I have never been into the dollar store scene.  But after reading a few blogs of moms who found some great hands-on materials to use with their children, I decided to give it a go.

When we were visiting my parents recently, I decided to visit all the dollar stores in their town.  Some were junky and some exceeded my expectations. I had the most success at Dollar Tree and it was by far the nicest of the four stores.  Here are some of my finds!

Caroline really likes Pooh and it is the only “character” thing that we do. I found these cute puzzles and they were much nicer than I expected.  I’ve given her the first one and I’m saving the second one for when I need for her to be totally absorbed for a half an hour.  When she gets a new puzzle, she does it over and over.

Caroline isn’t quite ready for the books, but they were so adorable I bought them for future use.  They are full color inside and really nice for only a dollar!  The card sets she can do now. I’ve given one of them to her and am saving the other one for a bit.  I plan on using the workbook pages in plastic binder sleeves like I saw on Chasing Cheerios (and can’t find now) so we can reuse them.

I found these cute Christmas puzzles and special pencils (which were fifty cents, not a dollar).  Caroline adores puzzles so it will be fun to start bringing these out after Thanksgiving.

There were several other things I found, but I’ll save those for another post.  All in all, it was a good first experience and I think I will probably locate the Dollar Trees around here and see if they have good stuff as well.  I also plan on looking into the Oriental Trading Company. I ordered from them in college and as a teacher, but haven’t looked at their catalog or site since having Caroline.

I found this little gem today at Michael’s (the craft store).

They have a new aisle at our store that is something or other about deals under $5.  This ABC puzzle was just $1.  The letters are glittery and there are little cut outs for each letter making it easier for small hands to remove the pieces.

Underneath each piece is a sentence that says something like “A is for apple.”  The uppercase A and the lowercase a are both in color to stand out.

A great learning tool for just a buck! 

While we were out Christmas shopping in December, I found a Goodnight Moon puzzle in a puzzle store.  Caroline was very into Goodnight Moon this fall and she loves puzzles so I thought it would be a good purchase for her.  I was concerned it might be a little hard since it was 36 pieces, but my philosophy is that if it is too hard you just put it away and bring it out again in a few weeks or months. (I would link to the puzzle on Amazon, but the linking is totally not cooperating.)

Goodnight Moon

When we got home Caroline and I got on the floor to do the puzzle. I talked her through different strategies of what to look for and how to determine which pieces go where.  We got out her large board book and opened it up to the page that matched the puzzle.  She did very well in putting it together with a moderate amount of help from me.  For the next couple of days she did it a several times a day and in four or five days she was doing it on her own without looking at the picture.

Today we (David and I) made a Goodnight Moon lapbook that I found online.  I discovered lapbooks about a year ago and I was completely smitten!  I think they are a wonderful concept and look forward to utilizing this learning tool a lot in the years ahead.

We scanned the cover of her book and made a copy for the cover of the lapbook.

Everything here (well, almost everything) I downloaded via One Little, Two Little. She also had a link to this page at HomeschoolShare that had other printables that I did not use.  Some of the ones there would be more suitable to children a little older than Caroline.

The one thing that was not in the downloads was the top pocket of the three on the right side of the green page.  For some reason it just wasn’t there.  David made one very similar to the other ones.  If anyone decides to make one of these, feel free to email me and I can send you a PDF of that pocket. This one took us a bit of time, but I also expect we would speed up once we get used to how all the little books typically go together.

Caroline liked the lapbook.  Obviously it is something new so she’s learning how to interact with it.  But we had fun with all of the sections this evening and I look forward to making lots more of these for and with her in the years ahead.