Sort-'Em-Up Pups™ Play & Learning

Easter egg hunts are a beloved tradition but can be messy and time-consuming. Learning Resources Snap-n-Learn Toys are the perfect solution if you're looking for a fun alternative. This blog post will explore how these toys can be used as Easter egg alternatives and why they're a great addition to any child's toy collection.

Snap-n-Learn Toys are colorful, interactive toys designed to help young children learn essential skills such as counting, sorting, and matching. They come in various shapes and sizes and are made of durable plastic that can withstand the wear and tear of little hands.

Instead of filling plastic eggs with candy and trinkets, you can use Snap-n-Learn Toys as the eggs! These toys are not only fun to play with, but they also allow your child to learn and develop essential skills. For example, you can use the Snap-n-Learn toys to create a scavenger hunt, each containing a clue to the following location.

Snap-n-Learn Toys are a fun and educational Easter egg alternative and provide numerous benefits for your child's development. These toys can help your child develop fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and problem-solving skills. They also encourage creativity and imagination, as your child can use the toys to create their own stories and scenarios.

Learning Resources Snap-n-Learn Toys are a perfect Easter egg alternative that is fun and educational. They allow your child to learn and develop essential skills while promoting creativity and imagination. Using these toys as Easter egg alternatives, you can create a memorable holiday tradition that your child will love.

Learning Resources® does an excellent job of creating products for a wide range of age groups. They focus on fine motor development for the 18 months - 4 years old age group. I have used many of these products for my children and in my preschool classroom (I teach two and 3-year-olds). In this blog, I will be sharing a little more about how I use some of my favorite fine motor Learning Resources products and their benefits to young learners.

Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog®

Spike the Hedgehog was where the fine motor journey for the 18 months plus age group started at Learning Resources. They now have 7 Spike products, ranging in color and design. The original Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog is a firm favorite with my 2s age group. The idea of Spike losing his quills and children having to put them back in his back is just the right level of fun and challenge. The colors are vibrant and lend themselves to color recognition and sorting activities. I also love how numbers are subtly written next to the holes on Spike’s back, as this opens up the opportunity for number recognition and vocabulary development. The shape of the quills enables little hands to grasp them easily, and it is no surprise to hear that toddlers love the idea of pushing the quills in and out of the holes on Spike’s back over and over again!

There is also a range of great spin-off Spike products. The Spike Puzzle Playmate has been a big hit with my preschooler, who is 4, and the two-year-olds at preschool. This one combines the excitement of matching shape pieces with the challenge of matching numbered quills. It can be fun to hide the puzzle pieces in a sensory bin as an added element of play. Another popular item is the Spike the Hedgehog Sensory Treehouse. The great thing about this product is that it naturally encourages open-ended small-world play. Children like to use the little textured hedgehogs as they would do so with small toy animals. They pretend the treehouse is their home, and they go on all sorts of fun adventures. I love seeing the collaborative play and learning that takes place! There are discussions about the shapes, patterns, and textures on the hedgehogs’ backs and numbers shown on each Hedgehog.

Dottie the Fine Motor Cow

Dottie, the Fine Motor Cow, is a fun and colorful fine motor friend who encourages pull-out and pop-in movements with five tactile dots attached to the cow. This gets little hands working hard and exposes toddlers to learning all about colors. The soft surface of the push/pull dots makes this a great starting point for fine motor play, and the fact that the actions can be repeated is also a bonus. This is an excellent option as a travel toy as there are no additional parts which, as we all know, get lost so easily!

Steggy the Fine Motor Dino

Steggy is a bright and colorful dinosaur who needs help getting his ten scales placed in his back. The scales are durable and encourage the pincer grasp to be developed. Our favorite way to extend the learning is to focus on the number order in which the scales are added. Searching for the 1-10 numbers in the correct order and then carefully organizing them on Steggy’s back can take a lot of concentration for a two or 3-year-old! We recently set up a fun ‘Search for Steggy’s Scales’ sensory bin, which involved digging the scales out of a green rice bin and then adding them to Steggy in the correct number order. We have also had some fun using the scales for color sorting activities. It helps that all of Steggy’s scales can be neatly stored inside his body when not in use.

Have you tested out any of the fine motor friends on offer by Learning Resources? Which are your favorite and why? We’d love to hear how you use them at home or in your classroom.

Writer’s Bio

Lucy Baker is a Mom of two (4 & 8 years old) passionate about creative play and hands-on learning. She firmly believes in providing children with the opportunity to learn through play and being part of their play journey as a parent. See more of her creative play ideas and process art projects on Instagram @findthelittlemind, and over on her blog, Find the Little Mind.

I am currently in the fun position of being a Preschool teacher and being Mom to a preschooler. It is honestly such a magical stage of childhood, and I love how much playful learning happens daily. I am always on the lookout for engaging new materials with my daughter and preschool class, so I was excited to test out Learning Resources® Preschool Letters and Numbers Skill Builders! Sets. In the second blog of this mini-series, we will turn our attention to the Numbers Set.

As I mentioned in the first blog, learning for preschoolers should be as hands-on and fun as possible. It is important to capture their engagement and keep those little hands busy. The Skill Builders! Preschool Numbers Set includes durable plastic numbers and shapes, foam color and number dice, colored ocean counters, number and picture cards, and a selection of paper activity sheets. As with all Learning Resources products, there is also a brilliant activity guide full of enriching activity ideas for your preschooler.

I let my four-year-old pick out the materials she liked the look off, and then we set up a little number tracing and matching activity. She chose one number card at a time and then traced the number with her finger after saying it aloud. She had to find the correct plastic number and place it next to the number card. The final step was to flip over the number card to see the objects and count them. So many excellent numeracy and literacy skills were at work here!

Next, up my preschooler decided that she wanted to explore the shape pieces. We placed the shape cards on one side of the table and the plastic shapes on the other. She chose a plastic shape, and I asked her to name it if she could. She then tried to find the matching shape card, telling me what the picture was of on the shape card. We worked together to figure out the names of some of the more difficult shapes, and we also counted how many sides the shapes had. A really fun extension of this activity was when my daughter announced that she wanted us to go on a shape hunt around the house. We challenged ourselves to find two examples of each plastic shape in our home for each plastic shape. It was lots of fun!

We finished our number session with a game of 'ocean counter collections' (at least that's what my four-year-old called it?!?). We took turns to roll the foam color dice, and then we had to pick out an ocean counter of that color. We kept taking it in turns, building our ocean collection and counting as we went. If your child wanted to make the game more challenging, you could add the foam number dice for some number recognition and vocabulary.

There are plenty more ways you can play with this set. My preschooler particularly enjoyed the large plastic numbers and making games using foam dice and ocean counters. The vibrant colors are such a fun addition!

Writer's Bio

Lucy Baker is a Mom of two (4 & 8 years old) passionate about creative play and hands-on learning. She firmly believes in providing children with the opportunity to learn through play and being part of their play journey as a parent. See more of her creative play ideas and process art projects on Instagram @findthelittlemind, and over on her blog, Find the Little Mind.