childrens Archives - Rave & Review

Flower Fairies add whimsy and fun to any fairy garden

Fairy gardens are serious business at our house. Just ask our neighborhood kids whom my daughter has fully convinced that fairies live in our garden. We currently have a gorgeous backyard fairy garden that is out from spring to fall, which is where my daughter’s love of fairies started. But this summer I wanted to … Read more

Parenting: when sick gets real

This post has been sponsored by Pfizer Consumer Healthcare. All thoughts and opinions are my own. I’ve got three little kids, all of whom have independent schedules and loads of interaction with other kids. This basically means that cold and flu season is a constant struggle to stay healthy, and to minimize any illness that hits home. This year has been especially bad and there hasn’t even been one day that the kids’ classes were full or there weren’t a few last-minute playdate cancellations due to illness.

I can’t have them live in a bubble or sanitize every surface they *might* touch, so what’s a parent to do? I want to make sure they can see and play with their friends and not miss out on crucial lessons, but I definitely don’t want them bringing home every little sniffle that goes through their classes. To combat illness, we implement these basic rules for keeping healthy:
1)   Wash hands frequently, and make sure kids know how to wash properly.
2)   Staying home when we’re sick – no need to send the illness around the school, family, or playground.
3)   Keep a good routine. With healthy amounts of activity, good diets, and plenty of sleep, we manage to avoid quite a few illnesses a year.

How to throw an awesome science party for kids

I’ve never been great at birthday parties. Usually, I slap together an event with a loose theme and some character plates chosen by the kids and then order a few pizzas. I was prepared to do exactly that this summer when I was asked by my science-loving kiddo to throw a “science birthday party” with a very vague description of what that actually was. So, I got to searching “science birthday party” online. And, you know what I found? There are almost no science themed birthday plates or accessories that make sense for a young child. Luckily, my family loves a challenge, so they convinced me it would be a great idea to throw together a science themed party with absolutely no party store help. No “science” plates, no themed tablecloth, no activity kit to order. My goal was to throw such an amazing party that it would hopefully get me off the hook for throwing any of my kids a party for the next 5-10 years. I’ll let you know how that goes, but in the meantime I’m going to show you my take on a science party and share some printables I made up.

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Update those winter wardrobes with Carter’s Babies and Kids #SpringIntoCarters

I participated in an Influencer Activation on behalf of Influence Central for Carters. I received a complimentary gift card to facilitate my review and thank me for my participation #SpringIntoCarters

Spring is finally here in the Pacific Northwest and that means we're purging our bulky sweaters and looking for bright colors and warmer weather wear. But, while I can wear most of my clothes from last spring {hooray for not being pregnant anymore!}, the kids have grown so much that shopping is a necessity, which I'm not going to complain about now that I've got a new little one to shop for as well. Naturally, I turned to the company that I've relied on to outfit my kids since they were born: Carter's Babies and Kids. I absolutely love shopping at my local Carter's store because every season it is restocked with an awesome mix of adorable, cute, hip, practical, and truly fun pieces for newborn on up to kids size 12.

Children’s beds made fun and functional with Cuckooland

For the past few years, I’ve been researching bed solutions for my growing family and have come to one conclusion: people put a whole lot more thought into the crib that they will buy their little one to sleep in for a matter of months than they do the bed they will grow up in.

It’s true. There are numerous companies devoted to helping you design a baby nursery and pick your baby’s bed, but there is very little help once you are ready to graduate your child to a big kid bed. I guess you’re just supposed to go to a traditional furniture store and pick one of the 5 boring beds they stock and call it good. Well, there’s one company that thinks that kids beds should be cooler than that. Way cooler.

Meet the British commerce site Cuckooland.com, the coolest way to make your child’s room the stuff dreams are made of. Delivering all the wow factor I have been searching for in kids furniture, their line of children's bedroom furniture will have grownups as well as the kids wanting to daydream in a treehouse bunk bed or make believe the day away with a playhouse bed for sleeping and playing in. Part bed, part art, and part play space, these extraordinary children's beds make it possible to create a gorgeous place for sleep and for play that is only limited by your imagination.

A sensory adventure with SentoSphere art and learning kits

This is going to come as a shock to anyone who knows how close my daughter and I are, but a few months ago I found it hard to bond with my sweet little girl. We spent most of the day together but sometimes it felt like we were so similar that we were constantly at odds. With the start of school and the addition of ballet and playdates there was a lot of hurry up and clean up and eat up and we’ve got to go, but not a whole lot of time to just sit and talk and enjoy each other. I realized I had to do something fast or this school year was going to be pretty awful for both of us, but I wasn’t sure what. It was then that I tried crafts and I realized that was going to be our saving grace. Crafting gave us a time to slow down, to relax, and for some reason, it made my girl open up. Crafting time told her she had my undivided attention – and she was going to make the most of it.

