Toys & Games Archives - Page 19 of 31

Corolle dolls for boys and girls

My son plays with dolls. He’s had a Calin Sky Corolle doll since he was a few months old, purchased when we realized he was army crawling across our house in order to get to my daughter’s dolls and cover them with sloppy, baby kisses. This doll, named Baby Knox, started out as a comfort toy. Baby Knox was something we would give him when he wanted to babble at something and all of our hands were busy, and has slowly evolved into a friendship that surprised us all.

Now, Baby Knox goes everywhere with us. And, what is really cool is that Baby Knox is both a toy and a comfort item that helps soothe him when he gets sad or angry or scared. He’s become a big part of our daily routine and an honorary member of the family.

Home sweet Lundby {SMÅLAND Swedish doll’s house review}

Home Sweet Lundby
I vividly remember when I began to think in miniature. It was one of the many summers I spent with my grandparents in their small town up north. One of our projects that summer was to build a dollhouse for my growing collection of miniatures my grandma and I had collected at swap meets and secondhand stores as well as things we had repurposed around their home that were to scale.

In my mind, my grandpa and I would make a house fit for our treasures, one with intricate details and style that was just like my cousin’s dollhouse my aunt had made from a kit. But, I will never forget when my grandpa and I started to sit down and design my dollhouse and I realized we were making a primitive A-frame house with scrap wood from the garage. My dollhouse would be without doors, windows, or details other than walls.

Don’t get me wrong, I adored the dollhouse we built that summer. It was more than a few steps up from the shelf in my room that had previously housed my miniatures, and it would be perfect for moving a play family into that didn’t mind a little bit of a fixer-upper. I played with that dollhouse for years and did my best to make it feel more homey and inviting by making my own wallpaper and adding realistic accessories.

But, my desire for a real store-bought dollhouse never went away. Even into adulthood, I would look wistfully at dollhouses that were done up to the nines and imagine my childhood dollhouse furniture I had collected filling those big, bright rooms.

In one of those searches, I found Lundby, the Swedish Doll’s House, and it was as if my childhood play family had finally found “home”. I remember bookmarking the site, emailing the link to my husband and asking him how soon was too soon to start buying dollhouses for our baby girl. We both agreed to wait a few years, but I always kept Lundby in the back of my mind.

Last fall, I lost my grandpa after a long battle with illness and I, myself, felt a little lost. My grandpa had been such a strong figure in my life growing up and I wished more than anything that I had held onto that dollhouse we made all those summers ago. I wanted something to help my daughter remember her amazing great grandfather, and wished that they could have bonded over miniatures like we had all those years ago.

So, when a package landed on my porch a few months later with a welcome letter and a “key” to a Lundby Smaland dollhouse, I was beside myself with joy. I knew this was the perfect way to introduce my daughter to the world of miniatures and to provide a link to my past at the same time.

DIY: transform your wagon into an awesome fire truck

My little guy can’t wait to grow up and fight fires and drive fire trucks. On his 3rd birthday he came running in as soon as he woke up and asked if he was old enough to be a firefighter yet, clearly thinking that 3 just had to be grown up enough to fight fires.

Although I can’t do anything about the fact that he’s still got a decade and a half before we can pursue his dream of firefighting, I can encourage him to imagine himself as a firefighting hero every day of his childhood. With the Get Real Gear Jr Fire Fighter costume from Aeromax paired with what is quite possibly the coolest kid’s ride ever, we are well on our way to helping the kids play hero whenever they want.

Hello, Step2 “Fire Wagon”!

Introducing the new VTech InnoTab 3S Wi-Fi Learning Tablet

With the start of school a few weeks ago, my daughter has been thirsting for knowledge. She’s always been a curious kid and very interested in how things work, but this newfound love of learning is unlike anything I ever imagined.

She literally bounds out of bed each day excited to learn, she has trouble falling asleep at night because she’s so excited about what she will learn the next day, and she is constantly looking for things to challenge her new skills. All of this is awesome – really awesome – but it’s also exhausting. Sometimes I want to just “do”, not “teach” as I do, but I hate to discourage someone who is clearly craving lessons.

For this reason, I love that I can give her 30 minutes of tech time with her new VTech InnoTab 3S that arrived last week and it gives me a half hour of alone time to get things done. Instead of interrupting me every few seconds with “how do you spell ___?” or “what sound does ____ make?”, I love that when her VTech time is done she comes running back telling me something new she learned – all on her own.

