Toy Rotation 14
January 19, 2024
For some background introduction information on toy rotations see my first toy rotation blog at by clicking the link.
Last week’s toys and books:
This past week’s toy rotation was great. Aryi really enjoyed all of the puzzles. We had a casualty with our Lovevery Garden puzzle. One of the pieces was broken. I do think I mentioned in the review video, but I wish the pieces had been wooden like the board that you put the pieces into.
All of the dropping toys worked out great. Aryi loves them. All of the shape puzzles and the bus were great for this week too. Basically everything was very played with.
This week’s toys and books:
This week was a huge switch up for us. I put out our Mardi Gras and Valentine’s Day Baskets along with the number basket on one of our shelves. If you are interested in seeing what is in the Mardi Gras and Valentine’s Day baskets, you can click the links below.
I pulled out all of the shapes. For a little mini theme this week.
Shape sorter (gift) – Aryi was a little frustrated with this for a while. I haven’t brought it out in a long time. I am hoping we are really ready for it this time.
Shape puzzle (Lovevery) – I thought since I have out the shorter, let’s get this shape puzzle. We are kind of towards the end of mastery. I am hoping it comes soon.
Shape puzzles (Kiwico) – This was out from last week for my puzzle theme. This is what gave me the shape idea.
Bus (Lovevery) – Aryi pulled this down from where I had it stored last week, so I just decided to throw it into the rotation. Apparently he wants to play with it.
Pete the Cat Phonics set (Library) – I picked up this phonics set of 11 books from the library. I thought it was enough to warrant it’s own cubby. Aryi has been loving these. We really love Pete the cat.
Penguins (Knowledge Crate) – I am going to leave out the penguins again for probably the last week. The have so many uses. These are just wonderful.
Letter Basket:
This week we are leaving out the Dd basket. The videos I will be playing are The Good and The Beautiful ABCs and ABC sounds, the Letter Dd from ABCmouse, How to write the Letter Dd from ABCmouse, Alphabet Surprise Turn and Learn Letter Dd and David the Dog from Easy Peasy All-in-one Homeschool. These are the links for those songs in the order I wrote them below.
I say the letter and show it to Aryi. Then I will say the letter sound. This is a D and it says DDDDDDD. We go through words that start with the Letter Dd. I pull out the items as we go through the words. For Dd, I have a dog, dog flashcard, dragonfly, Dd flashcard, 3 dinosaurs, a drum, drumsticks, a duck, 2 dice, and a D block. I have an alphabet puzzle with letters A-D out. I will let Aryi Identify the letters from a few pieces and he can place the letters in his alphabet puzzle as we say A is for AAAA, B is for BBBB, C is for CCCC, C is for DDDD. We can read whatever related books Aryi wants to that day. I have 4 Alphabet books; ‘abc’, ‘Once Upon an Alphabet’, ‘A is for Apple’ and ‘AB See”. I have books that feature Dd words; ‘Dino Block’, ‘T. Rex’, “Dragons Love Tacos’, ‘Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumbs’, ‘Baby Dance’, ‘Leo Loves Daddy’, ‘I Thought I Saw A Dinosaur’, and ‘Rumble, Rumble, Dinosaur’. I got some of the Dd word books from the library. This is a great way for us to practice our Dd sound when Aryi points to the things in the book and says what they are. Then we can do a Dd related coloring page or craft. I get some of these crafts from education.com and Easy Peasy All-in-one Homeschool. I also just make some crafts myself.
This format has been working well for us. Aryi thought we were playing and reading books like always, but we were learning too. I plan to have this basket out for the next two weeks and move on to Ee. This has been working so well that I decided to introduce a number basket as well. Aryi comes to me and says basket, basket like 5 times a day. He enjoys this so much. To him it is play, to me, he is learning.
Number Basket:
I decided to add a number basket to our rotation. This is the second week. I felt like only doing 1 was not really something my toddler was understanding. Numbers are not like letters and you need a few numbers to get the concept. I added 2 and 3.
I have number flashcards, tactile number flashcards 1, 2, and 3, a block with the number 1, 2, and 3, and a peg board with the number 1, 2, and 3. I also have all of our numbers and books in here: ”Numbers”, “How Many?”, “Counting with Barefoot Critters”, “Big and Little”, “Let’s Count”, “Baby Math”, “Poppy’s Surprise”, “Few and Many”, and “Pop-up Peekaboo Numbers”
You can check out the related Youtube video by clicking the link below.