Ruby's Early Intervention teacher, Jen, is a doll. We've only seen her a few times thanks to snow and sickness, but she has given us some good ideas for toys and learning. I have come up with a few myself and working diligently with her. It's paying off! Between Ruby & I doing ABC's on www.starfall.com, the LeapFrog ABC's toy on the fridge, and her teacher it is all coming together more and more. She can identify A, B, G, I, K, M, O and a few others. She is putting together 2 & 3 word sentences more. Plus our music and gym classes also touch on numbers, letters, and counting so it's just great repetition for her! Even the shows and videos she watches teach the same things we are working on.
Her favorite toys come and go. Some of the puzzles are so easy they bore her, some too hard or she is just not into them. Coloring, cutting/gluing paper, and play dough are all still fun, but she even seems a little bored with these lately. Time to rotate or find something new! It's always great when Jen comes on Wed's with something interesting. This week she brought this:
Toysmith Battat House Shape Sorter Toy. Long and odd name for a REALLY great toy. It not only teaches colors and shapes but also is good for fine motor skills thanks to the color coordinated keys that lock and unlock the little door. Ruby was both entertained and challenged (in a good way) so I ordered one right away. Found it on Amazon cheaper than anywhere else. I also picked up Smart Snacks cute ice cream cone colors (below) at Learning Express today. Ruby really liked it. Great for stacking, identifying colors, and motor skills.
Here are a few other great things I have found that are on my wish list for buying in the near future:
LOVE this color learning set! Also on Amazon.com. They are crayon shaped bins that have a total of 48 little color matching manipulatives for learning colors. It is also one of the few color sets that include pink and purple. A girl has to know pink and purple for crying out loud! :-)
Also love this color learning magnet game that also helps with fine motor. This came from a fab (but pricey) website a friend passed on to me called: www.lakeshorelearning.com. A lot of really great stuff on their site. Too much for me to feast my eyes on actually, cause I am supposed to be watching my spending. (Urr. Watching my spending is so annoying!) Anyway, I was able to get a few things reasonably. The rest will have to wait till closer to her birthday. Can't wait! So what other gift ideas do I have in mind for that? Just a few things...some farm animal stuff to go with the theme...some things from the closet I bought long ago...and maybe things like this...
Have been thinking about this cute set for some time. She loves making cookies and this one will save Mommy from the extra calories! Must have packed on 3-5 lbs the last 2 weeks with all the baking!
Bought this already. So cute and she is ga-ga for Backpack! Even more than Dora! The main thing we want to get her is a bike. Trying to decide on a which one. They are all so cute!
Love the classic Radio Flyer tricycle and was sold until...
I realized they had it in pink! What's a girl to do?
And then I found out they had this cute scooter with sound and lights which would be great for indoors or outdoors.
Then today at Learning Express we saw this adorable Princess Bike by Kettler. Ruby rode it around the store and liked it. So now I have no idea. Maybe we'll take her to ToysRUs tomorrow and let her try them all and see which is her fav. Fun stuff! Long gone are the days of shopping for designer bags and shoes. Nope, nowadays, it's all about what exciting thing I can find for the little miss. And I don't mind one bit!
Happy Weekend!
5 comments:
The schooling thing is such a quandary isn't it? There are so many complicated things to take into account with any child - much less our newly adopted kiddos. Sounds like you are doing a great job sorting it all out though! I'll be eager to hear what you decide so keep us in the loop.
Same here, shopping for myself is gone, all I do is shop for my girls! And for some cute friends... hope the package has arrived :-)
And by the way, my girls are 7 and still not able to bike, so this year they will get a new bike in April as well and hopefully they will learn it soon. Coming from a bike country I MUST make sure that my girls know how to bike, but ever since we took off the training wheels the girls don't seem interested anymore...
Look in to the Leap Frog Letter DVDs. Both my kids loved them and learned their sounds from the first one. Figuring out school choices is soooo hard. We decided not to do preschool but picking the right school for Kindergarten has been a huge challenge.
FWIW: M didn't like the Kettler bike, too bulky and I must admit, it was a pain to pack it into the Jeep to take with us -bulkier (that back basket is handy for parents but extra weight for the kid to trike around). Does the scooter come with a volume control? I am of the set that gets annoyed with noise making toys b/c they are usually too loud and repetitive. But if it has a volume control it's more tolerable. M loved, loved the little house with the colored compartments that you had to use the correct key with. I don't know if you've done this yet, but bath toys in different colors and animals helped M learn colors and animals and animal sounds.
christina
oh! One last thing, do you guys have a shape sorter? It's got plastic shapes and comes in a container with the shape holes on the lid. M loved that one to death. Teaches shapes, colors, and motor skills (there was a square, circle, star, and triangle, so some shapes are easier to fit than others.)
christina
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