For that reason I am constantly on the lookout for crafts that we can do together, and I’ve found the perfect company to help me keep us both happy and connected. SentoSphere started in France creating high quality artistic and educational games, kits and toys but are now selling most of their lines in the States. Sure, we still do coloring books and doodling on some days, but other days we want something with a real wow factor, and that’s when we turn to SentoSphere.

The Magic School Bus Weather Lab from Young Scientists Club {review & giveway}

Anyone who knows my daughter knows that science is a verb in our house. A few months ago, my daughter decided that she definitely wanted to be a scientist when she grew up…. or a ballerina. We ran with the scientist thing.

I never turn down an opportunity to spark my kids’ love of learning, and science with kids can be a fascinating thing that can carry them all through school. So, now we “science” all sorts of stuff each day, anything from basic weather phenomenon, things we find in nature, or concepts that can be hard to explain to kids without hands-on experiments.

Thank goodness there are kits designed specifically for teaching kids early science lessons, because I would be lost on how to start teaching science otherwise. I recently found the Magic School Bus line of science kits from Young Scientists Club and it was as if I had found the coolest toys on earth, according to my daughter.

I loved the books growing up, and we just found the Magic School Bus show after searching for science shows for kids, so as soon as I saw that there were Magic School Bus kits specifically for doing science at home, I was sold. And, then when I saw this kit, I fell in love:

Magic School Bus Weather Lab
Ms. Frizzle and her students help Young Scientists learn about the weather by spinning a pinwheel, making a tornado in a bottle, swirling a paper snake, recreating the water cycle, creating a rain cloud, using a sun dial, constructing a barometer, catching a rainbow, and learning about the greenhouse effect. With a weather chart is for tracking weather with colorful stickers, 28 colorful experiment cards, weather station, weather chart, stickers, and data notebook to record observations, your child will have everything they need to become a little meterologist.

Step2 LifeStyle Custom Kitchen

I
am a Step2 Test Drive Blogger. I received a product in exchange for my
review and opinion. No other compensation was provided and all opinions
are 100% ours.

I spend a good deal of my time at home in the kitchen. Whether I’m making dinner, washing dishes, packing lunches, or prepping snacks, the kitchen is where you will find me. My kids have seen me in the kitchen their whole lives and love to watch me cook and prep, so it’s really no surprise how interested they are in how things work in the kitchen.

This is why they are in love with their new play kitchen from Step2 that sits right alongside my real kitchen. They play with it every single day without fail and it’s become one of the biggest draws of our whole house that the kids flock to during playtime.

I love that they adore it so much, because I love to see them figure out everyday problems like how to make stew when all you have in the fridge is a few random vegetables because someone {ahem, the little one} took everything else for his picnic in the living room.

I love watching them work out math problems by dividing foods and subtracting, and I love seeing them problem solve amongst themselves as they figure out how many foods should be allocated to picnics and how many are for the stew.

Back to School, rain or shine with Gymboree

Back to School rain or shine
I remember thinking that summer was far too short when I was growing up, but as a mom I feel summer is even shorter than I remember. Our weeks go by in a flurry of summer vacations, mini getaways around Puget Sound and playdates at the lake and ocean. All summer long you can find us with our toes in the sand, building castles and having picnics, enjoying ice cream as the sun goes down, and then just as quickly as it started, it seems like it’s fall again.

And, this year the coming of fall means a very big thing for us: the start of Elementary School. My daughter is really excited about going to the “big kid” school in our neighborhood and I’m excited to walk her there, hand in hand every morning and then pick her up every afternoon. But, with the arrival of school comes the changing of the leaves, the cooler weather, and the start of the rain that will be here on and off until April.

So, we’re starting school and kicking off the start of the rainy season with some new rain duds from Gymboree. That means rain boots, rain jacket, and umbrellas. But, it also means long pants for my son since he still goes to school twice each day to pick up his sister, and so far that has equaled a whole lot of wet jeans from puddles and rain.

Thank goodness Gymboree had everything we needed and more, including this gorgeous rain set that would make any rainy day seem brighter.

My daughter has worn it to and from school a few days now when it was sprinkling {or "sparkling" as she would say} and it was perfect for the warm days of fall. When she’s not wearing it, it stuffs nicely into the bottom of her school bag still leaving plenty of room for all the things that need to go back and forth to school each day.