Great Toy for your Junior Scientist!

The Primary Science Kit by Learning Resources is a great toy for a young scientist! Its a science kit geared for kids aged 4 and up. Its a very complete kit that includes a beaker, eyedropper, flask, funnel, magnifying glass, test tubes, tweezers and of course goggles. In our house, when you dress the part, its always more fun........

All the pieces included in the kit are made very well out of a hard plastic which seem perfectly safe and durable for small kids. The test tubes include a stand which helps to avoid messes and makes it easier to see your scientific discoveries! I really liked the size of all the instruments. They are very chunky which makes it easy for little hands to use, but they still work very well.

The 10 activity cards are large, plastic coated, colorful cards. Some of the activities include mixing primary food colors, cleaning pennies with lemon juice acid, sink vs. float, even a mini-volcano! The cards show a clear picture of the tools that will be necessary as well as specific directions for the activity. A non-reader could easily use the cards to gather all the necessary items, while an adult or older child reads the directions. Its actually a great toy to enlist the help of an older child with your toddler. The directions are easy to follow and some of the activities would be fun for older kids, too. My daughter had a couple of "helpers" in her experiments:

The Primary Science Kit is a fun learning toy that should definitely keep your child's interest! Many "younger" versions of toys end up being difficult to use or break very quickly. That is definitely not the case with this set. Its very usable for younger kids, yet includes everything you would need to conduct an actual experiment and learn about science. You can use the included activity cards or just play around with the kit to make your own discoveries and concoctions!

You can find lots of other fun activities for your kids on the Kidwinks Winter Fun Guide!

Penbo the Lovable Penguin

Penbo is an adorable bright pink penguin that my daughter has been carrying around for the last week. Penbo is the Third Toy of Christmas on the Kidwinks 12 Toys of Christmas list. She is an interactive toy, so she reacts to movement and voice. Although she is sitting right next to me as I type this and is slightly creeping me out because she is staring at me, my daughter (5 years old) loves her. She has a big round belly that opens up to store her egg, which holds a cute little fuzzy blue baby penguin, Bebe.

Penbo reacts to your child's voice and touch by blinking her eyes, moving her arms & legs, and speaking "penguish" back to your child. There are no real words spoken back, just "penguish". You might think that would be a negative, but I actually don't think it is. Any words would be limited by what is recorded within the toy, you would get the same responses over and over. With "penguish", your child can user her imagination to determine what Penbo is saying. Your questions can be endless!

The legs are a kind of rolling wheel so Penbo can move backwards and forwards. She can even do a little cha-cha! There are 5 different games you can play with Penbo & Bebe. You start the games and interaction with different combinations of pressing their hands, forehead and heart on Penbo's belly. The interaction you see from just rubbing Penbo's head or talking to her is exciting for a 5-year old. In order to start the games however, there are specific steps to follow that seem a little complicated for a child to execute. We went through the games once, but my daughter prefers to just rub her head or talk to her to get her to respond. Getting her to open her belly and release the egg & baby penguin seems to be a popular activity for my daughter also. The enclosed play guide describe Penbo's delivery of her egg as a magical moment! I'm not sure its magical, but it is fun!

It definitely seems to have more potential than just a regular stuffed animal, but I'm wondering if the electronics piece would lose interest after a while. After a few days, my daughter was putting barrettes and headbands on her and just dressing her up. Penbo is such an incredibly cute-looking toy, regardless of whether you enjoy all her neat features. Kids who love electronic toys will really enjoy the games and interactions that Penbo makes. You can find lots of other ideas for great toys on the shopping section of www.kidwinks.com. You can also find tons of ideas for fun ways to spend your holiday break on the Kidwinks events section.

Chocolate Without Guilt

I love chocolate. Love, love, love it. So when I was offered some sweetriot chocolate to try, of course I said yes! I'll get to the chocolate in a minute, but the company story is interesting, so you should hear about it too.

sweetriot believes in creating products that are good for the world: healthy, natural, fairly traded and ethically sourced. Their mission is: "To create a more just and celebrated multicultural world for our next generation." Wow! A chocolate company that truly believes they can change the world and make it better. I salute them!

Okay, now to the chocolate. It is absolutely delicious! I tried these little squares shown.  They're vegan, kosher, gluten-free, dairy-free and only 25 calories each.  This dark chocolate beats anything else I've tasted. And the best thing is, it is not super sweet, so just a little satisfies your chocolate quest. Anyone who's read anything about sugar knows that eating sweets makes your body want more. Well, not with this chocolate. Really. It's smooth and silky and does not kickstart the never-ending sweet craving that continually feeds on itself.  You can enjoy a square (or even 2) without guilt.

Another cool thing about this chocolate is that the packaging is beautiful and designed by up and coming artists. Artwork in a wrapper - who'd've thunk?

sweetriot chocolate would make a great gift or stocking stuffer for the chocoholic in your life -- even if it's you!

Click here for more info and a DISCOUNT code for sweetriot.

Hoot Owl Hoot!

