Hellobee Boards

C is 22 months, and is is into coloring big right now, I just give her some crayons and a pad of construction paper and she's all over it. She also loves the wooden puzzles. She's very into her shopping cart also, she has the plastic Fisher Price one. She loves to roll it around and put her toys and dolls in it. Cozy Coupe is another good one.

She's getting a big play kitchen for her 2nd birthday. http://www.amazon.com/KidKraft-Espresso-Wooden-Corner-Kitchen/dp/B005RNM9WM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392646198&sr=8-1&keywords=espresso+corner+kitchen

She loves to color, use stickers and play with play-doh but it's been hard to get her to play with toys for any amount of time, she just loses interest.

@Mrs. Pen: ooh good idea on the basketball hoop!! M loves throwing balls too so I think she will love having a hoop in the backyard. She also love M&D "fishing" games and legos too!

@littlek: http://www.melissaanddoug.com/fishing-magnetic-puzzle-game

She loves them! She goes "ta-da" when she gets a fish LOL

Oh and M has been loving her megablocks, I get a solid 10-15 mins out of those!

My LO is a bit older (27 months) and is really into puzzles (see below). When she was younger she loved the wooden alphabet and number puzzles. We have these ones

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0077RKXWE?cache=fde0f156cec35a5d3a3ca8e11c380868&pi=AC_SX110_SY165_QL70#ref=mp_s_a_1_7&qid=1392649892&sr=1-7

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000FQBCGK?cache=fde0f156cec35a5d3a3ca8e11c380868#ref=mp_s_a_1_1&qid=1392649935&sr=1-1

Early on she has always loved coloring on her easel. We have a cheap one from ikea but I like it bc it's neutral and easily folds up behind our storage system. We have a giant roll of paper on the chalkboard side and she uses crayons. we just put a small pack of them in a plastic bag and she would take them out and identify the colors. And she would love putting them back in the bag...good practice learning to clean up after herself now she dumps them out to color (there's a little shelf on the easel) but cleans them up when she's done. On the other side she used dry erase markers and she just loved drawing with those ...of course supervised. She still loves markers

I also bought a giant flat storage bin (the big ones to put shoes under your bed or something) and a giant bag of rice (like 70 lbs) and let her use that in the garage as a "sandbox". It's easy to clean up (just sweep out of the garage) and she loved digging with her shovels, cups, construction site toys. I read on the YHL blog that play sand isn't that safe so I opted for rice in our home. I don't mind if she plays with sand when we go out.

She started out with these giant floor puzzles when she was 24 months. I think it's easier for little ones bc the pieces are big and bc it is pretty easy to figure out bc it's the alphabet...so it's easy to see what's next

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0057APY1S?cache=fde0f156cec35a5d3a3ca8e11c380868&pi=AC_SX110_SY165_QL70#ref=mp_s_a_1_13&qid=1392649320&sr=1-13

The brand is Innovative Kids and the quality is great. We got our puzzles at costco. This is the other floor puzzle we have

http://www.innovativekids.com/buy/0008/on-the-farm

They have all kinds of puzzles available through their website. I may have to get some more http://www.innovativekids.com/shop/85/floor-puzzles

Now she just does other regular puzzles but I think the floor ones were a good starting point.

@locavore_mama: @sandy: we have the ikea easel as well and J LOVES it! we mostly just use the chalkboard side for now, but I would like to get a roll of paper to attach to the other side. @sandy, how do you attach the roll of paper?

@Mrs. Pen: @locavore_mama: it's such a great little easel and love the price! And I don't mind if she gets paint or marker on it bc I could just easily paint it myself. We bought I before she was born so kids could play with it when they come over and it's still as sturdy as ever. And folding it flat to put away is the best part of all...super easy.

I'm in bed right now but I'll go downstairs and look how it's rigged up in a minute. I just assumed it had some attachment bc we've always has the roll of paper on there but maybe my husband bought something....let me go see

@Mrs. Pen: we bought it for the nieces years ago and I don't remember having to buy a attachment for it.

My almost three year old is really into his peg board and building so we got the Melissa and Doug workbench and a battat build a plane.

He's also an active kid so he has a fisher price basketball hoop, three in one tball set (prefers the pop up setting to the tball), and a mini golf set. He just watched the jake pirate that jake did mini golf and now does the exact same thing.

@locavore_mama: @Mrs. Pen: did you have to assemble yours? I'm pretty sure ours came assembled and ready to use

- another vote for the ikea easel! My LO uses hers daily to draw and practice her letters. She's also really into coloring books and ate supplies like markers and crayons
- play kitchen - she loves to cook and "clean" her kitchen
- puzzles- she outgrew the wooden melissa and Doug ones so we have the ones like @sandy mentioned. She plays with those daily.
- fishing game: like this one but it's fish, not ducks. http://mbeans.com/janod-ducky-fishing-game.html?childid=56951&utm_medium=cse&utm_source=google&gclid=CNXOkprI07wCFQNufgodvSYAfg. It's helped her learn all her colors.
- she loves playing with beans in a huge Rubbermaid tub. It's a pain to clean up but keeps her occupied for a long time.
- she's obsessed w/ anything alphabet or color related, and loves to show off to us. We have the leap frog alphabet laptop and letter factory, and alphabooks. She likes when we ask her to find a specific letter or to line them up.

She is turning 2 this wk.

@sandy: is that your playroom? It looks SO FUN! J would love a room like that
I will have to stop by a craft store and see if I can get a dowel - shouldn't be too expensive. I'm fairly positive mine didn't come with one.

@Mrs. Pen: yes it's our playroom. It's our formal living room at the front of the house...never used it except for holidays so made sense to convert to a playroom. I love that she's on the same floor as me when I'm cooking or doing laundry. And all the toys stay in that room so we're not overwhelmed with toys everywhere. She loves it

I have purchased dowels at Fred Meyer which is a kind of like a nicer wal-mart...has a grocery store, shoes/clothing, housewares and also garden/paint/automotive the dowels were near the paint section. So I bet Walmart would have them for cheap too.