Name: Great Homeschool Conventions (Columbus)
Start: 2025-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-04-26T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Columbus, OH

Tagged: school toys, special toys

This topic has 4 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 11 years, 3 months ago by albanyaloe.

Viewing 5 posts - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

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December 5, 2013 at 10:48 pm
anniepeter
Participant
I’ve often heard about moms having a few special toys set aside just for “school” or “blanket” time. Anyone want to share what yours are/were? Right now I have a stash of busy bags, math manipulatives, magnetic letters…nothing else really set aside, but I’m thinking on it. I have a 2 yo I’m thinking of right now…
December 6, 2013 at 1:59 am
mama_nickles
Participant
My almost 2 year old loves dried beans with scoopers and bowls. She like beads, dry pasta, pattern blocks, anything she can scoop and pour. These are table activities.
On the blanket she does toys on a weekly rotation. Duplo legos, a box of basic dress up stuff she can do alone (slip on shoes, headbands, necklaces, etc), a box with food and a stuffed animal, a basket with doll stuff (bottle, “wipe” made from DH’s old undershirt, blanket, baby food with spoon, etc).
December 7, 2013 at 12:43 pm
Tristan
Participant
We are big fans of Melissa and Doug toys. A few we like include:
Magnetic puzzles with fishing pole
Magnetic dolls to dress (boy and girl ones)
Wooden pattern blocks with boards (a young child version with large shapes and a reglar version)
Wooden slicing food (velcros together and can cut apart).
Cube puzzle

We also like stamps and ink pad (messy though!)
Lauri puzzles
Glue stick and bits of paper to glue
Chenille stems and pony beads to ‘string’

December 10, 2013 at 3:33 am
anniepeter
Participant
Thank you ladies! These are good ideas. I’m going to use them!
Which Lauri puzzles do you like best? I have the Primer Pack, I think it’s called. But that’s it so far. I do like that set a lot…it has the alphabet puzzle in caps and the little octagon shapes with slits that fit together, lacing cards, etc. The kids always enjoy playing with it for quite awhile.
Now, I need to designate the “spot” for these special activities and declare it off limits at other times.
December 10, 2013 at 12:09 pm
albanyaloe
Participant
I remember printing out a whole lot of preschool busy ideas from a place called Paula’s Archives. (I hope that it is okay to refer to another website here, I can never remember rules from all the different forums I belong to 😉
I also wrote up the ideas on a card, and stuck them up, so that I could see them quickly when we were having one of “those” moments, you know, when I couldn’t even think straight to offer and activity.
Another few tips: a large piece of old canvas underneath all the messy activities kept me more peaceful and made clean up quick and easy. And keeping a lot of old towels for water play was really worth it. If they just got wet with plain water, I would let them dry and re-use them and only launder after a few uses. And lastly, newspaper spread under painting and art activities also makes it an easier task. We even pulled our baby high chairs up to tables and strapped little one in, at certain ages for art. No falling off chairs, and no messy paint footprints through the house.