We've been playing with the Kidwinks 7th Toy of Christmas these days. It's Hoot Owl Hoot! and my 5 year old and I love this game!

This a cooperative game by Peaceable Kingdom. I'll have to admit, considering I love to drive my older boys into bankruptcy in a hard core game of Monopoly, I really didn't have high expectations of a "cooperative" game. I was wrong!

The game works like Candyland, where you pick color coded cards ..... no reading necessary. Each players has 3 cards at a time. They can either be color cards or sun cards. The sun cards move the sun across the board, from sunset to sunrise. When you pull a sun card, you must play that first. The object of the game is to work together and move through the board, getting all your owls back to the nest before the sun rises. Since you are working together you either win together or lose together.

You strategize together to figure out how to best utilize your cards with the other players. Not only does the cooperative effort take the pressure off the idea of winning and losing, but I could see my daughter putting a lot of thought into how to use our cards together in order to get the owls as close as possible to their nest. The only "bad" thing that can happen to you in the game is to pull a sun card. We ended up cheering for each other and crossing fingers when the other was drawing a card, hoping not to draw a sun. Lots of high fives as we got our owls closer to their nest!

Depending upon how many owls you choose to play (anywhere up to 6), you are still able to lose. Its pretty hard to lose with only 3 owls, but it could be a nail-bighter with 6. You can have the lesson of sometimes losing in a game, but no one is singled out for losing. You all lose together.

The box cover includes several games made by the same company. I think any of these games would be a great gift!

You can now see all the great toys that have been picked for the Kidwinks 12 Toys of Christmas. If you are looking for fun things to do with your kids, check out Kidwinks Christmas Events listings!

Here We Go! Time to Exercise the Imagination

Here I am just two weeks before Christmas and I'm still just making lists and checking them twice. Not enough shopping, baking and general merriment going on yet. So, I got busy this week and began to check out potential gifts for my friends and family. First up, I sat down to read Here We Go!, Around-the-World Adventure, part of a multi-media creation of GrandCamp Adventures, a relatively new Atlanta-based company.

Cute story, but my first reaction was "huh?" My boys are going to wonder why their very own grandma and papa aren't taking them on extravagant trips to the Congo, New Zealand and China, among other foreign places, not that they want them to. My guys are all pretty happy exploring the hills and waterways that surround their grandparents' farm.

Then I slept on it. I re-read the book, listened to the accompanying music CD and checked out the Grandcamp Advenstures' website.

And I "got" it. I must've been sleep deprived the first time I read the book, because the whole concept behind Grandcamp Adventures is to foster imaginative play and storytelling between grandparent and grandchild. The organization's first story, Here We Go, takes readers (and listeners) around the world looking for their families' lost treasures -- photos, travel journals and other memory-jogging riches.

As part of the adventure, tech-savvy grandparents can navigate the online activities on their next visit with their grandkids. A CD of music (the Nobody Loves me Like My Grandma, lullaby version, had me grabbing the hanky), and various accouterments can also be purchased to complete the experience. These additional items seemed a bit pricey for my tight wallet, but the book and CD are reasonable and will find their way under my in-law's tree this holiday.

Sssshhhh. Don't tell them!

For more gift ideas, check out Kidwinks' 12 Toys of Christmas at Kidwinks. 

Kidwinks is your online resource for everything kid-related in the Chicagoland area. 

Enter to Win Kidwinks' 11th Toy of Christmas - Richard Scarry's Busy, Busy Airport Game

ZOOB Building System

The 5th Toy of Christmas is ZAC, The Zoob Alien Creature.

ZAC is part of a building system that is made up of ball & socket type connectors. Those connectors allow you to move the pieces once they are snapped in place. The pieces are all the same length but come in a variety of colors. The ZAC kit comes with some special pieces that not all the kits include.

My 9 year old son played with this kit and built the space station.

When we first took a look at it, we thought it would be a cross between Legos and K'Nect. It really is totally different, however. The fact that the pieces can move independently once they are connected is really great. You can have a moving hand or foot, or even individual toes and fingers, like ZAC does. The pieces are a good size & shape for building larger structures and adding stability to structures. The connections are very tight, so once you put something together it is not going to break apart, which can be both good & bad. The age range for the toy is 6 & up. A 6 year old would definitely be able to imagine a fantastic creature to build with the pieces, but he might have a difficult time snapping them together or taking them apart to rebuild. Our set is new, however, and we thought that over time the connections may become easier as they loosen.

This set also comes with a couple of light up balls. You can see in the picture that they are attached to long wires and they bob up and down. Those were a big hit!

Visual instructions were included which show how to make several different designs with this set. I think after the initial build, most kids would love to build something unique with them. Z.A.C, The Zoob Alien Creature is a great set for kids who build with legos, tinkertoys, etc. It has unique pieces that would spark their curiosity and get them building something new and different.

This was a good choice for the 5th toy of Christmas! You can check out all the 12 toys of Christmas as they are revealed by clicking here.