games « BabyElan {daily}

Posts Tagged ‘games’

Musicolor

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Kids love to create! I haven’t met a child who isn’t proud of something they drew or a song they learned to sing. MusiColor combines these two childhood favorites and will cause hours of fun and many, many smiles as a result!

Each music disc comes as a blank canvas for kids to color. The disc and markers are a “paint by letter” concept which allow kids to easily know which color goes where. {Marker A colors all the A’s on the disc and so on.} Once the disc has been colored kids insert it onto the player and the colors magically turn into music! {Choose to hear each song played by a piano, violin or horn!} These are songs that most kids are familiar with and can sing right along with them. There are also additional markers and discs available for purchase outside of the main MusicColor Kit. That is always a bonus for me since there is nothing worse than having your child fall in love with a toy that can’t be replenished.

Our family received our own MusiColor to try out. My five year old son couldn’t wait to get started. As a preschooler he is very proud of his polished coloring abilities and made sure to point out to me how well he had colored inside the lines on the first disc he worked on. It was also fun for him to use the “record player” by himself and he thought it was magic that his picture turned into a song. My daughter who is almost three LOVES to dance and has so much fun during the “dance parties” we have with our MusiColor. Although she is still working on her coloring skills she knows her colors and we used the markers to work on her letter recognition. My little Mozart also likes to color on the blank discs to make her own music!

To find a musicolor for your kids visit them at Musicolor or deltacreative.com. Delta Creative is an award winning company with toys you and your kids will love! Enjoy!

Tags: educational, games, gifts, toys
Posted in KIDELAN | No Comments »

Little Pim {GIVEAWAY}

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Here is an exciting innovative educational tool you can use at home with your baby, toddler or pre-schooler, Little Pim! When I look at my pre-schooler I hope I am doing everything I humanly can to encourage creativity, intelligence, spontaneity and success. For a pre-schooler that really just means doing some great crafts, counting to 30, tracing letters and being polite But we all want our kids to strive, be successful, confident, and brilliant.

Little Pim is literally a cute cartoon panda bear character who teachers your child a foreign language using the Entertainment Emersion Method. The entire DVD is spoken by native speakers, and words are presented and repeated at regular intervals. Each Little Pim DVD focuses on sixty words and phrases typically acquired in a toddler’s primary language, providing the essential building blocks for language acquisition.

Little Pim DVDs are designed and paced for developing minds. Young children respond enthusiastically to Little Pim’s format, a combination of animation and live action. Babies respond to black and white, therefore the panda captures the attention of even the youngest viewers. Each 35-minute DVD is segmented into seven 5-minute episodes to accommodate a young child’s attention span and encourage pausing for parent interaction. Simple sentences are broken down into easy-to-understand parts, and reinforced through repetition.

We were lucky enough to receive the set above as a sample for Nicholas. It is amazing to sit and hear Nicholas just repeat the words while playing, he laughs at himself having fun doing something completely different and entertaining to him I was impressed at how quickly the panda character caught my busy 3 year old attention but I think too that it was interesting for Nicholas to see kids his age saying these words in Spanish, “if they can do it, so can I”.

You have to check out Little Pim’s website to fully appreciate this fabulous children’s entertainment and learning series. If you have the desire of giving your child an edge, of opening doors, broadening horizons for him then help him learn a foreign language, now. According to much research, many scientist, now is the very best time to help your child learn a foreign language.

Use the flashcards, DVD’s, stuffed Panda toy or music CD’s to get your child interested in learning any of the nine choices of languages. AND interestingly, Little Pim is going digital with a new iPhone application! How fun is that, you child can play games anywhere anytime. Little Pim Word Bag, developed by Animax, is an interactive word game featuring Little Pim the panda. The game uses adorable artwork, music and sound effects to teach children 27 everyday vocabulary words in a second language – French or Spanish. “Word Bag” costs $1.99 to download and can be used on both an iPhone and an iPod.

There really is too much to say in one feature, you must visit the Little Pim website to understand how wonderful this learning tool is. After all, Little Pim is designed by Julia Pimsleur Levine a uniquely previous filmmaker, language teacher, and now mother who is also the daughter of Dr. Paul Pimsleur, who created one of the most popular and acclaimed audio teaching language methods for adults. So obviously Little Pim is a masterpiece of exceptional expertise in the area of educating language to people old and young

Enter to win a free Little Pim DVD of your choice (10 languages to choose from). Just go to LittlePim.com and comment on one blog post. http://www.littlepim.com. Be sure to enter your email address in the appropriate field so you can be contacted if you win! If the winner is also a Little Pim newsletter subscriber, they will also be sent a Little Pim plush panda.

Good luck!

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Tags: educational, games, gifts
Posted in GIVEAWAYS, KIDELAN | 65 Comments »

Bruce the Moose {GIVEAWAY}

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

As a former Alaskan who has spotted several moose during my arctic tenure and also an obsessed iphone owner I believe I am very qualified to report that Bruce the Moose is awesome! Not only is he fun for kidos to play hide and seek with on an iPhone and very reasonably priced {$0.99 for a limited time} but he is also completely adorable!

