Do A Toy Rotation with Me #26
May 8, 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:
We really enjoyed our Eric Carle theme. We have also been having so much fun with the ocean toys as well, especially the sensory bin.
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. Since we just went on our beach trip, I am also keeping our beach sensory bin from Knowledge crate out on the shelf to be played with when asked for. I made prints with the fingerplays in the Spring Knowledge crate. I thought this would help us to remember to do more things like this. You can print the printable backgrounds by clicking on the pictures below, but you would have to type up and print out the words on top or write them.
This week’s toys and books:
I think a good color theme goes with Eric Carle. We just got a Kiwico crate that had toys all about color. This week I decided to go with puzzles and color.
Chunky Wooden Puzzle (Lovevery) – Since we are working on puzzles, I pulled this out. This is one of our newer puzzles. Aryi loves it. He can get all the pieces together, but not quite make it a square yet. We will be working on that.
Pegs (Lovevery) – This is a toy Aryi has mastered completely. He still enjoys doing it, so I pulled it out.
Color mixing toy (Kiwico) – This fits into the color theme. This is super cool. You put in a red circle, then put in a yellow or blue one on top, and see what color it makes.
Color game (Kiwico) – This toy is super cool and is very open ended. I love that we can play with colors in many different ways with this toy.
Mix it up book (Kiwico) – This book is so fun, it is interactive asking kids to mix colors on the page. You flip to the next page to see what happened.
Eric Carle books (Library) – We are still reading the Eric Carle books they are still out on the shelf.
Stacking pegs (Lovevery) – Aryi LOVES this toy. He likes to take all the pegs off and pretend its a cookie. Then he puts all the pegs back on and now it is a cake. Then he can make a stack with every single peg. This is a great toy for him.
Shape puzzle (Lovevery) – This puzzle is fun, colorful, and helps learn shapes.
Garden puzzle (Lovevery) – More puzzles
Face puzzles (Lovevery) – More puzzles
Bugs and Flowers (Amazon) – Bugs and flowers go great with Eric Carle.
Easel (gift) – This was a gift from my sister for Aryi’s birthday. I put it out in hopes Aryi could write more “mess free” without the same level of supervision he requires with markers.
My Prints – I printed out my itsy bitsy spider prints to go through with Aryi. I am super excited about them. I will link below where you can find the video, blog post, and Etsy shop. I have a few of the pages I made below as a sample.
Letter Basket:
This week we are changing out our basket to a Ii basket. The videos I will be playing are linked below if you are interested in playing them yourself.
I say the letter and show it to Aryi. Then I will say the letter sound. This is a Ii and it says iiiii. We go through words that start with the Letter Ii. I pull out the items as we go through the words. For Ii, I have ice cream, insects, and an I block with ice cream and an iron on it. I have an alphabet puzzle with letters A-I 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 Ii words; ‘I Like Bugs, ‘Pattern Bugs’,’ and ‘i’ (I explained that bugs are insects and we are using the word insect when reading these books). I got the Ii word books from the library. This is a great way for us to practice our Ii sound when Aryi points to the things in the book and says what they are. Then we can do an Ii 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 Jj, 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 that I find on youtube sometimes.
You can check out the related Youtube video by clicking the link below.