Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Toddler-friendly educational materials

Great idea! And also if one of your other kids is old enough you can instruct them how to make some (blocks, at least) out of yarn and plastic canvas. I googled plastic canvass balls, but those are pricey. Might have to stick with home-made canvass ten-base blocks instead of large plastic canvass "beads". I remember using plastic canvass to make barbie doll furniture following a pattern when I was nine. Good times.

Oh yeah, that would work too! Thanks for the suggestion. I have a crafty 1st grader who's always making stuff. I'm not sure if she's ready for crocheting yet (she still sometimes gets frustrated about tying her shoes), but she does okay with sewing flat toys made of felt. I think she could do *something* with plastic canvas. And the tactile aspect would be great.

Thinking of other ways to use my yarn stash... I bet her younger brother could be taught to spool knit a bunch of "worms" in various colors. Then I could sew them into game pieces/counters/lunar landing pads/etc.

Just for future reference:

I went to a talk by a local child safety group. They said that a good rule of thumb is that if you can fit it through the inner cardboard tube of a roll of toilet paper, it is a chocking hazard for an under three year old. Might be handy to know if you are making your own manipulatives.

Thanks, GeoMamma. This would certainly be a quick and easy method. The down side is that a toilet roll is much bigger than the standard testing tube, ~1.6" vs ~1.25" diameter. Many common toddler toys such as Duplo figures would go through it easily.

The toilet roll is also open at both ends, so it rules out long and narrow items such as chunky dowels or twistable crayons. AFAIK, these are very unlikely to cause serious choking incidents. The standard test allows them, since the tube is about 2 - 2.5" long with a sloped bottom.

According to the official standards, one example of a toddler-safe game piece would be the 2 3/8" long peg people that are used in wooden school bus toys. These would be handy for lots of activities. I'd love to find a place that sells them in different (non-toxic) colors.

Safety 1st sells the standard testing tubes for home use; you can sometimes find them at toy stores. Ours seems to have gone missing, but it seems to me that a 1" cube might be okay, since the diagonal measurement would be sqrt(2), which is more than 1.25. But I'm not sure about this. I'm kind of spatially challenged.

I said I'm not much use here even though my guy's just entering the pre-school years. �I just gave him stuff with small pieces. �The perfection game is definitely a chocking hazard. �But he was an only child (until next month). �

I was suggesting building the cuisineaire rods (sp?) and base ten blocks out of the trio. �A toddler could not use Trio because their hands are not strong enough because it is a pre-schoolers toy. �I just thought the square trio cubes were bigger than the base ten pieces. �And it's cheap, like $5/box.

If you want something larger.. I've given it more thought, could you use those pop-together toddler beads to make your rods and golden beads?

You know when I looked into Montessori and wished the classes were cheaper and closer I decided to try to make my own golden beads. �I decided instead of using little glass beads and earring wires I'd use pony beads and leather so my son could help me string the beads. �Now I'm stuck with a bucket of ten-count bead strings because I never found a way to make flat 100 squares out of them. �When I bought it I had in mind that I could use embroidery floss and weave together the the 10 strands �to build 100 sheets. �Didn't work to my liking. �They were too wavy. �Tried hot glue, it wasn't sturdy. �Hope this next kid is a daughter so I have a use for a ton of plastic beads.

Hey, if you have a crafty child, you might even end up needing to buy more beads. I thought we had a huge supply, especially after buying a couple of 400-packs of pony beads at the dollar store, but DD6 has gone through an amazing quantity of them in a day of frenzied bead-animal-making.

Anyway, I think I've solved our math manipulative dilemma in a way that's completely different way from what I was considering. La Texican, it was your post about making the beads yourself that made me think of it. Here's the plan:

We already have a bunch of the standard Montessori bead chains. If I just hook a large metal split ring (the kind used for key rings) onto the end of each of the smaller chains, then they're no longer a major choking hazard. They're also much less likely to roll under the furniture and get lost. And we could use the big rings to hang them on a peg rack on the wall for storage. I could paint each peg the appropriate color, and even the most uncoordinated and non-math-adept munchkins could have a go at matching them up.

They're still not something I'd want the little guy chewing on, but if he happens to get hold of them, no big deal.

So that's a huge relief. The older ones can go back to using their beloved math beads, without too much investment of time or effort on my part.

Just for fun, I think I might still do one set each of the ping-pong "golden beads" and the cardboard "colored bead stair." I think they'd make a very effective first presentation for slightly older toddlers.

Hey Lighthouse, I was just reading some kind of family magazine. A lady was describing a homemade board game she made and said she finished it up by covering it with clear contact paper. I never noticed clear contact paper before, but I've never looked. Just thought maybe it would work to protect papers you won't be using that many times.