Category: children

December 18, 2017

Practical Stocking Ideas for Children of All Ages

I was on Facebook the other day when a Meme popped up about Christmas and stockings. It was a child asking Mom for toothpaste in December but Mom said that will be part of your Christmas gift. I had to laugh because that is me.

The holiday season can be a very expensive time of the year if you let it. There are gifts, work parties, school events and gifts to buy for and the list can go on and on. The first few years into parenting, I would stress and want to make Christmas magical for my child. Which meant I would go overboard, spent too much and most of the stuff was never used. We had a great time don’t get me wrong but the money spent was way too much and we still had to buy so much in the new year.

I have learned over the years that practical gifts make the best gifts. Now half of the presents under the tree are clothes, shoes or soccer equipment. I want the gifts to be something that they can use all year round – if I am going to spend the money it has to be worth it.

The same holds true for a stocking. It can be easy to go to the Dollar Store and load up on a lot of items that your child may not use (and it isn’t cheap either there).

Instead I try to pack their stockings full of items that they can use. My top items to include in a stocking for children and adults are:

Toiletries – this includes their deodorants, gels, body wash, tooth brushes, tooth paste, lip balms and hand sanitizer for school. I love to buy the boxed sets from Shopper Drugs Mart every year (usually Axe or Dove) and use my points to get the most for my money.

Underwear and socks – we all need them and they fit in their stockings perfectly. My boys go through socks like crazy and the cost can really add up throughout the year. Adding this to their stockings is a win win for parents.

Chocolates – I cave here and buy them their favourite chocolate bars. Who doesn’t love to get a little bit of yummy chocolate here and there? I know I do!

Music and DVDs – everyone loves music and watching movies, this makes for a great stocking stuffer. Maybe you have a younger child who would love the sounds of Will’s Jams or an older child that really has to have the newest Taylor Swift. Or maybe a child who loves My Little Pony. The options are truly endless when it comes to music and DVDs, the bonus is that this is a gift that is great for the colder, winter months when your child may be stuck inside more.

However you organize your spending during the holiday season make sure you enjoy every moment and live in each moment.

How do you as a family navigate the holiday spending when it comes to stockings?

Wishing you and your family a very happy holiday season!

December 15, 2017

Cross The Family Gift off Your List with Enchanted Forest Observation Puzzle

Every Christmas holiday season, I begin the search for the perfect family gift (which I am sure so many of you do too). Every Friday night we try to have a family game night, it helps us unwind after a busy week and we can re-connect over friendly competition and team work. We get to hear about the kid’s week at school and we can tell them a little bit about our week. For an hour or two there is no thought about work, what needs to be done around the house or worry about driving to extra-curricular activities.

Not all family games are suited for bonding and unwinding. You need an activity that requires team work, encourages talking, has a goal and is not connected to an electronic (sorry for all you gamers!).

The Observation Puzzle Enchanted Forest fits all these must have requirements and more. The Enchanted Forest has 100 puzzle pieces to put together as a family. Once the puzzle has been put together around the edges are images of items that you will need to find inside the puzzle.

We had a lot of fun putting this puzzle together. While it is a 100 pieces, the puzzle pieces are on the medium size so that little hands can put the puzzle together with just enough difficulty to help them with their fine motor skills. The box includes a large poster of what the finished puzzle should look like which helps you fit the pieces together.

Once the puzzle was completed, your family can move onto the second challenge – find all the images on the outside white frame within the puzzle. Some of the images were easier to find while others really made you think. This was a great addition to this puzzle and added extra fun to this activity. You can even through some competition in this one – the person who finds the most items wins something special or gets to choose the family movie.

You can find more information on the Observation Puzzle Enchanted Puzzle on iLo307. The puzzle can be purchased at specialty toy stores and select book stores across Canada. The puzzle sells for $19.99 CDN.

What is your favourite product to purchase for a family gift?

Disclosure: I received the above mentioned product in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.

December 8, 2017

Collect and Battle with the Awesome Little Green Men

My kids love to create battle scenes and whenever their cousins come over, our toy room becomes a huge battle ground. We have soldiers versus soldiers, soldiers versus superheros – anything is game!

Awesome Little Green Men bring a whole new take on your typical soldier figure. These small little figures are full of spunk and authority! These characters, both male AND female, are truly epic with fantastic features and even better names (Sgt. Major Attitude and Major Boo Book to name a few!).

Your child can create their own battles OR follow the super easy Battle Game Guide (which can also be found online). Each player picks their army so that each player has the same amount of power points, which can be found on the bottom of each soldier. They also require a small coin, large coin (which are included in the packs) and a “prized possession” – which can be anything but each player should have an equal sized possession that becomes the goal to capture. The smaller coin becomes the attacking slider and the larger coin the march slider.

Your child should set up either on the floor (no carpet!) or a long table in order to have a good-sized battle. The youngest player always goes first (this is actually in the rules not just our youngest making it up). Each player can use their march slider to advance their soldiers or their attack slider to hit an enemy soldier. They have to hit the enemy enough times to match their Hit Points in order to capture that soldier. The main mission is to capture the prize behind the soldiers but if your children are anything like mine they will love the marching and attacking just as much if not more. All the obstacles and bandaids that you will need for your attack are included in the package or you can print them online.

