I'm looking for educational toys and fun things for my daughter to play with, I want to encourage her to learn as much as she can while still having fun. She'll be 2 in march. What kinds of things would you reccomend? If I could only buy a few items, what are your "must haves" so to speak?
We're planning on homeschooling in the future so if you have reccomendations of toys or tools that you use/used constantly in the early years to help with your lessons that would be great too. Thank you!
At this age pretty much everything is educational! The simple basics work the best!
Playdough, wooden building blocks, crayons and paper, paint and an easel, sidewalk chalk, plastic animals, sandbox.
Non-toys are great too. Things like empty egg cartons and muffin tins where there are little spaces to put little things into. My DD would spend a long time exploring with a muffin tin, large wooden beads that fit in the spaces, and empty cardboard tubes that the beads fit into.
Some things to invest in that can be used for years:
An easel where they can stand and paint/write on chalkboard
Large wooden beads (they can string them, stack them, learn colors, counting, sorting (by color, shape, size), create patterns)
Blocks
Puzzles
Books, books, books!
Quoting maggiemom2000:At this age pretty much everything is educational! The simple basics work the best!
Playdough, wooden building blocks, crayons and paper, paint and an easel, sidewalk chalk, plastic animals, sandbox.
Non-toys are great too. Things like empty egg cartons and muffin tins where there are little spaces to put little things into. My DD would spend a long time exploring with a muffin tin, large wooden beads that fit in the spaces, and empty cardboard tubes that the beads fit into.
Some things to invest in that can be used for years:
An easel where they can stand and paint/write on chalkboard
Large wooden beads (they can string them, stack them, learn colors, counting, sorting (by color, shape, size), create patterns)
Blocks
Puzzles
Books, books, books!
Thank you!
Melissa & Doug puzzles are awesome! We have a few and the girls are getting a few more for Christmas. My 2yo can identify all the basic shapes and then some... square, circle, diamond, rectangle, triangle, octagon, pentagon, oval etc.
Those wooden blocks with letters and numbers are awesome. Not only for letter/number identification, but also for stacking and identifying the other pictures on them. Additionally, they can later be used as math manipulatives!
Board books are great because they don't fall apart as easily. Some of mine are on their third child use. Look for Scholastic Book Fairs (and Warehouse sales - there are several this month in my area, google for their site!). Stock up at 50% off at the Warehouse sales.
IMHO, toys that are labeled as "educational" (V-Tech, LeapFrog) are, for the most part, not very educational. My kids have had several and while they might play with them and enjoy making them make sounds or songs, they don't use these toys to learn at all.
Quoting amandae21:Melissa & Doug puzzles are awesome! We have a few and the girls are getting a few more for Christmas. My 2yo can identify all the basic shapes and then some... square, circle, diamond, rectangle, triangle, octagon, pentagon, oval etc.
Those wooden blocks with letters and numbers are awesome. Not only for letter/number identification, but also for stacking and identifying the other pictures on them. Additionally, they can later be used as math manipulatives!
Board books are great because they don't fall apart as easily. Some of mine are on their third child use. Look for Scholastic Book Fairs (and Warehouse sales - there are several this month in my area, google for their site!). Stock up at 50% off at the Warehouse sales.
IMHO, toys that are labeled as "educational" (V-Tech, LeapFrog) are, for the most part, not very educational. My kids have had several and while they might play with them and enjoy making them make sounds or songs, they don't use these toys to learn at all.
Agree with the above post about normal toys being as educational as anything.
Also, nature walks talking about all the senses. What do you see? colors? textures? soft or hard? big or small?
Also, check out www.starfall.com The alphabet program is completely free, and if you like it you can get a year membership with lots more like it. I do that with my 4 and 2 year olds, and they love it. We watch the little computer animations, and then do things like "Lets go find a toy that starts with that letter. or has that color."
blocks, books, bath fizzles that you can mix to make new colors. lots of arts and craft supplies.
Maybe a cheap tablet for some of the educational apps you can get.
Blocks, toys with letter shapes colors numbers DvDs edsucationals like LeapFrog ask her questions about what ever you are doing singing dancing movement
The Book Challenge
- kitkat316
on Dec. 3, 2012 at 10:17 PM