May I Recommend…

Crayola No Spill Watercolors

Oh. my. goodness. Talk about genius design. The white strip along the front comes out, and you get it wet and put it back. The two brushes have thick, almost foam tips. The little pots have lids which flip back and fit neatly into little slots along the back. They also have a small hole that you stick the brush in for about a second, and it comes out with color on it. Once you paint, you run the brush along the wet strip to clean it off.

So there’s no paint to spill, no cup of water to rinse in (and potentially knock over), no brushes to get forgotten and all crunchy (I’m pretty sure that even if you left these, you could just rinse them later and it would come out. Or, it would just become part of the brush and not influence later colors.)

The only flaw is that the rinse of pad is a titch small, and if there’s a lot of color on the brush, it’s difficult to get it all off. But we noticed that the colors don’t mix too much in that case. And if it really bugs you, a quick run under the faucet washes the brush right off.

AND, most importantly, they’re on clearance at Target right now (10-28-10) for $1.98. I grabbed a bunch for last minute birthday presents. Go, now!

I love playing classical music in our house. I just play it in the background while the kids are playing, we rarely talk about it unless one of the girls asks a question about a piece or makes a comment.  We listen to all flavors of classical, and the girls are kind of developing a taste for what tones they like.  Amazon has two classical music compilations for SUPER cheap right now. The 99 Most Essential Grieg Masterpieces, and The 99 Most Essential Mendelssohn Masterpieces. They’re each $2.49, which is somewhere around a $95 savings over if you bought each song individually. Both are fantastic, with lots of variety. The 99 Most Essential Tchaikovsky Masterpieces is also on sale for $5, if he’s more your taste. You can’t go wrong with the Nutcracker and Swan Lake!

Also wonderful, child friendly, (and cheap!) are Prokofiev: Peter and The Wolf/Carnival of the Animals and Other Great Children’s Classics. Carnival of Animals is so fun to listen to and have the kids figure out which animal the musicians are being. And Peter and the Wolf is just wonderful, but I do recommend David Bowie Narrates Peter And The Wolf. It’s a little more pricey (but still under $10), but HELLO! DAVID BOWIE!

Big Pumpkin

This is another Halloween favorite at our house. (To be honest, we read it year round.) The story of a witch who needs the help of her friends to pick her oversized pumpkin, it has catchy repetition, and cute illustrations.  It also encourages working together and not discounting the little guy, if you’re into that.

Ghosts in the House!

We have a plethora of Halloween books in our house. A plethora I say. Many of them are character books (Handy Manny, Dora, Backyardigans), which is fine, but it also means they fall out of favor pretty quickly as the fickle likes and dislikes of the little ones sway.  So this year I’ve been trying to find Halloween books that are a bit more universal. Enter Ghosts in the House. It’s a gorgeous (seriously, check out the pictures below) book about a little girl who finds ghosts in her house, and what she decides to do about them. (Hint, she ends up with lovely new linens.)  It’s got ghosts and a witch without being scary, and it’s a fun, unexpected story.

More pictures, just because they are LOVELY.

TRIANGLE CARD HOLDERS – SET OF FOUR

My girls love to play card games, but can’t hold more than 2 cards in their hands at a time- and 2 is kind of pushing it. That means that they have to lay their cards out in front of them, which is helpful for manipulating the game in any given direction (if you’re into that), but does take something away from the overall concept of the game. These are the solution to that problem. They’re inexpensive, easy to hold, easy to get cards in and out of, and they make it more difficult to cheat. So you make the choice.

Bare books These are awesome! They’re blank books  that can be turned into anything. They offer books with lined pages, blank pages, even books where 1/2 the page is lined and half is blank (remember those from school?). They have books with panels on each page for making comics, and books with pictures to color in on the covers. (They even have blank gameboards. How fun would that be to design your own game? And puzzles! I hadn’t seen those before!)

I try to have at least a couple of these around the house at all times. They’re great for customizing in all kinds of ways- I’ve made busy books, let the girls draw in them, and today we used the last of the stash for impromptu “autograph” books for friends who were moving. All of the friends drew pictures inside and wrote notes. Simple and easy, but full of love. We’ll be using these for preschool later in the year when we have the girls write their own stories and illustrate them.  And what a fun birthday present – stick a couple in a bag with some markers and crayons and you’re set!

Go Fish! , Crazy Mates, 4 Up! Silly Animals

I’ve been on a mission lately to un-brand our toys. I have no problem with a Cinderella doll, but I’ve decided we don’t need, say, a deck of Disney princess playing cards. These decks from Peaceable Kingdom have lovely, fun illustrations, and are really enjoyable to play with. (Crazy Pirates is Crazy Eights, and 4 Up is a matching game.) Both Crazy Pirates and 4 Up come with two sets of instructions, one for “easy play” – ages 4 and up, and a more challenging version for 6 and up.

Plus, Peaceable Kingdom seems like a really good company, using ecologically sound materials and socially responsible manufacturers.

Story S-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-r-s: Activities to Expand Children’s Favorite Books (Pre-K and K) This series of books is fantastic. We’re using  More Story S-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-r-s for our 4 year old preschool, and it is working marvelously. Basically, these are books of activities to do based on children’s books. So you read the picture book, and then do a science, art, math, cooking, dramatic play, or other fun activity related to it.  There are 4 or 5 activities suggested for each book, and the subjects the projects cover vary from book to book. (So not all of them have a cooking project, say.)

There are volumes for infants and toddlers, Pre-K and K, and up.  These are great for preschool (we do one book a month and spread the activities out over the time) or to just use at home.

I Never Forget a Face Memory Game This is a gorgeous version of Memory, which features the faces of children from around the world. The drawings are lovely, and each card has the country the child is from, so it encourages appreciation of different ethnicities and introduces country names.

This site is so wonderful. And I’d say that even if it wasn’t created by one of my dear friends. The whole goal of the site is to encourage parents to take more pictures of their kids, and to give tips and advice as to how to get those photos to come out better. And really, don’t we all want to take better pictures?