Fun Educational Tot Toys

I have been on a hunt for fun educational tot toys to use for Holden's "tot school." He is almost 2.5 now. I have had great success at finding things at the thrift store for a dollar or two each. Here are some of the things I found:
Lauri Toys Shape Sorter and Large Pegboard for a total of about $3. The pegboard set was complete, and the shape sorter set was missing a few pieces, which I can get from Patch company.
Discovery Toys Giant Pegboard for $2. It was missing only 1 piece, which I'm getting from a local representative for FREE. Never hurts to ask...she was very helpful!
Tallest Tree Stacking Blocks for $1. It was complete! It is neat...has 5 sides of learning on 3-dimensional cubes that stack in a set of 10. One shows the journey from forest floor to outer space. One is a poem about the Redwood tree to read. One has counting from 1 to 10 with forest animals. One has discovery of forest animals and plants. And one has learning about the world's tallest trees. Neat! ISBN is 1-883869-50-1 for anyone who might be interested.
Nick Jr. Go Diego Go Shapes & Colors Slide & Learn Interactive Flash Cards for $2. These are neat. Has 30 cards that slide open and show matching colors and shapes. This was complete, also. Holden loves Diego!
Enormous set of wooden pattern blocks in various sizes and colors for $2. It was enough to fill two tubs from Huggies wipes! I figured I can print off or make up my own patterns to use with them.

Then I went to ACMoore and used a 50% off coupon plus a $6 gift card he got for his birthday to get a $20 Melissa & Doug Lacing Beads set. It can be used in multiples ways for shapes, colors, counting, patterning, etc.

Then I went on Craigslist and got the nice Melissa & Doug Beginner Pattern Blocks set for $5. That was a deal! It was a complete set.

So we're all stocked up no on educational early learning toys, plus all those games I made myself. And I've got Teddy Mix & Match from Sonlight's PK 3/4 Core, plus I have some things I got at Moore Expressions: Discovery Toys Place & Trace for $3 and Peg-It Bears with Subtraction Fun Cards that I picked up there when Haylee was younger. And I have a nice set of colored counting bears and sorting cups from Wal-Mart that was also Haylee's.

So I should have a good supply of learning activities for Holden's workboxes to supplement his assignments from Sonlight PK 3/4 and Abeka Nursery for 2's.

I've been scoping out a couple of things from Lauri Toys like maybe the Primer Pak, but most especially the Early Learning Center Shapes & Colors. That looks REALLY cool. I found it cheapest at Amazon for about $29 HERE.

My A/C is broken, so our planned trip to Busch Gardens for today is out. It's being repaired as we speak. Gonna cost me about $1,000. Just spent $4,500 replacing the system at my rental property last month. When it rains, it pours. What can you do? We're in a roasting hot heat wave, so there's no way around it. The heat index hit 100 over the weekend with more to come.