Come the weekend, my daughters love to fight over who gets to use my husband’s iPad (you know, your average Saturday struggle). So like most families with different aged kids, we’re always on the lookout for apps that will suit everyone’s interests–easier said than done. Fortunately, my 8-year-old loves playing school and you can only guess who has been recruited as her one-and only student. When my girls got their hands on Educational Insights’ Hot Dots Jr. app, it was all they could do not to contain their excitement. The game play is relatively straightforward: four categories (ABCs, numbers, colors and shapes) with 12 questions in each. A friendly girl prompts young players to answer questions and with each correct answer, a talking dog rewards [&hellip
Educational Insights Archive
TGIF! In honor of the upcoming weekend, we’re helping host a special promotion with toy maker Educational Insights. The company is giving away a gift card valued at $50 good towards the purchase of any Educational Insights products. All you need to do is “Like” Educational Insights on Facebook between now and Sunday, October 16 at 12 a.m. PST, and then contact The Talking Walnut. We’ll select one lucky person randomly. Good luck! Wild Walnut Special: Start your holiday shopping now by entering to win a $50 gift card from Educational Insights. Congratulations to Olivia L.! Tags: Educational Insights, product giveaway, toys giveaway
I don’t which subject my daughter loves more these days: reading or math. She devours books just as veraciously as she does numbers, so I’d have to say it’s a toss-up. (Wish I could credit my genes for the math, but I’ll have to settle for helping shape her into a wordsmith…). In the meantime, trying to keep up with her fascination with all things binary is not as easy as introducing her to a new author or making frequent jaunts to the library. What’s a a numbers-challenged mom to do? For kids who love a good math fix, especially during these last few weeks of summer vacation, Math Slam will motivate them to test their skill set. At first glance, it’s an electronic handheld [&hellip
How good are you at Scrabble? Can you polish off the Sunday Times crossword puzzle in an afternoon? If so, maybe KaBAM wouldn’t faze you. But if you relish a good challenge and want to test your spelling smarts with your kids, I invite you to get a copy of this word-building game and see just how vast your vocabulary is. My daughter and I have been playing KaBAM for the last few weeks and I must admit to being stumped on more than occasion. The concept is simple, but trying to win is anything but. Players draw cards, each containing one or more letters, and then must add a minimum of one letter to create a new word. Once you know a word, shout [&hellip
I must confess: In my younger days, I was a closet geologist. One summer on break from middle school, I became infatuated–no, make that obsessed–with all kinds of rocks and minerals. After a stint as a nature camp counselor, I could proudly rattle off the difference between sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic. I knew my quartz from my graphite, and eventually became a collector of many treasured finds. And no, it wasn’t because I was hoping to score a big, fat diamond someday. Now, I get to impart my learned wisdom (or whatever is left of it) to my daughters. Since studying rocks is hardly considered “sexy,” I love when I can stumble upon a educational product that can get my own juices flowing and, in [&hellip
Getting my daughter to write thank you notes isn’t an easy feat and from what I hear, it only gets more challenging with age. But short of bribing her–hey, I had to write my fair share of thank yous when I was a kid, and we just did what we were told–I wondered if there wasn’t a way to make this chore a little less arduous. Well, score one for Smens scented pens. These are the grown-up cousin of Smencils, an equally refreshing line of colored pencils that make practicing ABCs a treat for little noses. Each pack contains 10 uniquely named pens with cool monikers like Aloha and Banana Fo Fana. We can’t decide what we like best about Smens: the fact that they [&hellip
My 7-year-old has her own tape measure; I kid you not. Maybe it’s because she expressed an early interest in home improvement, thanks to her handy father, and wanted to covet her own tool. When she’s not assisting her dad around the house, this tape measure has become a useful tool for her math homework when she can’t seem to locate her MIA ruler. This ingenuity got me to thinking about inventive ways to make math fun, and so I stumbled upon Inching Along. This clever board game makes the chore of using a ruler repeatedly a little less tedious. Set against a camping-themed backdrop (just in time for summer), Inching Around has its players move around the board as they draw cards and solve [&hellip
When my almost 7-year-old was in preschool, she brought home a plastic jar filled with pom poms and declared that she needed to count each and every one of them. “Huh?,” I thought. “I’m not exactly sure that’s what your teachers had in mind,” I gently replied. We all remember the “guess how many jellybeans are in the jar, and win a prize!”-type contests. For some it was pure delight–can I count to one gazillion?–and for other kids, a source of frustration. “How can I know for sure if I don’t count them one by one?,” rationalized my daughter, teetering on the brink of a fit. Taking an educated guess is a great life-long skill that can be refined over time, so it certainly helps [&hellip
How is it that even if I take one day off from doing laundry, the amount of clothes in our bathroom hamper appears to triple–no, make that quadruple– overnight? It’s one household task that no matter how frequently you check it off your to-do list, bang! there it is, waiting for you the very next day. To make the chore a little less tedious, I’ve tried to inject some fun into it lately by making it into a game for my preschooler. We sort by color, talk about opposites (“wet” vs. “dry”) and, of course, I let her pitch some socks into the dryer every now and then. But once the machines start their whirling and spinning, she freaks out and our game is over. [&hellip
After three days at home with a sick kid, we’ve been going a little nutty over here. Once TV has run its course and activity books have lost their allure, you know it’s time to break out a board game. Well, even if my daughter isn’t yet cured of her virus, she’s been having a blast playing The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game. The concept is simple (perfect for foggy, cold-infected little minds): Each player gets a mini log and uses a spinner to land on a color. Once they have collected one acorn for each of the corresponding colors, they win! The trick is to demonstrate your dexterity with the Squirrel Squeezer (don’t worry–no animals are harmed in the playing of this game), tongs in [&hellip