Re: Off Topic - good thinking toys??

[Guest guest]

Debbie-

My daughter turned 2 on October 25th. She got a ton of toys for her

birthday, but one in particular that sticks out is a slicable wooden

vegetable/fruit set. There is velcro between the pieces. Olivia

takes the wooden knife and cuts the veggies on the little cutting

board. Then she makes sandwiches. This is pretty easy because the

velcro sticks everything together. My mom got it at an Teacher's

store. I haven't been able to find it online. It's by and

Doug. They do have similar plastic ones on Smarterkids.com.

She did also get some CD's by . I would highly

recommend them (Great Big Sun and Yellow Bus). There are counting

and ABC songs on there. You can buy them on amazon or

heardiagonally.com. It is great music - not annoying to parents

like Barney or Raffi or those awful 100 songs for kids! It's kind

of ish. We tend to listen to it in the car after the

kids fall asleep!

As far as the counting goes, Olivia counts to 14. This has nothing

to do with any toys. I just count the steps everytime. She started

counting a few months ago and it just hit me last week that's how

she learned!

Chicco has a great little car shape sorter. That really helped her

with her colors.

Happy shopping!

Dane's mom

In Plagiocephaly@y..., " debbieandabby " <dj2kirby@c...> wrote:

> Hi group!

> Abby's 2nd bday is 2 wks from today & I'm trying to figure out

what

> to buy her. I really want to get her some good mind stimulating,

> educational toys - things that will help her talk better,

counting,

> abc's (like Hanna!), all the good stuff. I looked today at Target

> with Abby (big mistake taking a 2 yr old into the toy dept, yeah

we

> had a few fits!) but didn't see anything good and I'm also pretty

> clueless. So I figured I'd ask all you other expert parents in

> here. Any suggestions will be appreciated .

> Debbie Abby's mom 3/1/00 DOCgrad 6/22/01

> MI

[Guest guest]

Hi Debbie,

I think was about 2 when we introduced him to the Tank

Engine. Each engine has different numbers and are different colors.

So we would be able to ask Kev to go get us the engine with the

number 2 on it, and once he brought it to us we would ask him what

color it was. Or we would ask him to group together all the green

engines or all the blue engines. Plus they have the wooden tracks

that is easy enough for kids to put together on their own which helps

them with manual dexterity. It would be interesting to see all the

different ways would figure out how to put together these

layouts for his trains to run along on. I also bought flashcards

with the ABC's on them to help him learn that way, but I can honestly

say they didn't do anything for me. But I did have an alphabet

placemat for him to use at dinner time which for some reason he

learned off of much easier. Patch now uses this placemat and he has

learned to recognize capital letters, we're still working on lower

case.

Oh, and isn't just for boys. Kaylie enjoys playing with the

trains too, although she's more into taking the tracks apart ;o)

Good Luck!

Niki

Kaylie & Danny (STAR grads)

Phila., PA

> Hi group!

> Abby's 2nd bday is 2 wks from today & I'm trying to figure out what

> to buy her. I really want to get her some good mind stimulating,

> educational toys - things that will help her talk better, counting,

> abc's (like Hanna!), all the good stuff. I looked today at Target

> with Abby (big mistake taking a 2 yr old into the toy dept, yeah we

> had a few fits!) but didn't see anything good and I'm also pretty

> clueless. So I figured I'd ask all you other expert parents in

> here. Any suggestions will be appreciated .

> Debbie Abby's mom 3/1/00 DOCgrad 6/22/01

> MI