Hooked on Baby Learn to Sign

Details: "Baby Signing Time special edition", 2 special baby signing time DVDs, 2 sets of flash cards, 2 cds with 8 songs from the DVDs, Good Night baby CD, 36 page parent's book, milestone poster and stickers reference chart.  6months-2 yrs.

Introduces ASL and encourages communication development and the parent child bond.  Introduces over 70 signs from the following categories.
1. Family and People
2. Pets and Nature
3. Food
4. Getting Ready for the Day
5. Bedtime
6. Feelings
7. Helpful Signs

My Review: The movies were a little boring but actually worked.  My 5 year old wouldn't watch the movies, but he loved the reference chart, and the flash cards.  My 2 year old loved the movies, Cds but not the flash cards.  A four year old who did this program with us also wasn't very interested in this program.  This really is a great program for younger children.  Easy to use, fun to use and totally worth it.  We checked this program out from the PERC center at the Orem Public Library.

Pros: great product, fun songs,easy to read flash cards

Cos: great for babies and young kids, would be great if there was something for older children.

My Rating 

Great States Junior

Details: 2-4 players, ages 4-7.  150 cards, 1 board with the US map.  A great way for young children to become familiar with the USA map, and learn a little bit about each state.  50 Shape cards: find the states by their shape.  50 Picture cards: match the picture that represents each state with the one on the card.  50 Name cards: find the state by its name, by its first letter, find all the states that start with "A"/ "K" etc, how many states start with North or New...

My Review:  We checked this out from the PERC center at the Orem Public Library for 1 week.  My 2 year old and 5 year old loved playing this game.  As did the other 5 year olds and 2 year olds who came to school time at our home.  Easy and challenging to play, fun to help children learn from.  I recommend this game for teachers, home schoolers, Joy Schools, Preschools, and for parents with children ages 2-7.

Pros: easy set up, easy to play, the dice tells you how to find your state.  There is a Great States for older children and adults as well.

Cons: none

My Rating 

Number Hunt Game

Details: Six math games in one!  Made by Discovery Toys.  Earth friendly and kid fun!  Beyond learning getting smart is just half the fun of learning.  The hunt is on by rolling the dice and moving your disks along the trail through the jungle.  Add numbers and subtract numbers, count insects, and more.  Ages 4 and up, and 2-4 players, takes 15 minutes to play.

This product is organic and printed with vegetable ink on recycled paper and includes parts made from natural wood and bamboo.  This is sustainable and biodegradable and renewable resource.  All products meet or exceed ASTM safety standards.

Information: This sounded like a really fun game, as we're getting our 5 year old ready for Kindergarten this fall, but let me tell you we were all very bored with the game within 5 minutes.  The instructions are confusing even for me to figure out to explain to my children.  The two cool things about this game is that 1. its organic and biodegradable and environmentally safe, and 2. Its instructions are printed on the top cover box so you can't loose them.  I am not pleased with this game at all.  I do not recommend it.  We checked this out from Orem Public Library's PERC center.

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Mr. Popper's Penguin game

 Details: This is an all wood game for children 4 and up.  2-4 players, and it does have small parts.  You have 12 penguins, 12 colored eggs, 4 iceberg scoring boards, and 2 colored dice.  This takes about 10-15 minutes to play.  The penguins hide the different colored eggs and after they're all mixed up you take turns rolling the dice and lifting up a 2 penguins trying to find matching colored eggs.  Its a cute and fun twist on the matching game that gives kids hours of fun and laughter.

Information:  We checked this game out at the Orem Public Library's PERC center.  My kids ages 5 and 2 love this game.  The penguins are super cute and remind us all about Mr. Popper's Penguins the movie with Jim Carrey.  We've played this game a few times now and each time the kids get a kick out of trying to find the different colored eggs, and trying to trick me into loosing.  I really do like this game, its made by Blue Orange.  My only con is that this game should really be for children ages 3 to 5.  I would think anyone older than 5 would be bored with this game.  I highly suggest this game as a great way to learn colors, matching, and memorization.

