Melissa & Doug floor puzzles are great

Thursday, March 04th, 2010 3:05am

If you have a toddler, we’re probably preaching to the choir here about how great the Melissa and Doug floor puzzles are. They don’t get every puzzle right; they have tried a few variants of their standard formula, with mixed results. But in general, the quality has been excellent: the puzzles are well-constructed (pieces are a good weight and fit together nicely), the pictures are beautiful, and the challenge level just right.

A good example recent one we received was the Safari puzzle (shown above). It’s 100 pieces. Although our toddler just under 4 has a few 100 piece puzzles, some require parental assistance more than others, so it’s right at his level and we can see subtle techniques that make a difference. Uniqueness of pieces is one - that has to do partly with the construction of the puzzle itself to produce distinct pieces. It also has to do with the picture that the puzzle presents as a whole; how distinguished are the components? Another factor is what percent of the puzzle consists of edge pieces. These tend to be more helpful to most people, and for toddlers they help hold the puzzle in place better, so that it frustrates them less and gives them encouragement to stick with it. The Safari one above excels in all these categories and it’s a great example why most of the Melissa & Doug floor puzzles are so good.

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Some thoughtful pediatric advice

Tuesday, March 02nd, 2010 3:39pm

I found this site the other day when I was doing some reasearch on toddler aggression. Dealing with anger or behaviors like hitting and biting is always a sensitive parenting subject. I don’t know one parent that finds it easy - though may can talk the talk succintly, few can walk the walk without bumps in the road. It’s just hard for us to deal with our little one when they get into that state - it clashes with everything we usually associate with them.

Anyway, the post about aggression on the site seemed very thoughtful. I’ve never tried the technique, and I can’t vouch for the whole site, but based on what I can tell, it seems like a very reasonable stream of advice. Dr. Roy (the author of the site) has also written some books, which seem well-received, so the site as a whole may indeed be worth checking out.

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Pre-school “goals”

Thursday, February 18th, 2010 2:23am

Having started our child in pre-school, we frequently monitor his feelings about the place, and occasionally reflect upon the effect the whole experience is having.

Our main goal with pre-school was the socialization aspect — it is great to see our child increasingly confident and social with other children and we feel this will serve him well as he grows older. We are not the most social family, so it is good that the school allows him opportunities every day to interact with others outside of his immediate family.

Occasionally, it occurs to us that maybe we should be expecting more from the school in terms of academics. They certainly do other activities there besides social ones — there is work on crafts and encouragement of individual exploration of puzzles, etc. there, but I’m talking more about basic academic skills like reading and writing. Clearly, as most parents do, we feel those are critical tools in surviving in the world, so while we don’t overly push those things (we prefer until we feel the child is ready), we nevertheless value such skills quite highly. We planned to do most of this on our own. But again, we wondered — to what extent should we expect the pre-school to help out here?

In thinking about this, we’re also aware that we can fall into the trap of the “overaggressive parent”, pushing things on their kids before they are necessarily ready. A good antidote for that was a recent article from Scholastic.

We will be, no doubt, thinking about all this more, but it’s useful to sometimes take a step back and think about the bigger picture.

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cam2pc - nice freeware that simplifies transferring images

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 7:38am

We have lots of family pictures on our digital cameras. However, getting them to our archives (and bypassing photo edit software) is an interesting challenge. Camera vendors give you software, usually, for this. However, it sometimes doesn’t work the way you want or comes with added ware that you don’t need. Plus, it can be a space hog.

Enter cam2pc, a nice freeware utility that will detect your camera type (it’s storage protocol, we think) and then allow you a simple way to specify where and how (including wildcard-style naming for files/folders).

In addition to an intuitive GUI (the options tab is straightforward and has all you need), a nice feature of this tool is that it will show you thumbnails as it transfers the photos. The software doesn’t push anything on you — it defaults to a lightweight config mode and allows you to opt out of anything (like auto transformation of pictures for orientation).

cam2pc is a great little utility that simplifies a general problem. We recommend it.

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Preschool thoughts (part one)

Sunday, December 27th, 2009 10:04pm

Having started our son at preschool 4 months ago, we thought we’d pass along some things we learned, based on both advice and experience.

A safe, (reasonably) clean, and healthy environment is important. It shouldn’t be a toy jungle, bathrooms should be clean, snacks can be fun within reason

The teacher/caregiver and administrators can be much more important than the school itself. Just like a great teacher at your local community college can be MUCH better than a bad teacher at a famous university. We initially thought of putting our child in a well-known (and expensive) Montessori program. We still might, simply because it’s just a great environment at that school. However, our son didn’t really take to the teacher at that school and clung on to my wife and I. So we decided to wait and try in a few more months. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough room in the school next time around. But we found a different school that we very nice; perhaps not quite the same “academy like” environment of the first school, but a good old-fashioned preschool with caring administrators and teachers (their retention rate is amazing). We lucked out and got a great teacher - she knew very quickly how to best relate to our son, and he really took to her. Since then, school has been a breeze. We may still move our son later, but right now he’s having fun where he’s at.