The boys even made up their own battles too which was pretty awesome and fun. They enjoyed battling just as much as they did playing and setting up their characters in their rooms. The characters are well designed and they loved showcasing and just carrying them around as is.

Check out this video showcasing these adorable and spunky characters:

You can purchase Awesome Little Green Men at Toys R Us, Amazon and Walmart. They are sold in starter packs of four, deluxe battle packs and blind box. The starter packs include 4 soldiers, 4 dog tags, 1 chain and a collector poster. The deluxe battle pack includes 8 soldiers, 8 dog tags, 2 chains and a collector poster.

Make sure to check out the Awesome Little Green Men website for more information, super cool videos and more!

Disclosure: I received the above mentioned products in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.

December 4, 2017

Throwing The Ultimate Family Music Night

Music is a powerful tool – it lifts up your spirits, brings people together and can inspire an individual. As a family we love listening to music and throwing impromptu music parties at home. It helps us to relax, unwind and bond – not to mention just giving us a chance to laugh and be silly together, which is something we are not always able to do with our busy work and sports schedules.

So how do you throw the ultimate fun family music night? Here are my top three tips!

MUSIC! Simple right but you need to make sure you have a great selection of fun, family friendly tunes that you can all dance and be silly to. For young kids, you need something that is exciting, educational, witty but age appropriate. We love listening to Will’s Jams – it is fun to dance to, easy to sing along to and great for all age groups.

Here is a clip from one of our favourite songs:

Snacks are also an important part of any family music night – hey you need to be hydrated and fuel up in order to have lots of energy, right? Make sure to have lots of healthy options for drinks and easy to eat snacks that won’t make a mess. We love popcorn, apples and juice, although the popcorn sometimes will end up all over the place. Having easy to eat, finger snacks makes set up and clean up that much easier.

Let go and be silly. Kids are amazing at just letting it all go, moving wildly and truly enjoy themselves. Parents need to learn to do this too!

Let go of embarrassment and show off all of your craziest dance moves – trust me your child will LOVE it! Our kids think our moves are the silliest (although we think they are the best moves ever) and it always leaves us all giggling and battling for the title of the Best Dancer of our Family Music Night. Make up the lyrics and dance moves as you go – try out your kids dance moves – anything goes on Family Music night!

It is so important for families to take time out of their busy schedules to focus on the most important thing in their lives – their relationships. Music is that amazing common ground that we all have that helps us to relax, get silly, have fun and bond over. Your child will love seeing this new side of you especially if you are not one to unwind as easily.

Looking for more family friendly music? Head over to Will’s Jams for more great music choices and make sure to connect on Facebook and Twitter to keep up to date with the newest music and more.

Disclosure: I am a Will’s Jams ambassador and receive perks with this affiliation. All opinions expressed are my own.

November 26, 2017

Build, Battle and Learn STEM with HEXBUG!

We all know how important education is – I am personally very fond of the sciences. I did my Bachelors in Kinesiology and many of my electives were in Biology and Chemistry. I want my boys to understand this same love I have for sciences and how much fun the sciences can be (how can you not love mixing chemicals for reactions or building up a car that moves?). When you can combine learning with fun in a toy, this is a definite win win for this parent!

This year, HEXBUG has released a whole new line of products that are perfect for children from three to their teens. These products will find your child building, using their imagination, battling and so much more.

The HEXBUG nano Space Discovery Centre allows your child to take their HEXBUG adventures to space and beyond. The set is very easy to build and put together. My son and I had it ready to go in under ten minutes flat. The set comes with two nanos, space suit, a rover and all the necessary pieces to make their space adventure come to life.

Our son had so much fun creating space battles and even added in extra nanos to race around the space centre. He used his larger HEXBUG as an alien that would attack the Space Discovery Centre and the smaller nanos would have to do everything they could to protect the centre and not allow the alien to take over.

The Space Discovery Centre provided hours of imaginative fun and can be found at many retailers, including Amazon, Chapters and Toys R Us. There is also a nano Space Cosmic Command and nano Space Zip Line in this product line that would go perfectly with this set.

Maybe you have a child that is a budding engineer? Then the VEX Robotics Tombstone by HEXBUG would be a great gift option for them.

This set will have your child putting together pieces to assemble their own VEX BattleBot. This set is definitely for the older child or a younger child with a lot of patience and a parent nearby to help them. The instructions are excellent (some of the best that I have ever seen) and also includes real size image of many of the smaller pieces so that you can compare each piece to the instructions during each stage (which really helps to ensure that you don’t get near the end and realize you used the wrong piece in step two). The BattleBot took us about two hours to put together, although to be fair we took a lot of breaks.

It was really fun to put together and the pieces snap together easily, although they are a bit trickier to pull apart. I found if you used one of the smaller pieces and pushed from the bottom the pieces would unsnap easily. Once the BattleBot was fully assembled, it looked incredible. We were both quite proud of the final product!

The VEX Robotics Tombstone can be purchased at Amazon and Toys R Us. You can also purchase the VEX Robotics Minotaur by HEXBUG to get into full battle mode.

What features do you look for when purchasing educational but fun products for your child?

Make sure to follow HEXBUG on Twitter and Facebook to keep up to date with all the newest products and more.

Disclosure: I received the above mentioned products in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.