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Beautiful Blocks with a Twist

Almost everyone selling toys these days tries to tell us that their toys are educational. But these eco-friendly and non-toxic classic action block sets from Haba are the real thing. Children, playing and experimenting freely, inventing their own rules and structure as they go along or using no rules at all, will acquire and maintain new motor, cognitive, and creative skills when they engage in genuine play with almost any toy offered at TurnerToys.Com.

An explicitly didactic toy is boring. A toy with a predetermined set of goals, with a “right answer”, is not a toy at all. It could be argued that play with such a “toy” is not play, but work. An automated toy holds attention for a while, but pretty soon, after it has done its thing, a child gets bored with it and moves on (it’s a closed system, of course). It is the toy that requires thought and effort from a child, and rewards new efforts with new effects, that really teaches. There is a place for real, structured learning even in the life of an infant. But such behavior is never play and shouldn’t be confused with play.

These classic alphabet blocks feature real embossed (not just printed) letters and numbers. This standard set now includes 28 blocks, providing 4 complete alphabets, 3 sets of numerals, and 28 different animal pictures.If that doesn’t do it for your tots, try adding motion and excitement to your unit blocks with our rock maple ball tilt. Infinite variety of kinetic and dynamic designs unleash a child’s creativity in all four dimensions: length, width, height, and time.   Excellent medium for enhancing problem solving abilities.

These are all simple and beautiful classic toy solutions for kids this holiday season!

$30-75 bucks [plus shipping] at TurnerToys.Com

Encourage Kids to Start Saving Money

There are a lot of great articles written by professional finance planners describing all the reasons why and how we should teach our kids how to maintain a healthy relationship with money. With that in mind I won’t regurgitate them here, rather I will simply say walk the walk and talk the talk. Meaning, be good with your money and they’ll learn to be good with their money. It’s a work-in-progress, I realize.

I have a little change bowl inside the front door of my house where I throw my keys, and with the boys I call it my piggy bank. It gets them thinking about the concept of money and sometimes starts some important conversations about the power of “change.”

My oldest has a piggy bank and is already eager to earn an allowance since he has made his first few purchases with money stolen from his piggy bank. Yes, he has discovered his own “buying power.” He’s only four.

Related Links;
Family Education | Kids and Money
Columbia Management | Young Investor
Reuters | Teaching Kids ABout Money

BabyGeared.Com | Complete Collection of Piggy Banks
Large Chrome Piggy Bank | Kikkerland
Pretty Pink Piggy Bank | Kids Bank
Wide Selection of Piggy Banks

Mod Diaper Bag Option for Dad

On a never ending search to find a men’s diaper bag that caters to my non-maternal taste [read; no polka dots and no flowers, please], I have stumbled across the JJ COLE Essentials Bag. It has the right balance of modern tech and basic appearance (i.e. it does not scream, “diaper bag”).

Simply put, it’s a cool looking basic bag that can be used for Baby’s necessities, or not.

$35 bucks [+shipping] at ModernMimi.Com

Save Your Family Thousands of Dollars

Without really thinking about we throw away our hard earned money on things that are by-in-large minor conveniences – coffee, bottled water, cigarettes, etc. Here’s the breakdown based on recent reports of the top ten biggest daily expenses.