Social development and confidence is the main goal. If you care about your child and are reasonably motivated to help them read, etc., focus on the school being a place where your child learns to interact and respect others. You won’t find another opportunity like it. Sure, they can help teach your child to read, their ABCs, etc. but you can also do that - but you can’t replicate the social environment of the school and the chance for your child to build self-confidence without you around.

Too structured can be problematic. Although our son is very sructured and routine-oriented, there’s a limit to that and if the school encourages too much structure, it can seem more like “work” than “fun”. Our son very much prefers structure to unstructured, but everyone needs some breathing room.

Too unstructured can be problematic. Some folks swear by the more artsy approach of an unstructured environment where the kids can run around and do whatever they want - the school just supplies the materials. We ran into one school that was pretty much a house full of rooms of materials that the children could use for whatever projects they wanted to build. When we toured the school, kids were running the hose in the front and building a huge lake. For us, this just didn’t make sense. In our hearts, we feel some routine and structure is vital - the breathing room around the structure allows one to create and improvise.

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The Fisher Price Learning Home

Sunday, February 01st, 2009 12:35pm

In a sea of many useless, overly loud, overly intense (and sometimes overly boring) “activity centers”, one is lucky to find this gem: the Fisher Price Learning Home.

The good:

Lots of activities: You can open and close the door, ring the doorbell, open and close the window, turn on/off the radio (great music - see below), adjust the address, and more. Your child will use almost all of these with glee, but I’m betting that, for most people, the door will be the “kitchen” (heart) of this home.
It’s easy to move around and position: The “house” is really a front wall, but that’s more than enough for your little one. As a front wall, one can easily position themselves outside or inside of the house. And it looks fine just about anywhere, but since it’s likely to be a keeper, you’ll probably enjoy it in the center of your rec room (or whatever space is your baby/toddler’s domain).
Great music: One of the few toys we have owned where the parents can actually enjoy the music, too. There are many tunes on this guy, some with singing, some without, running the gamut of styles. I found myself requesting certain songs from time to time, that’s how catchy they were. And it’s not too loud (has a reasonable hi/lo setting to keep you sane).
Entertaining as your little one grows: As your child gets older, he/she will find different things interesting. The music is a consistent draw, but the various activities get more or less attention as the child grows. It’s a nice balance!
Reliable: Our son never really got tired of this home. We ended up loaning it out to friends with their own new bundle of joy because we wanted others to enjoy it too. Our son mostly forgot about it (out of sight, out of mind…) but was happy when we visited those friends and he saw his old, familiar play home.

As far as cons, hard to find. If push came to shove, I guess I might complain a tiny bit about the sensitivity of the door. As you know, babies and toddlers are not the most delicate of handlers and they can easily move things back and forth in rapid succession. The end result can be the repeating start/stop of the same song (you’d think they’d just let it finish after 5 back and forths in less than 5 seconds or something!). But that’s really reaching…

Seriously, this was one of the best investments we made and we recommend it wholeheartedly!

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Free toddler music at You Tube

Sunday, January 25th, 2009 9:17am

Do you have a toddler that loves to dance? Do you not want to order each and every song he/she likes and compile your own custom mix of songs? Do you like to experiment and find new artists? Look no further, we have a recommendation for you about how to make good use of YouTube for your child’s entertainment.

The idea is simple:

1. Create a YouTube account
2. Search for songs that your baby/todder likes (Alphabet Song, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Old MacDonald, etc)
3. You find several versions; try them out yourself to see which is the best fit for you and your toddler.
4. Add them to your playlist
5. When your toddler wants to dance, login and, when viewing your playlist, select “Play All”
6. When the first video starts playing, make the display full screen (there’s an icon on the bottom right part of the player that allows this) and let the fun begin

Unfortunately, playback isn’t always flawless in YouTube (sometimes playback just stops after a song or sometimes YouTube can’t seem to locate one of the videos, even though it comes back later), but that’s minor noise we’re willing to live with.

Here’s some of our favorites:

Give it a spin and let us know what you think. Tell us your experiences too!

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Meet the… DVDs

Sunday, January 11th, 2009 1:32am

Our son really enjoyed the “Meet the…” series from Preschool Prep. A friend of ours recommended the series and, being curious, we ordered a couple just to check it out.

