Do A Toy Rotation With Me #36
August 1, 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 are moving on in our playing preschool. We will no longer be talking about bears, so I will be getting rid of our bear theme. We are moving on. We had tons of fun with the bears. However, he did not play with his new Kiwico Toys much.
This week’s toys and books:
This week in preschool we are talking about clothes. I don’t have any related toys (this is so funny to me because I have so many toys). I will be simplifying what is out this week. I think this is needed right now.
Sensory bin (Knowledge Crate) – We will be doing a sensory bin that requires rice, so I set aside the rainbow rice from our knowledge crate for when we need it.
Music basket – I pulled the shakers from various musical sets.
Shape puzzles (Kiwico) – I have not brought these out in a while, Aryi loves them.
Buttons (Lovevery) – This is the only clothes related toy I could think of, is this one. We are reading Pete the Cat and His Groovy Buttons book. This toy is a button. It should be fun to play with this week.
Stacking pegs (Lovevery) – Aryi loves to make this a “cake” with candles and sing happy birthday or a “cookie” with no pegs. We have tons of fun with this one.
Xylophone (Gift/Amazon) – Aryi asks for his xylophone sometimes. He loves to play with this.
Cones (Target) – I got this from the target dollar spot. I thought it would be fun since we play with cones at soccer. We could do a few of our soccer activities at home. I love this and it was $3.
Alphabet monster (Kiwico) – This wasn’t played with much last week so I wanted to leave it out again. I think it is so much fun and I want Aryi to have the time with it.
Puzzles (Gift/Amazon) – These puzzles might be too hard for Aryi, but the others are getting to easy. So, I thought we could move on and I can help him.
Magna Tiles (Amazon) – The magna tiles get used a lot. I wanted to put them out in the actual rotation so they can get pulled easier. This is a part of my simplifying what is out.
Number basket – This is also a part of my simplification. Now an entire shelf is taken up by this basket. It is easier and more likely to be pulled and there are less toys out.
Letter Basket:
This week we are changing out our basket to our letter Ll basket. The videos I will be playing for Aryi are linked below in a playlist 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 Ll and it says lllll. We go through words that start with the Letter Ll. I pull out the items as we go through the words. For Ll, I have lions, a leaf flashcard and a Ll block. I have an alphabet puzzle with letters A-L 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 Alphabet books; ‘see, touch, feel ABC’, ‘abc’, ‘Once Upon an Alphabet’, ‘A is for Apple’ and ‘AB See”. I have books that feature Ll words; ‘Llama Llama’ and ‘I Thought I saw a Lion’. I got the Ll word books from the library. This is a great way for us to practice our Ll sound when Aryi points to the things in the book and says what they are. Then we can do a Ll 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 Mm, 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.