5 Days of Teaching Creatively: Toys, Games and Puzzles-The Montessori Toddler Corner

We are up to day three of our 5 Days of Teaching Creatively blog hop!  Today's topic is Toys, Games, and Puzzles.  I thought it would be a great day to showcase our Montessori Toddler Corner!

Since Explorer is in our classroom a bit more, I decided I needed to be sure she has some things to keep her busy.  But, honestly, this isn't just for 'school time' this is her toy corner and these are the only toys out on a regular basis (extra toys are kept elsewhere).  I tried to choose toys that would help develop a certain skill in addition to being fun. I also tried to limit the amount of items to a very manageable amount for a young child. Here's a closer look at what's on the shelves.

In the basket on the top shelf we have a Leap Frog Fridge Farm Magnetic Animal Set.  This *is* a little loud and annoying, but she really enjoys it and the object of matching animals is a good one!

Hape Counting Stacker.  She really enjoys the challenge of placing the beads on the sticks.

Melissa and Doug doorbell house.  She can't unlock the doors yet, but likes the doorbells!  Mini Cooper often comes to help her unlock the doors.  Great group toy! 

These are probably two of our favorites!  Pat the Bunny book and our Jack-in-the Box.  Pat the Bunny is full of great activities such as peek-a-boo and smelling flowers.  Jack-in-the-Box is great for pincher-grabber control, and patience!

This vintage Sesame Street toy requires her to figure out the different 'locks' to make the characters pop up.  Very fun!

Melissa and Doug peg hammer set.  I love that the pegs do not come out!!  They can't be lost or put in the mouth!

Our two pull toys.  A vintage turtle and the Eric Carle caterpillar.  She enjoys both of them.

This soft block has a challenge of putting a cylinder into the opening.  Seems easy for us, but it is very challenging for Explorer. 

Montessori Mini-Knobbed Cylinders are a great addition to the toddler shelves-as long as your child isn't one to put things in her mouth.  Thankfully, Explorer is not.

Our little child sized recliner (thank you Grandpa!) is a great place to count with Lily-she counts in English and Spanish.  

Or, to cuddle up with a book from our book basked.  It's overflowing I know.  It's always hard to keep them at a minimum :).

And, next to the shelves is our little horse riding toy that she really likes!  

I hope that you enjoyed the peak into our toddler shelves.  I'd love to know what toys you use with your toddlers!  

Be sure to stop by the other crew blogs and see how they use toys, games, and puzzles in their home learning.  Click below or stop by the crew blog.

Thanks for stopping by and God Bless!

Lisa

We are also linking this up to:

Toys My Kids Actually Play With: Fisher Price Laugh & Learn Learning Home

I'm generally not a fan of toys that make NOISES, take up lots of SPACE, or have tons of pieces. but, since I've come to realize that I just described about 95% of all toys, I have had to learn to weight the bad against the good. The Fisher Price Laugh & Learn Learning Home falls into the large & noisy toys category. But, my kids LOVE it. All three of them!

I should add that this toy also has a large sticker price. The Fisher Price site has 85.00 {yikes}, though I am sure you could find it cheaper. I did. $3.00 at a yard sale last spring. A few Clorox wipes, 3 new batteries and as good as new. Well, almost. Actually better then new in a way. It was supposed to come with a ton of little pieces-balls, shapes, mail-you know, the stuff you trip over, step on, and loose? {unless you have only one child...I miss that part of only having one child} but it DIDNT! The little pieces were lost at the other lady's house. Like I said, better then new :)

So enough about how we got the toy, lets talk about the playing with the toy.

It has a door. That's really all it needed. When Mini Cooper pushes on it, she hears 'creeeeeek Open.' Or sometimes, 'Hello.' It even has a setting that, when one of the kids opens the door, a sweet lady belts out a 'welcome home song.' And, YES it is a bit annoying and YES it gets stuck in your head and comes out at annoying times, like the middle of the night when you are trying to have some Mommy blogging time. But, the kids LOVE IT, and that's what matters.

Charger will sit on one side, Mini Cooper will sit on the other, and he will open and close the door for a game of peek-a-boo. They will both giggle for a good 10 minutes, together! An amazing amount of time for an 8 month old & a 2.5 year old busy boy. Yes, after 10 minutes real life returns and Charger tries to play tackle football, tackling Mini Cooper. It's a toy not a cure all.

It also has a radio that plays Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, and The ABC Song. Mustang will turn on the radio and dance her little heart out. There is a light, complete with a switch. When its turned on it says 'ON.' When it's turned off it says...yep, off. There is even a mail box that is perfect for using as a tunnel for matchbox cars {since we dont have the mail}, or passing hand written notes.

All in all, I would say this is one of, if not the favorite to in the house. To see what other kiddos are actually playing with, check out the weekly linky at My Bilingual Boys. Um, nevermind. I just went and checked, and she isnt doing the linky anymore! Oh well, hope you enjoyed my post anyways lol!

God Bless!!

Please Help Me! Organizing Dolly Stuff

Last week while I was blog surfing I found a very cool blog. Wearethatfamily.com. It has over 4500 readers, so I have no clue what took me so long to find it, but I am glad I finally did. The reason I found the site was a weekly carnival called 'Works for Me Wednesdays' where the readers offer advice of what has helped them in their home. Too cool!

I really wanted to involve myself in the fun, but try as I may could not come up with anything that I did so well that it was worth advising others to do it my way. I am still trying to come up with something ;). Enter BACKWARDS Works for Me Wednesdays. This is where the readers ask how to to something and other readers suggest ways to do it. Perfect.

