Today we’re in for a special treat from Playmobil – a perennial favorite of the adorables:

Meet the Playmobil 1.2.3 Large Farm!

Created for the younger adorables 18 mos and up, this farm is packed with fun. The set includes three people figures, a cow, pig, lamb, dog with dog house, horse and buggy, and many other accessories.  The farm has a working cable winch to transport supplies up to the loft. The windows and gate of the farm can be opened and shut.  So set them free to play!

Also in the Playmobil 1.2.3 lineup:

The Playmobil 123 LARGE ZOO #6754.

These Playmobil sets are excellent for quiet (!) pretend play and promote creativity in your adorable.  I just love it when mine spend hours arranging zoo or farm scenes and then moving the figures and animals around, making them talk and work.

Giveaway

You can win one Playmobil 1.2.3 Large Farm playset ($54.95) just by leaving a comment by Friday, July 30th and I’ll choose the winner using Random.org on Saturday, the 31st.

Here’s how to gain extra entries (please leave them as separate entries):

1. Do you subscribe by email or RSS to The Good Stuff Guide? I love my subscribers, so you get an extra entry. Wahoo!
2. Email 5 of your friends about The Good Stuff Guide and tell them what a rockin’ website this is.  We’d love to have them join us!
3. “Like” The Good Stuff Guide on Facebook and receive the latest news and your chance at additional giveaways. (I LIKE you too!)

(Feel free to do them all – that’s a total of 4 entries!)

Good luck!

If you are not the lucky winner, you can find the Playmobil Large Farm 6750 on Amazon!

This is the children’s wing of our local library.

Each time I admonish myself for not taking better advantage of this wonderful, educational, free resource.  Seriously, what excuse can I possibly have?

I asked Dear Reader Sarah F. (not to be confused with Sarah D. of geocaching fame) to share some ideas on her library routine with her twin 3-year-old adorables.

How do use your local library?

We LOVE libraries.  Our frequent use of the library serves many purposes, from filling open times during our week with an activity we all enjoy to reinforcing what I tell my boys every day, that if you learn to read, then you can teach yourself anything you wish!  Using the library frequently is good practice in manners (being quiet, waiting in line, saying please and thank you), sharing (returning books so other children can have their turn to bring them home), speaking to other adults in a polite manner that can be heard and understood (asking the librarian where the space books are, or the fire engine books, or that one about the otter that learns to swim…), group participation and following through with a commitment (summer reading program).  I believe there are teaching moments in the simplest parts of every day, and there are some places or activities that conveniently offer a plethora of lessons and good examples that directly give kids the practice they need at very important skills they’ll use throughout their lives; libraries are one of those places.

What is your library routine?

When my kids were under 2, we went to the library on a weekly basis for “Books & Babies” story time and to check out board books.  Now, we visit the library several times each month.  In general, I will search the online catalog a few days before we go so the picture books I know I want are on the hold shelf waiting for me.  I look up favorites we’ve checked out before. books that relate to our lives right now (learning to swim, moving to a new house, riding a bike, flying on an airplane, etc….) and books that I’ve seen recommended in magazines or by friends.  The library is also a great place to explore more work by the author of a book your kids love.  That’s how we fell in love with Chris Van Dusen!  Our library has a great summer reading program with activities and special performances throughout the summer months.  We have taken advantage of some of those but we don’t do story time much right now.  We read so much at home that my boys are ready to explore when they hit the library, not sit still for a book.

Any tips for keeping your library books separate at home?

At home we have two shelves on our book shelf that are designated for library books (see below).  This helps us find library books quickly when it’s time to return them and also helps the boys go right to a book they checked out recently.

Visiting Libraries during travel…

We don’t just visit our local library, we drive to Topeka and Kansas City libraries and we visit the library near my parents when we stay with them in Colorado.  My mom has visited her library before one of our visits and filled her house with 30 fun new books for the boys to read for the week that we’re there.