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Melissa and Doug want you!

Have you heard, used, or seen any of the products that Melissa & Doug have in the stores?  I love them!  My kids have used tons of their puzzles, and we just got some of their games from the Orem Public Library's PERC center.

Well they are trying to reach 100,000 likes on Facebook and are offering a very large giveaway for it.  Help them reach their goal!  After all its still the New year and goals are very important.  Their products are so great, everyone should help them out!  Join in the fun and get a chance to win big!

Here's the link: http://www.facebook.com/MelissaAndDoug

Hooked on Numbers

Details: DVD, MP3 songs, activity pad, journal, wipe off crayons, stickers.  Ages 3-5.  The Crayons conform to ASTM D 4236 (child safety regulations).  This Super activity kit is an educational extravaganza that's packed with learning and fun.

Information: This was another educational tool I checked out from Orem Public Library's PERC center.  First off, my kids and I sat down and watched the DVD together, and to be honest we were all very glad it was done because it was very boring.  The Amazing story was the best part, but my kids didn't really like it (and I say this because they watch lots of different educational DVDs or TV shows like: Dora The Explorer, Leap Frog, Little Einsteins, Dinosaur Train, Super Y, The Mickey Mouse Club House, etc.)  Secondly, my 4 year old who can write, draw and is learning to read basic words didn't like the little Number Journal.  He found it very frustrating because he had to draw things without any type of guide line.  He also prefers white erase markers to wipe off crayons. The Numbers Activity pad was the best part.  Lots of puzzles where you have to read the instructions to get the correct answers.  This was a fun part to do with my 4 year old.  Myself and my children didn't like anything except the puzzles on the Activity Pad.

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Match It! ABC Game

Looking for a great ABC game for kids?

26 upper case puzzle pieces, 26 picture puzzle pieces, and 26 lower case puzzle pieces, and directions.  There are different ways to play this game, depending on the age of your children.  For ages 4 and up.  Educational benefits teach speaking, reading, cause and effect and problem solving.

Information: This looked like a boring game for my 4 year old, but he loved it.  He had forgotten some of the lower case letters, and having to find them by sight to match a picture and the upper case letter was really fun to watch.  We played this by organizing all the pieces into their separate groups (upper, lower, picture), and he had to choose an upper case letter, match it to the picture and find the lower case letter too.  To help him, he learned the sounds that each letter makes, and had to find pictures that he doesn't normally associate with each letter (sun instead of snake, jar instead of jam, yarn instead of yo-yo).  We checked this out from Orem Public Library's PERC center, and had to turn it in before we got around to playing this like Memory.  I highly recommend this game!

Silly Sentences

Why this game is awesome for kids! 

This game is for 1-4 players, starting at 4-7 years old. This game helps teach grammar skills for elementary aged children.  This is a puzzle type game, each piece fits together to create sentences.  Each piece is a combination of a word with or without its picture.

Some more details 

 My 4 year old had a blast playing this with me one afternoon.  We checked it out from Orem Utah Public Library's PERC (Parent Educational Resource Center) for a whole week, and had a good time learning how to play it, read and build sentences.

This game is easy enough for a preschooler to read and play. You could build 1-7 sentences at one time, and there were enough pieces to build hundreds of sentences with lots of different rules to help teach your child.  It helps teach adjectives, nouns, verbs, adverbs, etc, and it helps teach site words to your children.  This was such a popular game from the Library, that there were a few missing pieces. However we still had enough pieces to do what we needed.

So if you buy this, which is very worth the money, it's okay if you loose one piece or two, there are tons of "a's", "the's", "and's", etc.  Which was pretty surprising because those are the letters/ phrases that generally don't have enough.  Another cool thing about this game, is that if your child is still learning how to read, some of the word cards have pictures.  Those pictures make it a lot more fun for the child too.  However, if you loose a noun or verb card well you can still play you just won't be able to put that picture card in the sentence anymore.