First, about our TV watching policies, so that you know where we’re coming from. Like many parents, we try to minimize the amount of DVD/TV-watching time in our house. We didn’t quite go to the extreme of no TV watching until 2, but we did try to keep it to as little as possible (hopefully no more than 2-3 hours per week). If our son did watch TV, it was either in the form of a little Sesame Street (he liked Elmo) or DVDs like these. Many days he watched no TV. Some days he watched more than usual (for example, if we went a long-ish car trip).

Each of the DVDs takes a simple approach to introducing the child to a series of concepts (e.g., shapes, colors, the alphabet). Typically, each item in the set of objects associated with the concept is introduced and then linked to a particular character and musical score. The name of that item is repeated several times, with different intonations, and the character used to represent the concept is often show performing some simple task (e.g., a green square will be show mixing chemicals in a lab, a blue circle will be skateboarding around town, etc).

In watching these, here was our take:

PROs:

Simple concept - easy to watch
Great musical score - easy to listen to
Stresses phonetic variations
Colorful, smooth animation
Obviously made with care (you get the feeling a small core group of people are involved)
Repeats sequences of related concepts (good logical flow)
Calm; not over the top
Can be purchased with a book (per DVD) - our son actually loved these!

CONs:

Repetition of concept might be annoying (at first) to adult (but we guarantee that the music will win you over)

Overall, these DVDs were a smash hit. I recommend starting with “Meet the Shapes” and/or “Meet the Colors” before tackling “Meet the Letters” or “Meet the Sight Words”. You’ll get a feel for how much YOU like these DVDs by starting off simple and holding back on ordering the whole set.

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CPSIA effective start date is Feb 10th

Thursday, January 08th, 2009 6:22pm

On February 10th, an important new law will go into effect that has lots of implications for the production and purchase of products for children (under 12). Due to recent problems in lead poisoning from Chinese made products, the U.S. passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, which will be implemented starting on February 10th. What this means is that any product sold for children under 12 needs to be tested for lead and phthalates. So even if an entreprenurial mom wants to make and sell socks for toddlers, she will need to get them tested for toxicity - which is not only a hassle, it will cost several hundred dollars (at least).

Obviously, the intention of this act (protect children from evil substances in products sold to them) is good, but the implications are rough for small businesses and possibly quite worse for consumers, who will presumably have less choices in the marketplace (albeit safer ones). This is legislation that is obviously good spirited, but needs some important refinements. Also, it’s another reminder that it only takes one bad offender (China) to ruin life for the rest of ~99% well-meaning enterprises.

If you have strong feelings FOR or AGAINST this legislation, make sure you make your voice heard to your local congressional reps.

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Automoblox cars

Sunday, January 04th, 2009 10:17am

If you have a toddler or youngster that is really into cars, we suggest you check out the Automoblox line of cars.

These things represent the culmination of a nice little story - a young college student designs a wooden car for a school project. Student goes to work for Fortune 100 company, learns about product development. Student becomes entreprenuer and the Automoblox company is launched. The first (project) car was made up of a a few blocks that were attached together via wooden dowels. The idea was to combine high quality wooden blocks that could be attached together with a concept all kids love - the toy car. It’s a great idea and the secret is in the care with which the idea was executed. Automobox has now acquired a long line of good reviews and loyal customers.

My wife and I bought a couple of these cars from Amazon when our son was just about two. He was a bit young for them then, but he since has really grown into them. He loves taking them apart and putting them back together. Of course, he loves racing them even more. And we’re happy the folks at Automobox took the time to design them with care - for example, the rubber “tires” not only make the car move fast along our wood floors, they also don’t damage the floors. Can’t argue with that combination.

The cars are very sturdy, just as everyone says and there aren’t any sharp edges. If you have very small children, who like to put everything in their mouths, you might want to watch out a bit for the plastic people, but given their size, it’s a minor concern. BTW, the people are kind of fun - they each have different shapes and fit into the car a different way. One minor complexity with some of the cars is that you have to make sure the people are facing forwards in order for everything to come together nicely. But our 2-3 year old grew into that and we saw it as a nice learning opportunity.

As far as the differences between the cars, I think that’s really only of importance if you have an older young child playing with them (i.e., K through 2nd grade or something). Toddlers don’t really appreciate the differences and in fact they are more likely to be interested in the slightly larger cars. What’s fun about buying at least two is that you can mix and match some of the pieces and create totally new cars. Kind of like Legos, with less pieces, less freedom, but more practicality for the younger child.

Check them out online and read the reviews over at Amazon for more info.

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Toys, Toddler | Comments (1)

Melissa & Doug floor puzzles are great

Some thoughtful pediatric advice

Pre-school “goals”

cam2pc - nice freeware that simplifies transferring images

Preschool thoughts (part one)

The Fisher Price Learning Home

Free toddler music at You Tube

Meet the… DVDs

CPSIA effective start date is Feb 10th

Automoblox cars

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