What do you think your adorables are learning?

The Reading Rainbow and Super Why recommendations to “Look- in a book!” are a philosophy of learning in our house.  We purposefully point out to the boys when we read a manual, a cookbook, a publication about coffee (the family business)….so they see that it’s not just a kid thing we’re trying to instill, but a family practice and a way of living where acquiring knowledge is a life long endeavor.  At the very least, they will be prepared for reading, writing and research, which is 70% of success in school, I think.

Borrow, don’t buy…

The children’s section of a library is a good resource on “citizenship” issues like caring, honesty, hard work, conflict resolution, feelings, as well as books about the human body.  Both of these categories are books you might not want to buy for your home library, but they are perfect to share visuals and helpful words, phrases and stories when you are helping your kids work through these things and internalize values.  The repetition that books provides in simple terms can take the pressure off giving a lecture repeatedly and I have found it interesting how my boys will keep requesting a book like that until they have it down.  Re: the digestive system and our talk about how food travels through the body.  They were fascinated by seeing all those “pipes” inside their body and learning that those pipes pull out good things from the food they eat, that’s why it’s important to put good food in the pipes in the first place, etc…. books can be a fantastic springboard for other conversations.  Now they know why I want them to eat well!   We also talk about “just enough and not too much,” a phrase from the title of one of our favorite library books that stresses moderation in life.  Another book, “Little by Little” is about learning new things one little step at a time.  I can just say those phrases and the boys immediately know what I’m talking about thanks to how the book illustrates and spells these concepts out for them.

____________________________________________________

Thanks Sarah for these incredible ideas!

After talking with Sarah, I’m making a commitment for more regular library visits – there will be no driving past.

Such a peaceful, beautiful place….

Children’s classes and storytime are through this magical door.

Need I say more?

I also learned that many libraries (perhaps all?) receive their funding based on circulation, which means the more you check out, the more money they get!  So we filled 3 bags with books and I have been amazed how my adorables remember which books they chose and how often they sit with our basket of library books at home.

So now I could kick myself for passing the library by before!!

What is your library routine?  Do you have any good tips to share?

Friends, if your adorable is over 37″ and potty-trained, and you have an IKEA nearby, take advantage!

(And by 37″, I do NOT mean 36 and 15/16″ as they made my younger adorable remove his shoes and while he clearly made the 37″ marker, they hemmed and hawed until another mother said, “He’s made it!”  I was seriously quaking in my boots the whole time.  He would NOT have been a happy camper to leave.)

There is a children’s play room complete with a ball pit, drawing tables, jungle gym, etc, where the adorables can have a ball while you shop.

Not a great photo at all, but the last thing they wanted to do was pose, they wanted IN THERE, MOM, so hurry it up!!

And I put on a HUGE smile and dashed around in my 45 minutes of Adorable-Free IKEA glory.

I was pretty restrained – some organizing tubs and buckets for the mayhem of sports equipment in the garage, random kitchen items and strict orders from the elder adorable to purchase one of these:

The Mala Easel – last year when I deliberated it was $24.95, but this summer it was $14.95.  I almost bought 2.

It has proved to be a great purchase for my budding artists.  The roll of paper mounts on a spindle that is right there behind the tray. The paper goes up one side and down the other and that means -

One adorable on one side (hot air balloon)…

…and the adorable (a cake, he says) on the other side – not drawing on each other’s work, not hitting/kicking/licking or the myriad of other things they do to each other.

And they’ve been quite prolific -

I LOVES it.

Do you have an IKEA nearby?  What other treasures have you found?

Dear reader Sarah D. alerted me that she was just about to introduce Geocaching to her son with the Geomate Jr.

Since I’d never heard of it, I immediately went to Wikipedia:

Geocaching is an outdoor activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called “geocaches” or “caches”) anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container (usually a tupperware container or ammo box) containing a logbook. Larger containers can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value.

(Thanks Wiki, I don’t know where I’d be without you.)