• Coffee – Average price for brewed coffee is $1.38 a cup. Considering the U.S. average consumption is 3.2 cups a day, we’ll assume one of those cups is purchased on the go. There are 260 weekdays a year – that’s $358.80 a year on a modest Starbucks routine.*BTW – Women indicated that having a cup of coffee was their way of relaxing whereas a cup of “joe” for the guys, was inspiration to get the job done.
• Cigarettes – Current national average are hovering around $4.54. In NYC they are as high as $8 a pack on the street. Pack-a-day smokers fork over $1,660-$2920 a year! Weekend smoker? Buying a pack once a week adds up, too: $236-$416 annually.
• Alcohol - Depending on your “poison” and the mark-up of your favorite “watering hole” be-it the local Sports Bar or the VIP Room, we can set an average of $5 per beer including tip, buying two beers per day adds up to around $3,650 annually and you can figure twice that for two mixed drinks a day at the local bar which is a whooping $7,300 a year annually for celebrating the spirits.
• Bottled Water – A very common vice for soccer moms, kids and dads on the go. A average bottled water costs about $1 at the convenience store. One bottle of water per day costs $365 annually – never mind the negative impact on the environment with all those plastic bottles. Buy yourself a reusable water bottle (preferably a non-toxic kind) and fill it up with filtered water at home or at work. Actually you could add a positive offset to this line item – recycle your other bottles at the end of the week. At a nickel a pop, and that starts adding up quickly!
• Manicures – Surveys found that the average cost of a manicure is about $20. A weekly manicure sets you back about $1,040 per year. And if you indulge in a Mani’ and a Pedi’ expect an annual set-back of $1,560.
• Car Washes – It is common to get a basic wash once a week here in LA primarily because of all the pollution (sediment) that’s about $12 per car or $14 for a SUV — that’s $676 a year. The average cost for a basic auto detailing package is $58, according to Costhelper.com. The tab for getting your car detailed every two months: $348 per year.
• Weekday Lunches Out – $7-9 will generally cover a decent lunch most work days. If you buy rather than pack a lunch five days a week for one year, you shell out between $1,820-$2,350 annually.
• Vending Machines Snacks – The average vending machine snack costs $1. Buy a pack of cookies every afternoon at work and that’s another $260 per year.
• Interest charges on Credit Card - According to a survey released at the end of May 2007, the median amount of credit card debt carried by Americans is $6,600. Rate tables on Bankrate.com indicate that fixed interest rates on a standard card average 13.44 percent. Making the minimum payment each month, it will take 250 months (almost 21 years) to pay off the debt and cost More »

Green Birth e-Announcements

For those of us sensitive to paper waste, this may be a nice option when your precious one is born and you are looking for a “greener” way to announce the baby’s birth to the family and friends.

The fine folks at BabyMomento have created a number of animated (Flash) birth announcements designs to choose from. You simply choose the design you want to use, send them the photos you want included in the announcement, once you approve the finished product (and pay them, of course), you announcement is published, pretty cool.

(Between $25-35 bucks @ BabyMomento)

Plastic Shopping Bag Alternatives

It is said that an estimated 500 billion to one trillion plastic shopping bags a year are used worldwide with some other sources putting estimates much higher (250 trillion+). Regardless, that’s a whole lot of bags that end up in landfill. The average plastic bag takes over a thousand years to degrade. So if you are trying to reduce your carbon footprint and be a little responsible about your trash, what is the best solution in this case?

There is no easy answer but there are a few options out there that can ease things a little bit. My wife and I have purchased a few re-usable cloth shopping bags to cut down the number of plastic bags we use when shopping throughout the week. Having a few of these cloth bags can have a profound affect on your personal consumption of plastic shopping bags. We use it not only at the grocery store, but at Target, at the GAP, hell, my wife uses it at Sephora. Think about it. Why would you need a plastic shopping bag for something you can put in you pocket, or purse or, heaven forbid – just carry in your hand (*gasp*) to the car.

Now when we get home, we have been used to re-using the plastic bags to either clean up after our dog on her daily walks or to line the smaller trash bins throughout the house. Now we use a few pages of the newspaper on the dog’s walks and use brown paper bags to line the small trash bins.

That still leaves a problem that I have always struggled with; what about all those large trash bags you purchase? There are biodegradable ones. Check the links below. The prices for these have been slowly dropping. Perhaps materials are coming down in price; perhaps demand is growing.

SITED LINKS:
Reusable Cloth Grocery Totes
Reusable Organic Shopping Bag
BioSmart | Biodegradable Trash Bags
ReusableBags.Com

RELATED LINKS:
How Stuff Works | How Recycling Works
How Stuff Works | How Landfills Work