Do A Toy Rotation With Me #24
April 12, 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:
The last rotation we had out all of our musical instruments. I have been going through a horrible pneumonia spell and am finally getting better after weeks of Aryi playing with these same toys. He loved them all at first. He got all of the possible play he could out of them. Now he is bored, rightfully so. I am glad that I can finally got some toys switched out for him.
Knowledge Crate Sensory Bin and Art Projects:
March was Eric Carle month. Because of this, the Knowledge crate we get themed their spring box after Eric Carle. This gave me the idea to do our own Eric Carle month. Since March was so busy with St. Patrick’s Day and Easter, I decided to do it in April instead. I will be using everything that came in the crate. I put out the sensory bin supplies that came in this kit in a sterilite container on the top shelf of our toy rotation for Aryi to ask for when he wants it.
This week’s toys and books:
The theme of this entire month I plan on being mostly Eric Carle. Because of this, I went to the library and checked out a bunch of Eric Carle books and pulled the ones we have in our collection. I set up one of our shelves mostly to house these Eric Carle books. I have toys relating to some of the animals in the books. For those books, I gave them their own shelf with that toy. These include a snake, bear, caterpillar, and panda bear. I put out the art projects we made at the library last month. I filled the other shelf with Eric Carle Related Items.
Animals – Eric Carle features animals in most of his books. I have collections of safari animals, rainforest animals, birds, and bugs. I am getting in a flower/plant pack as well.
ABCs – I found these foam bath letters on Amazon that are Eric Carle themed. Each letter has something from one of his books.
The Eric Carle ABC game – This came in our knowledge crate.
Eric Carle flash cards – This also came in our knowledge crate.
I also put out a few other things since I felt like it wasn’t enough. These include megablocks, magna tiles, and our Lovevery lock box.
In addition to all of this I have an Eric Carle coloring book and stickers. Aryi has been into both coloring and stickers a lot lately.
Letter Basket:
This week we are changing out our basket to a Hh basket. The videos I will be playing are The Good and The Beautiful ABCs and ABC sounds, the letter Hh song from ABC mouse, the Letter Hh from ABCmouse, How to write the Letter Hh from ABCmouse, A to Z by ABC mouse, Alphabet Surprise Turn and Learn Letter Hh, The Letter Hh Song from Miss. Molly and Harold from Easy Peasy All-in-one Homeschool. These are the links for those songs.
I say the letter and show it to Aryi. Then I will say the letter sound. This is a Hh and it says hhhhh. We go through words that start with the Letter Hh. I pull out the items as we go through the words. For Hh, I have hats, a hamburger, a horse, and a Hh block. I have an alphabet puzzle with letters A-H 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, and so on. We can read whatever related books Aryi wants to that day. I have 5 Alphabet books; ‘see, touch, feel ABC’, ‘abc’, ‘Once Upon an Alphabet’, ‘A is for Apple’ and ‘AB See”. I have books that feature Hh words; ‘Blue Hat, Green Hat’, ‘Hat’, My House‘’ and ‘Hello, Horse’. I got the Hh word books from the library. This is a great way for us to practice our Hh sound when Aryi points to the things in the book and says what they are. Then we can do a Hh 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 then move on to Ii, so come back for that. 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 am keeping this number basket pretty much the same. I put the tactile flashcards back in. I have peg boards with the numbers 1-10. I also have all of our number 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”. I also threw in some wooden animals to use as manipulatives. I have 1 pig, 2 lions, and 3 bears. The bears can also be broken down, 1 is a polar bear and 2 are brown bears. Two of the animals are little and three of the animals are big. I play number videos such as Count to 15 by The good and the beautiful and Ice cream counting by Number blocks. These will be linked below. I also love the alphablocks. That can be found on Netflix.
You can check out the related Youtube video by clicking the link below.