5 Reasons Cubby Houses Are Good for Australian Kids

A cubby house is a strange thing to justify on paper. It is a small building in your backyard that no adult can comfortably stand up in, and it costs real money. Yet families who have one almost never regret it, and the ones who bought a cheap plastic shell almost always wish they had bought properly.

Here is what a cubby actually does, and what to look for if you are weighing one up.

1. The climate is on your side

Australia is well suited to a backyard building. Outside a few weeks of genuine heat, children can be outside most of the year, and a cubby extends that further in both directions. It gives them shade in summer and somewhere to sit out light rain in winter, gumboots on, watching it come down.

That matters more than it sounds. A backyard with no shelter gets used in a narrow band of weather. A backyard with a cubby gets used most days. If you are aiming at the recommended three hours of daily activity for a preschooler, that difference is the whole thing.

Add a small table and chairs inside and some art supplies and it becomes a place they will sit for an hour, which is not a sentence anyone writes about a slide.

2. Pretend play is doing more work than it looks like

Watching a four year old run a pretend cafe out of a cubby window looks like nothing much. Developmentally it is a considerable amount of work happening at once.

Dramatic play, sometimes called symbolic or pretend play, is where children practise:

• Language. Children use noticeably more complex sentences in pretend play than in ordinary conversation, because they are speaking as someone else.
• Negotiation. Who is the shopkeeper, what the rules are, what happens next. All of it has to be agreed without an adult adjudicating.
• Sequencing. A pretend meal has an order. So does a pretend shop. Children are constructing and holding a narrative.
• Perspective taking. Being the parent, the vet, the customer. Stepping outside your own point of view is a skill, and this is where it gets practised.
• Emotional rehearsal. Children work through things that have happened to them by acting them out. Doctor visits and new siblings turn up in cubby play constantly.

A cubby is unusually good at prompting this because it has a threshold. Going inside it is a signal that the pretending has started. An open lawn does not do that.

3. It is theirs

Children have very little space they control. Their bedroom is arranged by someone else, tidied on someone else's schedule, and entered without knocking.

A cubby is different, and children treat it differently. They decide who comes in. They arrange the inside. They develop rules about it that are enforced with total seriousness. That ownership is where the independence and the confidence come from, and it is why a cubby holds interest for years while a lot of equipment gets outgrown in eighteen months.

It is also, for a lot of children, somewhere to go and be quiet. Not every child wants to be in the middle of a busy house all afternoon, and having a retreat that is outdoors rather than in front of a screen is worth a great deal.

4. It competes with screens on their terms

The Australian guidelines suggest no more than one hour of recreational screen time a day for children aged 3 to 5, and no more than two hours for school aged children. Most Australian families are not close to that.

Lecturing rarely shifts it. Offering something more interesting sometimes does. A cubby competes because it is genuinely engaging rather than merely permitted, and because it works best with other children, which a tablet does not.

It will not solve screen time on its own. It does make "go outside" a more attractive proposition than "go outside and do what, exactly".

5. You get some time back

No guarantees, and we would not insult you by offering one.

But children who are absorbed in a cubby stay absorbed for a long time, and they stay absorbed within sight of the kitchen window. For a lot of parents that is the actual return on the purchase: a stretch of the afternoon where everyone is happy and nobody needs anything.

What to look for when you buy

Timber or plastic

Plastic cubbies are cheaper, lighter and easy to hose out, which suits toddlers and small courtyards. Timber lasts far longer, looks better in a garden, and is what children keep using as they get older. If you expect more than a few years of use, timber is usually the better value despite the higher price.

If you go timber, look at where it came from. Our guide to FSC certified timber explains what the certification actually guarantees and why it is worth paying attention to.

Footprint, and the space around it

Measure the ground you have, then add clearance on every side, and more at the bottom of any slide. Check the height against fence lines and overhanging branches, and consider whether an elevated cubby will look into a neighbour's yard, which is a conversation worth having before delivery rather than after.

Elevated or ground level

An elevated cubby gives you play space underneath as well as inside, which is good value in a small yard. Ground level suits younger children and is easier to supervise.

What it comes with, and what you can add later

A cubby with a slide covers two kinds of play in one footprint. A cubby with a sandpit underneath suits younger children particularly well. And cubby house accessories, letterboxes, serving windows, play kitchens, are the cheapest way to make a cubby feel new again a year or two after it arrives.

Assembly

Be realistic about this. A decent timber cubby is a weekend job for two people. If that is not going to happen, look at our assembly service rather than letting it sit in boxes until spring.

If you would rather build it yourself

Plenty of people do, and it is a genuinely good project. Our guide on how to build a cubby house walks through what is involved.

Where to start

Have a look at our full range of cubby houses, or read the cubby house buying guide, which compares sizes, materials and features properly.

Everything is covered by our Price Match Guarantee and delivered Australia wide.

Written by Carla, owner at All Things For Kids.