Aeromax Get Real Gear for Halloween and beyond

Imaginations take flight with Aeromax
In our house, we take our dress up very seriously. We don’t merely have dress up time; all play time these days is done in costume. On any given day you will find the kids dressed as princesses, cowboys, knights, dragons, fairies, and doctors to go along with whatever they are playing with.

Our love of dress up lead us to fall in love with a company called Aeromax that makes the most realistic dress up gear anywhere. The kids have never been drawn to the fake costumes with plastic and overdone jewels – they want stuff that they can put on and be able to truly imagine themselves as a scientist in a lab, a police officer keeping the neighborhood safe, or a pilot flying a cargo plane full of toys.

With Aeromax Toys, pretend play has never been more realistic because even though their gear is designed for kids, this stuff is anything but child’s play. Seriously, just look at these costumes from their Get Real Gear line!

We’re talking flashing sirens, metal buckles, sewn-on patches, real buttons and snaps, and reinforced fabrics and details that look like miniature versions of the real deal stuff. For over 15 years Aeromax has been sparking imaginations with dress up clothing and gear from baby on up to adult and has received every top toy industry award.

With Halloween on the horizon, now more than ever we are thinking about costumes. But, with how much my kids love dress up year-round, I never consider shopping for Halloween at stores that carry traditional costumes. You know the kind, the ones that are made of those awful polyester fabrics and are designed to self-destruct before you even make it around the block trick or treating and with accessories so flimsy they end up being held together by tape before the big day even rolls around.

No, that won’t do at all. Our dress up gear needs to last throughout dozens of playtimes, so we need high quality stuff that’s built to be played in. Thank goodness Aeromax knows that dress up isn’t just for October 31st and has plenty of high quality gear that is made to be loved. And, trust me when I say that the gear that just arrived from Aeromax is very, very loved.

We received the Jr. Fire Fighter costume in tan, the Jr. Astronaut costume in white and then helmets for both costumes, and to say they were well received would be a vast understatement. Since my daughter is obsessed with space travel and my son is convinced he is almost old enough to fight fires, these costumes really couldn’t have been any better suited to my kids.

Do you have your wagon ready for Halloween?

When you think Halloween, do you think wagons? We sure do! Wagons are the ride of choice here in Washington, and even better if that wagon has a canopy with our usual 90% chance of rain just in time for Trick or Treating. My kids will be riding in their spooky chariot, AKA Step2 All … Read more

Corolle dolls, at home and on the go

My kids are absolutely crazy into dolls. This means that we do a lot of pretend play here at home. But, where most people think of dolls as an indoor toy that consists mostly of snuggling, rocking, and feeding, we treat our dolls like we do our real babies, and we take them everywhere with us.

This started when my son was under a year old and refused to sleep without his special Corolle Calin baby doll. We couldn’t very well let one child bring a doll and not the other, so we’ve now embraced the fact that wherever we go, we will need a suitcase for our dolls, too. And, our Corolle dolls have been all over the world with us.

I love that they adore their babies enough to take them out into the world with us as it shows the love that they have for their dolls is stronger than just a mere toy. And I also love that it opens up ways to make playing with babies active and makes even more ways for realistic pretend play.

Here are some tips to make traveling with littles easier with dolls:

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.

Sofia the First: Ready to be a Princess on DVD

Much to my daughter’s dismay, I must have been the last mom on Earth to hear of Sofia the First. She has been trying for months to get me to buy Sofia toys and games whenever we saw them in stores, and it wasn’t until about two weeks ago that I realized they were licensed after a new show on Disney Jr.

So, I did my reading and found that Sofia the First is all about a little girl who becomes a princess overnight when her mom marries the king. The show is about adjusting to life as royalty while dealing with normal issues every kid faces, like honesty and loyalty and courage. I love the premise because it shows girls that even though Sofia may be living a fairytale, it’s important to know that she has problems just like everyone else.

My daughter was ridiculously excited when we received the new Sofia the First DVD last week with 5 new episodes from the TV series. After watching the first episode, she turned to me and said “this is the BEST SHOW EVER” and snuggled in. My daughter absolutely loves the show now that she's seen the new DVD, and I love that she’s learning lessons about telling the truth, believing in herself, and trying new things.