I actually more questions then one could personally answer in an hour, so I will skip to the question of the hour.

PROBLEM: My sweet loving DD has inherited her mother's packrat tendencies. Combine that with wonderful and generous family and friends and a few yard sales, and you have too much stuff! My DD has 2 Bitty Babies, 6 other dollies, 4 Build a Bears, and all the clothes, bottles, play food, stroller, etc, etc, etc to go along with them.

I do realize purging would be best, but is mostly not a current option. We just moved and did purge a bunch of stuff, but she already is sad she 'lost' things in the move and even told me she didnt want to go to Heaven because she couldnt take her stuff (she's only 4!).

So, how do I organize what she has?? I want her to be able to 1)find her things 2) have a home for each item 3) be able to pick them up herself 4) learn to respect the items. I want to be able to identify what she doesnt play with so I know what I can purge without notice.

Please note I do not have an Ikea, Target, Container Store, etc, anywhere close.

Thank you so much in advance!! Check out other questions at wearethatfamily.com

Toy Yard Sale Money Learning

If you know me at all-or have read much of my blog-you know I enjoy going to yard sales. My daughter loves them too. She loves to go with me to see, and hopefully buy, toys. Well today, at her request, we had a toy yard sale.

She grabbed some of her toys and layed them on the coffee table for me to 'buy.' Using post it notes we priced her items. Then, she sold them to me.

Our local library has fantastic learning packs available for checkout, including a cool money package. It includes 3 books on money, a cool register, and play money. We used the register for our yard sale.


After our sale, we read the book Bunny Money, by Rosemary Wells. I HIGHLY recommend it.



Then we played with these neat ginormous coins we bought at the Dollar Tree on Wednesday. Mustang knew I had gotten them and was begging me to play with them. So, I had to quickly come up with a way to use them.



I found money work sheets HERE on moneyinstructor.com and printed them off. As you can see in the pictures, my printer only prints a fugly green currently (I am at the very end of my ink), so I had to write in all the details of the coins. Then, Mustang had to match up the toy coins to the right worksheet. This was very challenging for her, but I was really glad we did it. We went over each coin and she did get them all in the end, but she didnt want to play again today.

Lots of Circles

I purchased our math curriculum for 25 cents at a yard sale this summer. We are using Bob Jones University Press K5, 2nd (outdated) edition. We have no manipulatives or worksheets or anything of the stuff that goes with it. Just the teacher's manual. So, I have a lot of fun supplementing our learning with the fun stuff available for each lesson. Today's lesson was about circles.

I started by giving Charger a big circle to color HERE. It kept him busy for a little bit.



I borrowed the shapes from our Playful Patterns toy (an awesome 50 cent yard sale find!). Mustang had to find the circles in the bunch. She knows her shapes well, but this was a review.
It is a GREAT tot school toy and we will be using it a lot this week.




We also made a circle caterpillar. I found this adorable craft HERE Mustang had to color the circles without coloring the numbers. I think she did a great job.

Winners Circle

Today we learned about circles. It a completely new concept for Charger, and review for Mustang. Charger and I played with his cars. All of them can go on their own so we raced them. Well, I raced the cars and Charger ran after them. I pointed out the wheels and told him they were circles. I also pointed out the color of each car. He had fun collecting all the cars in his trunk and riding off into the sunset :)

Did you notice that his shirt has a car on it? Totally by accident but I found it fun.

Baby Einstein Blocks

Charger chose his Tot School game today. He came running in with his yellow block yelling duck! He realized that there was a duck on his block, so I went and got the other blocks, too. They are deemed a baby toy since they are soft and have rattles inside, but we found them to be a great learning tool today and Charger is 22 months.

He used them for stacking into a tower and then knocking them down. I used them to teach colors, words, and shapes. I showed him the blocks and identified the pictures on them (the ones that he couldnt already identify) and then asked him to find the picture. He did a very good job and surprised me with his memory.

We had so much fun that even my 3 year old wanted to join in.

Wooden blocks

Since we are new to Tot School I dont have a ton of supplies or toys that are appropriate for my little guy. What I decided to do was to simply start going through our current stash of toys and see what we can use for learning. First up...blocks. Basic old blocks. Charger loves building with them and then knocking the tower down. Great for hand eye coordination, balance, and creativity.

Then I had him look at the pictures on the blocks. We was not into the letters, but he loved fish,key, ball, apple, and all the other pictures on the blocks. Great vocabulary builder and is helping with his speech development. Lots of fun!

Shape n Color

If you followed my old homeschool blog, you know that Mustang loved this toy that we can check out from our local library. Charger was finally old enough to play with it, and boy was he thrilled. I helped him and showed him how to match the colors. He even got a few of them himself with no help. After we played together with it, I let him play alone. He played for quite awhile until Marissa couldnt take it anymore and had to take it away. She is having a hard time with Charger being old enough to play with 'her' stuff!

Tim ur Charger the Tool Man

This past weekend we found some adorable little tools at a yard sale. All of 1.00 total and we had many a smile and many a 'drilled hole' from our new tool man, Charger.

*Please excuse the carpet, Daddy was up in the attic and some of the insulation falls down when you go up there and Mommy hadnt vacuumed yet.

Boxes are so much fun.

Mustang told me yesterday that she doesnt have enough toys. If you have been to our house you know that is so far from the truth! So what did they play with today? The box from my vaccuum cleaner. In out up around. They hid in it and climbed on it. Then Mustang drew on it with her chalk. Seems to be a good alternative to TV at least :).