Mom Approved Toys for Preschoolers and Kindergarten

When ever holidays or birthdays approach I am always looking for toy ideas for my kids that are both fun and educational. I like to provide this list to family members so that we try to avoid ending up with too many toys that don't get played with. As a homeschooling family I want something that is functional but also something that will keep my kids attention.  This post is a list of great toys for young children from infants thru 1st grade. A few of these my kids have and LOVE and the others are on our wish list.

Infants & Toddlers:

For gift ideas for young children, checkout this post by a great blog I follow, The Darling Bakers. The post shares great ideas for toys and activities for the first year and the toddler years. 

 

Toys and Activities for Children's Early Years- The Darling Bakers 

Preschool to Kindergarten:

Alphabet Bingo Games- Where to Buy
This is a great game for children ages 4-6. It teaches pre-kindergarten children up to 1st grade. It teaches them to recognize the alphabet.

Jax Ltd., Inc. Sequence Letters- Where to Buy
Intended for kids age 4-7. It's a great way to learn the alphabet and the sound each letter makes.


Learning Resources Sum Swamp Addition and Subtraction Game- Where to Buy 
This is a great game to sharpen math skills and the basic operations of addition and subtraction for younger children and as practice for older children.

Melissa and Doug Abacus- Where to Buy
This activity is great for kids 3 and up. It helps to teach math skills, patterning and color recognition. 

Melissa and Doug Pattern Block & Boards- Where to Buy
These colorful pattern boards are great for children 3+ and is a great way to learn about patterns and shapes. 


Melissa and Doug See & Spell- Where to Buy 
This activity is recommended for children ages 4-7. It contains 16 colorful pictures to learn spelling skills. 

Melissa and Doug Geometric Stacker- Where to Buy
This durable wooden toy for kids 2 and up. It helps to build shape, color and size differentiation skills. 

Plan Toys Preschool Sorting Board- Where To Buy 
Perfect for kids age 2-5. This toy teaches colors, shapes and math concepts. 


ThinkFun Zingo Sight Words- Where to Buy
For grades pre-kindergarten to 2nd grade. This game was developed by educators to teach sight recognition and of essential words. 

ThinkFun What's Gnu- Where to Buy
This game is designed for kids age 5-8. It teaches word recognition, vocabulary building and reading. 





Do you have any mom approved toys to add to the list? We would love for you to share!


Disclaimer:  Please note: I am not a medical professional. Please use your careful discernment and double check with your naturopath or doctor before taking any vitamins or supplements

PAID ENDORSEMENT DISCLOSURE: In order for me to support my blogging activities, I may receive monetary compensation or other types of remuneration for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial and/or link to any products or services from this blog.

Potty Training 101

The title of this post implies that I am a potty training expert, which is by no means the actual truth! Potty training was a lot harder for me than I originally anticipated. I was under the impression that because she seemed advanced for her age, that the task would be no problem! Boy was I wrong. I tried almost every method out there, including the Naked $75 method.

This post is to provide information on the methods that I tried as well as some advice based on what I learned from this experience. Hopefully my next attempt will be much easier, although Ive heard that boys are a whole other animal (no pun intended) and look forward to see just how different the experiences are.


I wasn't sure which technique would be the easiest so I wanted to try a little bit of everything until we figured out what worked for us. I bought a seat for the big potty as well as one of the mobile baby potties. She took to the smaller, travel potty first because I she felt scared of sitting on the big one.

Potty Time!- It is important to make a simple act of using the bathroom a joyous one! I tried to literally make potty time like a party! I would invite her to come with me every time I had to go and talk to her about the process (sounds gross I know! Didn't get into any yucky details, just what and why I was doing it!) I tried to encourage her to try it and made a huge fuss when she would go in either the little potty or the big potty! When she would have accidents I wouldn't get upset, I would just reiterate what I  wanted her to do.

One technique said to place the portable toilet in the room that was most used. For us that was the living room as we don't have a playroom. I was a little hesitant to put the potty in the main room, but read about the whole out of sight out of mind theory and decided to try it. It actually worked really well, I would ask her every 10 minutes if she had to go to the bathroom and eventually she would go on her own but it was still intermittent, we had lots of accidents and she still preferred diapers. She actually told me she didn't like how panties felt because she loved diapers and wanted to be a baby like her brother. This was very frustrating to me but I had nothing to do but be patient and keep trying to encourage her to go in the potty like a big girl.

After about months of the off and on accidents I got desperate and moved on to bribing. I would bribe her with everything, show her pictures of Disneyland and let her know that once she didn't wear diapers anymore we could go and she could meet Mickey and Minnie Mouse! This offer intrigued her, but still didn't seal the deal. I decided to try short term bribes taking advantage of her sweet tooth, if she went #2 in the potty we would make cookies or cupcakes that day for her to enjoy. This started to work so I would switch up the prizes, sometimes it was a healthy sweet treat, sometimes it was stickers or a new coloring book (which you can get at Dollar Tree for a great price!) Every time she would go in the potty you would have thought she won an Olympic gold medal! I would jump up and down with excitement, sing, dance, whatever I had to do to show her praise and she loved it!

Even with all the headway we were making, I was still scared to take her out of the house without a diaper on. I was afraid that this was sending her mixed messages so I bought some training pants for when we would make our outings but tried to stay as close to home as I could until she was trained. I was terrified of being out grocery shopping or driving in the car and have an accident occur. I was very excited when we would go out and come back from being out for an hour or so and come back to dry training pants. Once I realized this I knew the dirty job was almost done! Within a few weeks she was completely potty trained (with the exception of diapers during nap time and at night- which we still have yet to master)

Potty training is no easy feat, at least it wasn't in my case. I had an extremely stubborn daughter and had to use a lot of time, patience and bribing to get where I am today. Ultimately I had to wait until she was completely on board for it to work. Even after months of being accident free there were  couple of days where she would have multiple accidents for whatever reason and we had to switch back to training pants for a day or too until we got back on track.

To anyone out there who is currently in potty training hell or getting ready to start the process, patience is key! Don't sweat the small stuff, there will be accidents, some worse than others. The important thing is to remember that it will eventually happen, maybe not in the time frame that you want it to, or even the amount of time it took your friend whose kid was magically potty trained in 2 days. But when was the last time you saw a teenager wearing diapers (I PROMISE your kid will be potty trained well before then!)

Good luck and I would love to hear any potty training stories (good or bad!) that you want to share!!

Disclaimer:  Please note: I am not a medical professional. Please use your careful discernment and double check with your naturopath or doctor before taking any vitamins or supplements

PAID ENDORSEMENT DISCLOSURE: In order for me to support my blogging activities, I may receive monetary compensation or other types of remuneration for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial and/or link to any products or services from this blog.