things like this because the toy doesn't dictate one specific game. They have to decide what it's for.
More possibilities than you'd expect.Things that actually get my kids outside.
Sometimes the activity doesn't need to be clever. It just needs to make the garden more appealing than whatever chaos is currently happening inside the house.
Reusable magnetic water balloons
Whoever invented reusable water balloons deserves some sort of parenting award.
Fill them, throw them, they burst open and then you use them again. No tying tiny balloons while increasingly impatient children ask whether they're ready yet.
And no garden covered in hundreds of tiny pieces of broken balloon afterwards.
Why did we spend years doing this the difficult way?Kids' explorer & bug-hunting kit
Binoculars, magnifying glass, bug catcher, net and enough equipment to make wandering around the garden suddenly feel like a scientific expedition.
I like this because the toy itself isn't really the activity. Outside is the activity.
Suddenly they're looking under leaves, hunting for insects and inspecting things they'd normally walk straight past.
Occasionally something is proudly brought over for me to inspect that I very much did not want brought over for inspection. Occupational hazard.
Turns an ordinary garden into an expedition.Zero Gravity 8ft trampoline
This is obviously a completely different purchase from a £5 sticker book, but ours gets used. A lot.
When children have energy to burn, being able to send them into the garden for ten minutes of bouncing is remarkably useful.
We have the 8ft Zero Gravity trampoline with the safety enclosure, which gives them plenty of room without completely surrendering the garden to a trampoline.
Not cheap. Very good at tiring children out.See the Zero Gravity trampoline →
One boring thing worth buying with it: proper ground anchors.
Possibly the least exciting recommendation on this website, but nobody needs to be excited about trampoline anchors. You just need the trampoline to remain where you put it.