Toys Toddlers REALLY like

On Monday and Tuesday, I took Sasha to the local toddler preschool program that we found. We're going to make it a regular thing to do now on Mondays and Tuesdays. It's so good for her! The part of the program we've participated in so far is two part. First the kids play in the heavily stocked toy room. Then after about an hour, the kids get to play with bikes and balls in the elementary school gym.

The toy collections let me know what sort of toys she actually likes. I swear they've got aisles and aisles of toys stacked from floor to ceiling. Any toy you can think of ever made, they've got it and when Sasha likes one I can borrow it! This alone should save me money because I don't have to waste money on toys she won't like anymore.

Toys she liked this week:
Wooden pegged puzzles
Sit & Spin - remember these when you were a kid?
Playhouse- Sasha was guarding a play house like it was her turf
Toy Vacuum (go figure)- popular with all the toddlers!

I found that I really like Little Tikes toys. They've got the coolest stuff, very sturdy, and kids loved them. There were lots of little kids the same age as Sasha and pretty much all the cool toys that the kids liked were made by Little Tikes. I think everything else (Fisher Price, Playschool) broke under the strain of a gazillion toddlers playing with them. Wanna know if a toy is tough? Throw it in the room with this crowd of toddlers, haha!

So anyways, I borrowed the Sit & Spin toy. The one we borrowed has a button with lights and music on the part in the center that you hold.

At the gym, Sasha was fond of this little car:

Isn't it cute? I could push her around with the pole, or she could scoot it around herself, although she mostly scooted it backwards. She had a blast with it.
Anyways, in the gym today, Sasha met her first bully. Oh no! There was a three year old rich kid, very cute, with his imported au pair. In the gym portion of toddler preschool, he took a liking to Sasha. I don't know how to describe it but it was like he was herding sheep, if you've ever seen a sheep dog do that. Wherever Sasha would step, he would jump in front of her to prevent her from moving and would yell "You stay right here baby!". She was basically stuck standing in one spot as he wouldn't let her go anywhere. She didn't get upset. She just glared at him and didn't give up. She kept trying to move anyways. Eventually she sat down on the floor, to which he yelled "Yeah baby, you just sit there and don't move." Whenever she tried to stand up, he would hold her down so she couldn't get up.

I mostly watched for a few reasons. I've never seen Sasha encounter a social situation like this before and wanted to see how she reacted. She did pretty well I think! She just kept doing what she was trying to do and didn't give up trying. I also wanted to see what the kid was like, since Sasha will be playing in this program with this child on a weekly basis. I wanted to see if his nanny would step in and stop him. Nope. She just yelled at him and said "no don't do that" but that's not effective on a 3 year old. So she seemed mostly ineffective. Sasha didn't seem to be in any harm, and I think she learned from this social encounter that 3 year olds are annoying.

Eventually I did extricate Sasha from the situation and had her play across the gym from the boy. Sasha stole his car...the neat one pictured above. Yeah he was pretty upset at that but oh well. The kids had to pick a bike or car to bring to the gym and the car was actually what he originally chose, thus it was "his" car. So Sasha got her retaliation :)