This giveaway is now over. The winner is Debra P. Congrats!

I remember back in the day (and I may be dating myself here) when almanacs were boring. You used them for school projects (when you needed to) and never looked at it again.  All I have to say is that my kids have it way better!  I have to admit I was excited to check out the National Geographic Kids 2010 Almanac.  The cover alone makes you want to look inside and find interesting facts.  What surprised me most was that my husband sat in his chair and read the almanac for himself one night.  I knew my kids would love it, but my husband got drawn in too!

My two year old likes the pictures.  We’ve been able to take the book and work it into his speech and get him to say a few more words.  My 6 year old also enjoyed the pictures.  However, she liked the facts too.  Both my kids loved the section on dinosaurs and loved finding pictures of snakes to show my husband (who is NOT a fan of snakes at all.  I love that we all found this book great!  This book is just full of knowledge (which will come in handy for my next game of Trivia Pursuit!).  National Geographic Kids 2010 Almanac is definitely a book that’s hard to put down once you open it no matter what your age.

Since I loved this book so much, I’ve arranged for one lucky reader to also win a copy of the National Geographic Kids 2010 Almanac.  Here’s what you need to do:

Check out the National Geographic site and tell me what you hope to learn about if you win this book.  Did you want to learn that in Scotland residents open their front doors before midnight on New Year’s Eve to let the old year out and the new year in?  Or did you want to know that in the 1870’s a swarm of locusts migrated over the Great Plains that stretched 300 miles long and 100 miles wide?

Each of these gives you one additional entry:
1. Twitter about this contest. Please leave me your username so I can verify. Or use something like this:

Win a copy of National Geographic Kids 2010 Almanac from @blm03 and @ngkids.  Enter here: http://lisareviews.com/2010/01/29/national-geographic-kids-2010/

2. Stumble this post and add this post to other social media sites like Digg, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, Reddit, Propeller, Etc. (1 entry for each social network).

3. Comment on any other post on this blog. (1 entry for each post). Let me know which posts you commented on.

Each of these gives you 5 additional entries:

1. Blog about this on your blog. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.

2. Add this to any forums you belong too. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.

3. Add @blm03 to any of your Twitter Lists.

4. Subscribe to this blog using either my email or RSS feed

5. Add my badge to your sidebar (each blog gets your 5 additional entries):

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If this isn’t working, please let me know. For some reason, Wordpress seems to be eating the code up when I post.

Each of these will give you 10 additional entries:

1. Sign up for my free newsletter!

This contest will end Feb. 13th at noon CST! Good Luck!

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When Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs came out in the theaters, Madison’s aunt had taken her to the movies to see it.  She loved it!  This is one of the few movies she’s actually been able to tell us everything that happened.  I was disappointed that this movie wasn’t out for Christmas, but ecstatic when I found out this would be released January 5th!  (This is 2 days before her birthday).  Haven’t heard of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs yet?  You can see the movie trailer here.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is about a boy wants to live his dream to be an inventor.  When this boy’s (now a man), latest contraption accidentally destroys the town square and rockets up into the clouds, he thinks his inventing career is over.  Then something amazing happens to Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) as delicious cheeseburgers start raining from the sky. His machine actually works! However, everybody starts getting more and more greedy, it causes the food machine to go crazy.  Spaghetti tornadoes and giant meatballs threaten the world!  Now, if you want to know how it ends, you’ll have to watch the movie. 

We were able to watch a copy of this DVD, and I have to admit that I think I like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs just as much as Madison.  It has a catchy story and nobody breaks out in song.  It has some great lessons in it — the best of which has to be “be true to yourself”.  I gladly sat through watching it a second time in a row, because my kids wanted too.  (On a funny side note, Will loved naming off all the food he saw that he knows the words for.  For a kid in speech therapy, it was kinda cool to watch).

With Madison in school now, I like being able to give her the tools to succeed.  That is why I like to see video’s like Munchkin Math’s telling time.  Now, the ages on this is 2 – 9.  However, my two year old ran in and out of the room while we watched it.  However, Madison (who is five) was memorized by it.  She got up and sang the songs with the movie and did the hand movements with the video.  I even found her learning to tell time with the video.  She did pretty well with the hour times, but was a little confused when it wasn’t exactly on the hour.  However, a few more views of the video should solve that problem!

I would definitely invest in Munchkin Math’s other DVD titles like Counting Money.  Madison really like this video, and I liked to see her learning.

I wrote this review while participating in a blog campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Munchkin Math and received a sample DVD to facilitate my candid review. Mom Central sent me a gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.

If you have kids of various ages, it’s hard to find presents for both of them that are along the same lines as one another.  K’nex has solved that problem for us parents.  They offer product lines for the younger kids and the older ones too (including parents!)

For Will, we have the Sesame Street Neighborhood Collection Building Sets. These are for kids 2-5, and it is perfect for the younger set.  With these sets, you can easily play with your favorite Sesame Street characters be it Elmo, Cookie Monster, and/or Ernie.  Each neighborhood words together too, so you can have a single set or an entire city.  There is the 123 Brownstone Building Set, the police car building set, the ice cream truck building set, and the police station building set.  We tried out the police car building set and Will loved it.  The wheels on the vehicle actually move, so he was able to push this around our living room.  The parts are also very big, so I didn’t have to worry about him putting them in his mouth.  They also made it very easy for him to work with them because of their larger size.  In the set, they also have additional ideas for you to build.  These sets help with hand eye coordination, encourage imaginative play, thinking and problem solving.

For the older kids, there is the 400 piece tub.  This is literally hours and hours of fun.  There are building ideas for 20 different things in here plus whatever your kids can come up with on their own!  The models you can build have a lot of movement that you can do.  The wheels on the car we made worked.  I love that K’nex works with the other brands out there like Lego.  You can take the Legos you may already have and easily incorporate them into this set.  I love toys that are self contained.  I love that the storage tub is small enough to easy fit under your kids bed and small enough to easily be taken on trips.  With a price tag of $20.99, this is a must have for the kid who has everything.

With both of our K’nex items, we are very happy.  My kids have had countless hours of fun, and I can only highly recommend them.

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My family and I are big fans of Eye Can Art kits.  These are great kits for your kids to  make great art projects for the house.  The latest kit we tried out was the Wax Drawing Kit.  I love that each kit comes with everything (and I mean everything) you need.  There is no going around the house hoping you have all the supplies. Not only do they give you enough supplies to make one, you actually get enough supplies to make two!  The Wax Drawing kit was easy enough for a 5 year old to do!  See:

Eye Can Art kits are a great present for the kid who has everything or just likes to create unique pieces of art.  I highly recommend them.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/2