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Half a Hundred Acre Wood

Half a Hundred Acre Wood

Christian homeschooling integrating Classical and Charlotte Mason principles

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Toddler – Educational Toys Gift Guide

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Over the past few years, we’ve compiled lists of our family favorites for books, studies, toys, and games we’ve used. There’s no doubt we’ve purchased, reviewed, and tested out a TON of various books and resources over the past decade+, some of which were fantastic finds, some of which turned out to be… total flops. Through our somewhat costly trial-and-error method of discovering great books and gifts, we realized that others could benefit from lists of our family’s most beloved, most used, and most enjoyed resources. This list includes our favorite family favorites for learning through play, primarily for toddler through primary grades (preschool through grade 2), although we’ve continued to use some of these resources beyond that age for other modified play (with nerf guns, angry birds, and the like!).

Favorite Learning Gifts for Toddler & Early Elementary

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This time activity set helps children with telling time and reading & writing time in both analog and digital format.
Magnetic Blocks helped our children with spatial reasoning skills. Even now when we pull these back out, a teenager is usually in the building fun.
Melissa & Doug See & Spell Wooden With 8 Double-Sided Spelling Boards
Melissa & Doug See & Spell Wooden With 8 Double-Sided Spelling Boards: A favorite when our boys were preschoolers and just learning to read.
Pretend and Play Calculator Cash Register
Pretend and Play Calculator Cash Register: Not only a fun toy our children enjoy playing with, it’s also a wonderful way to teach addition, subtraction, budgeting, and money concepts to children.
Melissa & Doug Pizza Party Wooden Play Food Set
Melissa & Doug Pizza Party Wooden Play Food Set: Not only have our children enjoyed playing with this set, we’ve also used it to teach probability.
Melissa & Doug Birthday Party Cake - Wooden Play Food With Mix-n-Match Toppings
Melissa & Doug Birthday Party Cake With Mix-n-Match Toppings: Similar to the Pizza Party Set, this provides more toppings for us to combine for introduction and practice of probability concepts. (And they love putting jelly beans on their pretend pizza and pepperoni on their pretend cake!)
Design & Drill Activity Center
Design & Drill Activity Center: Our toddler boys have loved using this set, and later it can be used to teach patterns and designs.
Design & Drill My First Workbench
Design & Drill My First Workbench: This provides not only the Design & Drill opportunities, but also a great space for keeping the Design & Drill parts and pieces stowed away when not in use.
Construction Take Apart Trucks
Construction Take Apart Trucks: Our toddler boys love construction… and destruction! This gives them the ability to take apart their toys without destroying them. We own several of the Tonka versions, along with a crane and an airplane.
Take-Apart Airplane
Take-Apart Airplane: Another of the many take-apart vehicles our children have played with through the years.
Melissa & Doug Deluxe Puppet Theater
Melissa & Doug Deluxe Puppet Theater: Many hours and performances have been performed with our puppet theatre!
Melissa & Doug Chef Puppet
Melissa & Doug Chef Puppet: Our favorite puppets are by Melissa & Doug. They even include detachable rods for animated gestures!
Foam Building Blocks
Foam Building Blocks: We’ve used these over and over again for building “factories” and “houses” for monster trucks and cars, and they’re great as targets for nerf guns, too!
Melissa & Doug Jumbo Cardboard Building Blocks
Melissa & Doug Jumbo Cardboard Building Blocks: We’ve used these for a number of construction and destruction projects.
Tangoes
Tangoes: Great for spacial reasoning and problem-solving!
Our boys have always loved to build things. This was one of their first building toys.
These chalkboard lift-top desks were a favorite of our boys until age 7. Our 14-year-old asked me not get rid of them because he wants to use them for his kids one day.
Our boys played with gears like these and eventually moved up to Snap Circuits and other more complex builds.
Sandpaper letters are a tactile way for children to learn to write letters in cursive.
Sandpaper phonograms not only reinforce connecting letters but also help with teaching multi-letter phonograms.
We used this wooden puzzle for learning the states. I can’t even remember all the different floor puzzles we used (human body, animals, etc.).

If you’re searching for other gift ideas, be sure to check out our literary gift ideas for lit lovers, our favorite family board games, our favorite toddler gifts, and our gift ideas for Star Wars and Star Trek fans.

Literary Gift Guide
Favorite Family Board Games
Gifts for Star Trek & Star Wars Fans

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By Brandy Ferrell November 25, 2018 Leave a Comment Tagged With: EARLY ELEMENTARY

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