I did a local search on www.geocaching.com and we have hundreds of caches within just a few miles of our home.  So that should keep us busy for a while.

This past Saturday with beautiful weather, it was a perfect day to try it out. I only had to mention that we were “treasure hunting” and the adorables were uber-excited.

Here’s how it worked for our family:

Younger adorable “led” us with our own Geomate Jr..  Talk about user-friendly – he just followed the arrow.

I promise I didn’t even pose Uncle Romer for this photo.  The Running Man and his bro thought this was wicked cool.

Along the way, we found this family of ducks so we stopped for a look-see.

Now I have to admit our search took us into the woods where we spotted poison ivy.  So we took the boys out and sent Uncle Romer in with my camera to make the find.  Luckily he was willing to risk it.

The cache was marked by this blue ribbon…

And it’s tucked back at the base of this tree.

Ta-da!

He brought it out to the poison ivy-free grass (thanks Romer!) and we gathered around for a look.

Inside we found a cache log in the plastic bag, sunblock, and a collection of trinkets.  When signing the log, we learned that this cache had entertained visitors only the day before.

The adorables had a difficult time choosing their trinket.  Note to self: bring enough trinkets for each adorable to put 1 in so they can take 1 out, if possible.

Friends, I’m hooked.  We had the best time wandering around our little town on Saturday morning.  The Geomate Jr. is small enough to pack along on trips or in the car, and I love how easy it is to get started.

Dear reader Ryan Leigh, also a fan of Geocaching, created a “geocaching bag” – stocked with the GPS, spare batteries, items for trading, a pen, gloves, and bug spray – so they are always ready to go.  She also wrote a great article about geocaching on TriadSmartyPants.com that I found really helpful!

GEOCACHING TIPS:

Here are some ideas from Allen Bates of http://crustygasguy.blogspot.com, who together with his son, has located more than 1000 caches and hidden 27 of his own:

1. Caches in city parks or state parks work well as opposed to those on the side of the road. An outing of finding 2 to 5 caches along a trail makes it interesting without tiring kids out.  Reward with a treat or picnic afterward.

2. Little kids can generally spot the caches fairly quickly but make sure they are findable by checking the logs at www.geocaching.com beforehand to verify there won’t be any surprises such as bees, wasps, ants, or poison ivy or the presence of material unsuitable for kids.

3. If taking a group of kids, the group needs to be small. One kid per cache works best so each kid gets a turn holding the GPS during the search. Geocaching in large groups is not very much fun. If you have a larger group, split them into smaller groups with one adult (at least) per group.

4. The larger size caches have trinkets to trade for so use dollar store items or McDonalds’ toys to trade.

5. Before setting out remind the kids about caching etiquette: Trade for equal value, don’t reveal the location of the cache to onlookers, put it back like you found it.

6. Practice “CITO” (“Cache in, trash out”) by taking a garbage sack with you to pick up trash on the way to and from the caches.

7. Safety: Watch out for poison ivy. Pack bug spray, sun block, and water.

The GEOMATE JR.

This is the Apisphere Geomate Jr Handheld GPS Geocacher.
With 250,000 pre-loaded caches, you literally insert batteries, turn it on outside, and move directly to your nearest cache. It’s as easy as that.  I love that it’s small enough to keep in the car, or pack with us when we travel.

And you can win one…

Giveaway

You can win one Geomate Jr. just by leaving a comment by Friday, July 23rd and I’ll choose the winner using Random.org on Saturday, the 24th.

Here’s how to gain extra entries (please leave them as separate entries):

1. Do you subscribe by email or RSS to The Good Stuff Guide? I love my subscribers, so you get an extra entry. Wahoo!
2. Email 5 of your friends about The Good Stuff Guide and tell them what a rockin’ website this is.  We’d love to have them join us!
3. “Like” The Good Stuff Guide on Facebook and receive the latest news and your chance at additional giveaways. (I LIKE you too!)

