Smiling Mom

I was recently sent a pretty cool item to review, 57 Piece Parents Bristle Blocks Spin­ners.  Ini­tially I was hesi­tant to open this pac­kage, as I’m kinda a scrooge about having toys in my house with mul­ti­ple pie­ces.  It dri­ves me crazy when pie­ces go mis­sing or are put away hapha­zardly, which in my house hap­pens ALL.THE.TIME!!  In the end, I deci­ded to bite the bullet (and let go of some con­trol) and open the package.

My kids were thri­lled.  We spent some time on the ground attemp­ting to rec­reate some of the cool cars, swings, and pla­nes that were mode­led in the pamph­let that came with these blocks.

First we put together the swing set.

The pie­ces were sur­pri­singly easy for a 4 year old to put together on his own.

And fun to play with.

With much help from me, we were able to clo­sely repli­cate the toy air­plane that was dis­pla­yed in the manual.  Unfor­tu­na­tely this air­plane was a dis­play only… once we pic­ked it up off the ground, it fell apart.

The Pros:  The bristle blocks come pac­ka­ged very nicely and are pretty colors.  There are a lot of moving parts which pro­ved to be inte­res­ting to my kids.  They also have cute cha­rac­ters.  And the pie­ces are easy for young chil­dren to con­nect.  My kids are drawn to this toy.

The Cons:  I was sorely disap­poin­ted that the buc­ket the items came in was too small to re-fit all the pie­ces.  Shame on you Parents!  I now have to go out and buy an addi­tio­nal bin to store this toy set.  This is one of those moments where the pac­ka­ging decei­ves you.  The items come in a large plas­tic bin, so you natu­rally think, “Great!  I have a sto­rage case!”  Wrong.  This buc­ket is mis­sing the top lid and does not fit the 57 pie­ces.  Boo!

In addi­tion, I was bum­med that the pie­ces fall apart rather easily.  The little yellow guy on the above swing that my son made con­ti­nued to fall out of the swing attach­ment.  And when the item that has been crea­ted is a bit heavy, it falls apart as it’s pic­ked up.

My sum­mary:  Although I like this toy, I pro­bably wouldn’t spend the $36.99 kno­wing that I will have to spend an addi­tio­nal $5-$7 to buy a bin to house it.  But if it was given to my kids as a gift, I’d think it was pretty cool!

I was invi­ted to attend an event hos­ted by Leap­frog this past Sun­day night through my affi­lia­tion with Sili­con Valley Moms Blog.  Ini­tially I was mostly exci­ted to be atten­ding this event because it gave me an oppor­tu­nity to catch up with newer and older friends, drink with the girls, and have zero child res­pon­si­bi­li­ties for a few pre­cious hours.  I was in, but not too inte­res­ted in the pro­ducts that I knew would ine­vi­tably be pushed as an exchange for my attendance.

Turns out, I was plea­santly sur­pri­sed that abso­lu­tely no sales pitch given to us.  None.  We were asked, but not requi­red, to leave a com­ment on Leapfrog’s com­mu­nity forum.  We were not even asked to blog about our experience.

OK, now I’m listening…

In lieu of a sales pitch, Leap­frog enlis­ted the help of Dr. Cun­ningham, a Leap­frog advi­sory board mem­ber and direc­tor of the Joint Doc­to­ral Pro­gram in Spe­cial Edu­ca­tion at UC Ber­ke­ley.  Dr. Cun­ningham enga­ged us in an hour long dis­cus­sion regar­ding the impor­tance of fre­quently spea­king and rea­ding to your chil­dren ages zero to five.

Recently I had the oppor­tu­nity to lis­ten to a pod­cast from NPR’s This Ame­ri­can Life in which they did a seg­ment narra­ted by “Wha­te­ver It Takes” author Paul Tough entit­led Baby College.  He fin­dings show that the typi­cal middle class family speaks to their infants and todd­lers dra­ma­ti­cally more often and more posi­ti­vely than the typi­cal lower income family does.  Fas­ci­na­ting!  His work focu­ses on brea­king the cycle of gene­ra­tio­nal poverty by focu­sing on the chil­dren.  If you have 30 minu­tes to lis­ten about his ongoing work in New York, it’s truly worth your time.

Dr. Cun­ningham sug­gests that we should expose our chil­dren to rich lan­guage through our words, books, and tech­no­logy, and in turn our chil­dren will have a bet­ter chance of rea­ding fluently and com­prehen­ding dif­fi­cult voca­bu­lary at an early age.

What a power­ful con­nec­tion, and a fabu­lous discussion.

I left the event with a gift bag full of the latest Leap­frog pro­ducts.  My chil­dren will be get­ting some pretty sweet Christ­mas gifts this year, thanks to our new favo­rite toy com­pany, Leapfrog.

OH, did I say toy com­pany?  I should cla­rify.  Leap­frog first iden­ti­fies the skill that needs to be taught, then crea­tes a sys­tem in which to teach that skill.  Kinda like a really smart teacher, huh?  So I should say that thanks to our new favo­rite teacher, Leap­frog, my chil­dren will have hours of fun lear­ning through play!

*****Leap­frog also pro­vi­ded us with a cou­pon to save $10 off any order of $50 or more when you shop at leapfrog.com which is good through Novem­ber 15^th, 2008.  So shop away!  I know I will be. 

Cou­pon Code: HY8BHPR

Thanks Leap­frog!!  I’m a new con­vert.  I’ll pro­mote you.  I’ll con­sult for you.  I’ll work with you.  Heck, I’d even help birth some of your cute little froggy gup­pies if I could!  I appre­ciate how nicely you trea­ted us mom bloggers!!

Last review for awhile folks, I pro­mise!! The Kid Kleen Bath Bliz­zard was sent to me for review along with the Aqua­doodle Mat.  This one has FLOP writ­ten all over it.  When I ope­ned the box, I was partly exci­ted. My kids LOVE bath bub­bles and I just can’t seem to get the bath bub­bles to bub­ble up enough!  This pro­duct could, poten­tially solve my bub­ble issues.

But in addi­tion to my exci­te­ment, I was sorely disap­poin­ted.  The bub­ble solu­tion that comes with this bub­ble maker is lite­rally about 4 inches tall.  It’s the sma­llest amount of bub­bles I’ve ever recei­ved at one time.  None the less, I was hope­ful that we’d receive great results.

After using 4 C bat­te­ries (YIKES!!) –not pro­vi­ded, I tur­ned on the device.

And.…disappointment.

First, I was not able to get the Bath Bliz­zard to attach onto the water spout as the direc­tions sug­ges­ted we should.

Second, the amount of bub­bles that were gene­ra­ted from this device were less than impressive.

Third, the minute the bub­bles hit the water they dissolved.

This item is not worth the $19.99 it costs to purchase.

Mine will be going in the trash as soon as my kids go to sleep tonight.

This is a week of reviews folks!!  I was give two items to review this month.  First was an Aqua­doodle Draw N’ Doodle Mat.  My MIL actually bought this mat for my son two years ago.  It was fabu­lous!!  I have active kids whom during the win­ter months are somewhat con­fi­ned to a sma­llish home.  This mat gave them something to do with their time other than run­ning in circ­les and dri­ving me mad. 

What is it?  The Aqua­doodle Draw N’ Doodle Mat allows a child to draw with water directly onto the mat and have a pic­ture appear.  When the water dries the pic­ture goes away.

At over $20, I feel the price is a bit steep, but still enjo­yed the time my kids had to play with it.

Down­side?  If you put the mat away and it’s not totally dry, it molds.  I lear­ned this les­son the hard way.