Christmas Countdown: Toys

I suppose when you space your kids out as we did, you’re bound to spend the rest of your life searching for the best educational toys around. Levi, my youngest, is 11 and here I am buying baby toys for my granddaughter! Of course, I’m not complaining. Kids and toys make my world complete.

If you’re looking for toys that are designed to educate while they entertain, I’ve got the site for you. Even though I prefer to invest in educational toys, I am a firm believer in the premise that all toys ought to be fun and keep the kid interested beyond the first day. And if a toy meant for, say, a 10 year old can also be fun for an older sibling, then that’s an added bonus!

Even though these are toys originally intended for Christmas, my kids spotted them and there just wasn’t much I could do after that. I had to let them play. I managed to hold one toy back for Kendyll but that’s only if Levi doesn’t find it hiding in my closet.

First up, Spill Your Guts. It’s been a while since my kids sat at the kitchen counter and played a game; they’re usually in front of the TV with the PS2 or at the computer. It was great to see Levi and his older sister, Maggie, asking each other the True or False questions, and laughing as they played the game. They even asked me a few questions and I actually knew one answer! That’s a big deal, considering biology was not my best subject. An added bonus was that I now know that Levi is very interested in the human body, knows quite a bit about biology and seems headed in that direction educationally. Perhaps he’ll follow his grandmother’s career in medicine.

I was also pleased with my choice for Kendyll. She loves animals, real or stuffed so I thought it would be fun to give her Animal Crack-Ups. The kids – all of them – had a blast playing with them. They especially liked connecting the horse’s front to the rooster’s back and other interesting combinations. The best thing, though, was that one side is tan, like a cracker but the other side of the animal pieces are 10 different colors. The colors are supposed to be for checking to see if you’ve matched them up right but that was a learning game in itself. Kendyll is quite good at matching colors! Who knew? She was able to match red with red, blue with blue, green with green and yellow with yellow. She got a little confused when we added the light green, the pink, the light blue, etc. But that just means that this toy will continue to teach, a little bit at a time, for quite a while.

I did manage to hide the Jump ‘N Jungle so I’ll put that one under the Christmas tree. It looks to be a more active game so that should be great for using up some of that pent up energy that comes from being cooped up in the house on cold wintry days. You know, I think I kind of want to get that toy out and play with it myself. I wonder if I can sneak it out for just a few hours this weekend.

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