P.E.R.C

A few weeks ago I was chatting with a good friend of mine at work. I was telling her it’s getting more and more difficult to work from home in the morning because Liam has mastered all his toys and seems completely bored. He will crawl all over me, request unneeded snacks or just pull me to come play with him so it's not so boring. I SO don't want to buy any more toys because it seems like a waste when he masters new toys so quickly.

My friend was sorry she had never mentioned it before, but there is a place that I can “rent” out toys and keep swapping them every week for FREE! She then told me about a P.E.R.C program in our area. “What is P.E.R.C.?” It’s an acronym for Parent/Educator Resource Center. This Center happens to be in the basement of a library not too horribly far away from us.

I called the center. They told me they were only open on Tuesdays in the summertime, so it just happened to be a Tuesday that I called, so I went directly after work since they close at 6pm… yikes. I got there at 5:45 with Liam and hurried and picked out 6 toys (the maximum number you can get per week). Easy as pie!

I have been trying to do searches on google.com for other centers around the United States. It seems that West Virginia seems to have the biggest amount of resources for this program. I did find this site, though. I hope other parents can take advantage of similar programs around the nation. It’s so nice to know I never really have to buy any more educational toys for Liam. He will always have something new in the house each week. I feel so fortunate to have found this gem of information!

Liam loving the bead stacking. We have been working on colors and counting.

These foam blocks have been a hit the past 2 days. Helps us educate him in identifying colors and he tunes his own fine motor skills when stacking.


This is a counting and sequencing game for older toddlers, but we used it to match colors and grouping like colors without the game cards.

He has loved using his little noggin' and I've enjoyed watching him use his own logic to figure things out. I didn't get a photo of a plastic peg board that had 25 different colored pegs. He would stack each color (5 stacks) and then demolish them and laugh, then repeat the process. This was his absolute favorite! We even took it to the sitter's house he loved it that much. He also has liked the felt story board books helping him match colors and numbers. The xylophone toy, he would bang on that for a long time and get so excited to play me a song.

I hope other parents can take advantage of similar programs in their areas. It's literally a priceless find!