(Feel free to do them all – that’s a total of 4 entries!)

Good luck!

If you are not the lucky winner, you can find the Apisphere Geomate Jr Handheld GPS Geocacher on Amazon.  I would also recommend the Apisphere Geomate Jr Geocaching GPS Update Kit . You can find them together as a kit at Geomate Jr and Update Kit.

Give me 2 shrimp tempura rolls, salad and soup and you have a very happy Heidi camper.

Luckily, my adorables also love Japanese so I took them along for a “date”.

Youngest adorable is still a sushi-virgin, so he eats my Miso soup and edamame.  Sometimes I order a side of rice and he creates a Miso/Rice/edamame concoction and he’s a very happy little guy.

Older adorable has decided he LOVES shrimp tempura rolls too, so I order a second 2-roll special for him.

Just to report – he ate it all: 2 shrimp tempura rolls, Miso soup, the salad, and every last scrap of the pickled ginger (mine too).

Younger adorable is quite good at shelling the edamame, so I can sit and gorge myself on my own food.  (Hooray!)

I’m taking advantage of these “dates” before my elder adorable enters full-day kindergarten in the fall, thus marking the end of our restaurant lunch special eating tour.

What are the weird things your adorables like to eat?

Lake in Michigan (or anywhere, on second thought) = FUN!

Younger adorable with his daddio having the time of his life.

This is the Running Man’s brother, who the boys call “Romer”, driving the boat.  Elder adorable is “helping”.

Surfing on the final dock piece.  Oh the dock.

But that’s another story entirely.

Then Romer gave the adorables a whopper of a gift:

Blow-up Wave runners!

I mean seriously.

So we’re off to test them out on a crystal clear, cloudless day.

Elder adorable very quickly mastered his aim for the sprayer directly into the eyes of younger adorable.

I know I’ve said this before but…

Happiness, thy name is Boden.

I’m really showing you this photo because the way younger adorable is splayed on his cracks me up.

Here I am getting sprayed by the elder adorable….

Try as I might, I couldn’t find these online anywhere.  They’re the Banzai Wave Rider Motorized Inflatable Boat, but they are unavailable from Amazon (gasp!) and I couldn’t find them anywhere else.  But just in case you know a guy, I wholeheartedly recommend them.

A happy Giveaway Monday to you…

If you’re looking for fun things to keep your adorables entertained during those long summer days, then you have hit the jackpot…

Canson Inc., a 453-year-old fine art paper company, has launched a brand new Eco-Friendly line of art products for kids, featuring the illustrations of renowned artist Eric Carle.

There’s a Finger Paint Pad, Drawing Pads, Tracing Pads, Painting Pads, Colored Paper, Sketch Pads, Doodle Pads, awesome Sketch and Tell Pads and the cutest little sketch pads you’ll ever see.

This is the Sketch and Tell booklet.  An excellent way to get your little illustrating storytellers started.

This is the lil’ sketch pad – it’s just a little bigger than a 3 X 5 card, and perfect for packing in your handbag to whip out in an “emergency”.

So let your adorables’ inner Picasso loose…

Giveaway

You can win the whole kit and kaboodle of Canson’s Eric Carle themed art supplies photoed above just by leaving a comment by Friday, July 9th and I’ll choose the winner using Random.org on Saturday, the 10th.

Here’s how to gain extra entries (please leave them as separate entries):

1. Do you subscribe by email or RSS to The Good Stuff Guide? I love my subscribers, so you get an extra entry. Wahoo!
2. Email 5 of your friends about The Good Stuff Guide and tell them what a rockin’ website this is.  We’d love to have them join us!
3. Become a Facebook fan of The Good Stuff Guide and receive the latest news and your chance at additional giveaways.

(Feel free to do them all – that’s a total of 4 entries!)

Good luck!

In a park, under a tent, that was quite pleasant despite the hot, hot weather, we watched the play unfold.