Bruce1

I was given a one time complimentary copy of Bruce to download onto my iphone to try out. I let the “experts” at my house try to find Bruce and both experts {my 2 year old and 5 year old} loved the game. They had so much fun with him I downloaded my own permanent copy of Bruce for them to play again and again! You can also become a fan of Bruce on Facebook! {He is Bruce Moose if you want to look him up.}

Bruce 2

Find Bruce is really a simple game, just touch the rocks, flowers, trees etc. to look for Bruce. These animated objects will smile and jump if Bruce is not behind them. When you do Find Bruce he jumps out from behind the object and smiles! A perfect game to play while waiting for food at a restaurant or while shopping. Since the game is fairly simple even the little ones can join in on the fun!

Logo_BruceTheMoose

GIVEAWAY! Three lucky BabyLuxe readers will win their very own copy of Find Bruce for their iPhone. To enter just post why you would like a copy of this fun game! {This game can only be purchased from the American iTunes Store} This contest will run for one week! Good luck!

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Tags: games
Posted in GIVEAWAYS, KIDELAN | 4 Comments »

Bananagrams

Saturday, December 12th, 2009

If you’ve been in the retail stores lately {HA, DUH, of course you have}, you’ve seen the little tree holding large bananas in the toy/game isles. Have you gone close enough to see what those Bananas are? If not, I’ll tell you today and you’ll want to run out and grab these affordable Bananas to share with your children as the perfect holiday fuss-buster!

BANANAGRAMS is a sack of letter tiles and is the most brilliant learning game for the gift giving season 2009! Scrabble has been a #1 favorite in my house for forever! My husband and I still play it without the kids late at night when we’re bored, or I should say we USE TO play it, since now we play BANANAGRAMS courteous of our sample from the fabulous company! Our 7 year old consistently needs new, improved ways to enhance his spelling and reading skills outside of homework and BANANAGRAMS positively turns learning into entertaining fun!

First off it’s silly…the name, the packaging, the concept {is fast and crazy, where loud squeals of “PEEL” can be heard for miles}…Secondly there’s no taking turns and it’s quick {which is a fabulous concept since who likes to wait their turn and attention spans are very low, especially with boys!}…Third, there’s no board, no score to keep, play anytime, anywhere…and Fourth, like I mentioned before, it’s educational! It brings the family together {as any good quality game should} for some old fashion “word finds” with a silly twist!

Look at this great Official Book and Combo set I found on Amazon!

I HIGHLY recommend you try BANANAGRAMS out for yourself! Ask Santa to toss this in the stockings as an indoor crowd pleaser for the cold months ahead! OR, since the packaging is so simple and compact, go grab BANANAGRAMS and toss it in your purse or suitcase for the upcoming travel days. Play on the hotel bed, the airplane tray tables, the dining room floor of Nana’s house while you are waiting patiently for the ham to finish cooking; it’s easy to play anywhere and since it’s quick, play one game or many with 2 or more players! My husband, our oldest Timothy, and I so enjoy this new game! Timothy has learned to spell many new words over the past few weeks {he tried to get as many of his weekly spelling words in his bunch as possible}. We even let our three old play, he makes up his own words {we’ve broken the rules on that one} but he gets such glee out of being able to play a game with us AND it’s helping him sound out combined letters and practice his ABCs {since pre-k starts for him in January}. Okay, I’ll stop now…you get my point, I LOVE this game! You will too, try it out! You’ll find it in many of your favorite retail stores including Barnes & Nobles!

Tags: games, gifts
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Itza Bitza {Giveaway}

Saturday, December 5th, 2009

My oldest son is just getting to the age where he really, really wants to play video games. The few that my husband plays are too advance and sometimes too mature for him to even understand. So he was thrilled when I told him I found a game for him to play on the computer! The game I am referring to is Itza Bitza, by Sabi, which allows kids to be creative and interact with their creations all while learning and problem solving. They think they are playing a game while we parents know they are also learning. Which of course is the best of both worlds right?

We were given a complimentary code to download and play Itza Bitza at our house. Our Itza Bitza experience started out with drawing a house for our character, or Sketchy, to live in. Once the basic house was drawn we were then asked to select tasks to complete like checking the mailbox, picking flowers or cooking. Some of the tasks required adding pieces to the house. For example to cook we need to draw a chimney. We also had to complete tasks like checking the mailbox to earn a star. Through all of these tasks our son was also reading words himself and with help from the program. We had so much fun together laughing at the drawings he made and trying to decide what our Sketchy would do next. This is easily a game our son at five years old could grow into for a few years to come and still find challenges to keep it interesting to him.

Since I always like to know how things work I was very interested in the technology that allows the game to know the difference between a window and door especially when a five year old draws it. Living Link, is a unique living drawing system, that allows the drawings to come to life. That is how the Sketchy knows to walk into the door and wave out the window and not the other way around. The program anticipates what a child will draw and then uses it to help him learn using an interactive, whimsical, fun game. Every time a child plays the experience is different which will make this game a favorite for a long time!

GIVEAWAY ALERT! One lucky Babyluxe {daily} reader will win a copy of Itza Bitza and one other lucky reader will win a free copy of Itza Zoo {which is also a GREAT game!} by simply commenting back to us why you would love to win these fabulous games! {Each winner will receive a code to use to download their respective copy of either Itza Bitza of Itza Zoo.} EXTRA ENTERIES for following itzabita on Twitter! Contest ends in one week! Good Luck! Open to US residents only!

BACK FOR THE HOLIDAYS, EXTRA ENTRIES FOR ALL GIVEAWAYS! Make sure to comment for each extra entry!