Wednesday, August 01, 2007

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!

15 comments:

D said...

We just found free mommy and me classes through our boys and girls club. It's AMAZING the resources that are available!

Congrats on your wonderful find! I need to get blocks like that for Kaden- he has smaller ones but he can't stack them yet. He loves stacking my canned food but it worries me when he knocks it over that he will hurt himself

Terry said...

That is awesome! I have never heard of such a thing. I need to do some research now!

Anonymous said...

What a great idea! Wish I would have known about this before our hosue became overrun with toys!

Tori :) said...

Oh how awesome! Thanks for the tip Gina.

Are We There Yet? said...

this is a great idea...K is so bored with her things. I've used your ideas in the past (stacking cups etc.) and kept her busy for awhile but once she figures something out she just isn't interested in it anymore. The closest one on the list to me is 2 hrs away, I'm going to try searching tho and maybe I can find something similar

utmommy said...

That is wonderful! Liam should stay busy now!

David said...

Hey, that is cool.

wendy said...

That sounds like a terrific program! I wonder if we have something like that here?

Kim's Life said...

Look how big he is getting. Liam your such a big boy now.

Little Hensley Fam said...

This sounds really cool! I'm jealous because the nearest one to me is 4 hours away if the traffic isn't terrible. =( Thanks for sharing though.

asiangard said...

What an awesome idea! Liam is a smarty pants too!

cpcox99 said...

Thanks for the tip. I'll check this out too. We have a ton of toys and Landon loves playing with Brady's stuff, but it's always nice having new stuff around...

Anissa said...

You are so fortunate to have a place like that by you. I just did a search for something like that around here and found NOTHING. :(

Stephanie Wilson she/her @babysteph said...

This is great! Thanks so much for letting us know about it!

Steph

Terri@SteelMagnolia said...

Thanks for the tip..

he is so smart... that is so great....

I haven't been here in a while it seems... he is just getting so big ...
he's simply adorable....

wow.. he's very smart....

sometimes it's hard to come here to be honest.... he's so much better off developmentally than Matthew....
makes me sad for Matthew.