I had to verify that, indeed, we were in the right spot (this being a very modern interpretation of Shakespeare).

The acting troupe handled this “Shakespeare light” beautifully.  One side of the dialogue would be in the old English, the other in our modern speak.  Then every now and then, they’d stop the whole thing and say, “Here’s what’s going on here…”  Then they would take suggestions from the adorables and incorporate them into the play.

A big hit was when the actors explained that hurling insults was incremental to several of Shakespeare’s plays.  The adorables LOVED this.

The adorables sat like this the whole time.

They were enthralled.

The whole play lasted 50 minutes, which was perfect for my youngest.

Afterwards we gathered our friends and played baseball at the park.

Until The Running Man spied the football practice equipment…

and taught the boys proper form.

On the way home, our eldest wanted to “play Shakespeare” and say mean things back and forth with his daddio.

Oh well.

At least we tried.

So to recap….

This is NOT just another photo book that you create with My Publisher, Photoworks, etc.  Artimus Art SCANS all of the artwork using heavy duty scanners.  So here’s how it works:

1.  Go to Artimus Art and purchase your book.  There are 3 sizes: The Red Wagon for a 24-page book; The Trolley for a 50-page book (that’s what I’m buying); and The Dump Truck for an 85-page book.

2. In the mail you’ll receive a huge art box for all of your art.

3. Ship it back (all shipping labels are included so you just have to drop it off) and in a few days all the magic happens.  You’ll receive a message that your art had been scanned and you’re ready to create your book.  It will take you approximately 7 minutes to create your book online.  You can change the order of the pages easily, choose the color of the cover and title the book.

4. Then you’ll receive all of your artwork and YOUR BOOK back in the mail!

5. Place the box under your couch and start collecting art for next year’s book.

I really thought this book would be more for me as a way to keep my adorable’s art without having tons of loose papers laying around.

What I hadn’t planned on was how much my he loves to pour over his book.  He regularly requests his book as part of our nighttime “reading”.

The quality was amazing.

Here’s the thing: art that was 3-dimensional actually LOOKED 3-dimensional on the printed page.  Their scanners must be outstanding because you can even see textures.  If you looked at this book, I promise you’d touch a couple pages because you’d think the art is glued in.  But it’s not.  Scout’s honor.

Artimus Art was created by a kind mom to three adorables aged 8 to 16.  She launched Artimus Art just a short time ago when she wondered what to do with all the art created by her prolific little artists.

Naturally I asked for another coupon code:  Use CIIIYI7YN for $10 off at Artimus Art.

Now don’t be surprised if when you see yet another post about Artimus Art around Christmastime. I think it’s an excellent gift for grandparents and I really am just that excited about these books!

Have a great day everyone!

Today is quick and sweet – how fun do these look?

Okay when did they stop calling these walkie-talkies??

Meet the Motorola Talkabout MJ270R which features NOAA weather, flashlight and a 27-mile range.

That’s some hefty distance.

I think these are meant for grown-ups, but I’ve never met an adorable who didn’t love a little “Roger, Roger”.

Giveaway

You can win a a pair of Motorola MJ270R Talkabout 2-Way Radios just by leaving a comment by Friday, July 2nd (WHOA!  July???) and I’ll choose the winner using Random.org on Saturday, the 3rd.

Here’s how to gain extra entries:

1. Do you subscribe by email or RSS to The Good Stuff Guide? I love my subscribers, so you get an extra entry. Wahoo!
2. Email 5 of your friends about The Good Stuff Guide and tell them what a rockin’ website this is.  We’d love to have them join us!
3. Become a Facebook fan of The Good Stuff Guide and receive the latest news and your chance at additional giveaways.

(Feel free to do them all – that’s a total of 4 entries!)

Good luck!

If you are not the lucky winner, you can find the Motorola MJ270R Two-Way Radio on Amazon.

Have a great week – lots of fun stuff planned here so check back…