If you are looking for a very affordable gift for kids ages 3 – 7, then you must get the Poingo.  With the Poingo, you are able to touch pictures and/or the text, the their favorite characters are brought to life with either music, sounds, and words.  The best part is that the Poingo starter kit is $34.99 and is available at Target, Toys R Us, Walmart, Costco, Sam’s Club, and BJ’s Wholesale Clubs.  It comes with the pen shaped Poingo and two large hardcover interactive storybooks.  This is definitely affordable, and the starter kit is awesome.  You don’t have to automatically buy another $100 worth of books right off the bat.  You have a working system right from the start.  The book choices are excellent.  The books that came with ours are Cars and Finding Nemo, so it was definitely right up my kids alley.  These movies are favorites in our house, so my kids had a definite interest in the books.   They also have Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Winnie The Pooh.  The pen itself is simple to use.  All you have to do is click it on the part of the book with the words, and it will read that whole section.  You can also click on the images and for sound effects.  There are words that are highlighted also, and you get a definition of the word.  You can also click on images and find out what they are or get a cool sound effect.  Madison is actually able to take this and read the book by herself.  She loves having that kind of independence.  My kids love to read, so this is really a naturally progression for them.

This is one of the best affordable educational toys on the market for kids.  I recommend checking it out — you can even try a demo here.

If you are a busy mom like me, you tend to struggle come dinner time.  I know I do.  If you don’t plan ahead, you never seem to have the right ingredients and you end up ordering out (which costs so much more!).  The Month Of Meals e-book has some awesome advice to get yourself out of that rut.  This book will help you stay home every night and not spend over $200 in groceries on dinner. I love how the Month Of Meals book not only gives me dinner ideas for a month, but they also give you a shopping list.  If you stick to the list, you will walk out of the grocery store spending less.  Now, there are some things in the book that I know my family won’t eat.  Those are the nights I will substitute my own idea.  I love how this book teaches you to plan ahead.  They have print out lists for each week.  They also have a shopping list for all the other things you will need throughout the week.  The majority of the recipes are easy to make (which is right up my alley) and they require things that you should have in your house already.  I also love that some of the meals are able to be frozen, so you have some meals for later on too!  There are some great tips in here too (though I did know about the one that says don’t go to the grocery store hungry).  If you are looking for a great book to help you in the kitchen, then check out  A Month Of Meals.  There is an 8 week money back guarantee, so you have nothing to lose checking it out!  However, the book does pay for itself on your first grocery shopping trip!

Does anybody still remember MacGyver?  Do you remember how he could make all those crazy gadgets by using whatever he had on had?  He was always able to escape using the oddest things and get the bad guys.  Well, real life isn’t that far off from some of the things he was able to come up with.  The Sneaky Uses Book series brings us all one step closer to being a MacGyver in our own homes.

The first book in this series of books is Sneaky Uses For Everyday things. From this book, you can learn how to make a megaphone, convert your radio into an aircraft broadcast receiver, and make a flood alarm. There are 80 things in here you can make (and that doesn’t include the bonus applications), and each of these are made from things you should easily find in your house! There are no extra shopping trips needed to pull this stuff off.

The next book is Sneakier Uses For Everyday Things. This book will show you how to make an antigravity rollback toy, a hovercraft toy, and even a breathing device! This is an additional 40 items for you to build in your house!

The next book in the series is the Sneakiest Uses For Everyday Things.  Again, all of these things can be made from items you just have laying around.  I’ve learned how to make a calculator, a magnifier using only a paperclip and paper, and a mini boomerang.  This book has an additional 40 projects for you to try out!  Like the other book, it also gives you step by step directions and illustrations to show you how to make these awesome items.

The Sneaky Book For Boys is right up any boys alley.  They can learn how to get drinking water from plants, make a periscope, and make an emergency flotation device.  I love that at the end of the book there is a list of other books and resources to check into.  You can keep the learning experience ongoing then.  There is also a section in the book for sneaky animals.  You can read all about spider and lizards that are sneaky (and right up a boys alley).

We don’t want to leave the girls out, so there is also The Sneaky Book For Girls. Here we can learn how to make a drawer alarm, make milk into plastic, and how to make batteries.

These books definitely make excellent stocking stuffers for anyone in your house.  The activities can be used in the classroom, for homeschooling, and just for fun too!  I got a kick out of reading how to make some of these items and I definitely felt my inner MacGyver wanting to come out!

Another great children’s book to get this holiday season is Tim and Sallys Beach Adventure. The first thing you will notice that the lines in the his book rhyme. I think that helps keep my kids attention, because they really like this book. Madison is always talking about going to the beach, so reading about the beach was right up her alley.  This is not a long book.  However, it is broken up into sections such as “They Get Started” and “They Are In Sight of The Beach”, so you can easily break down this story into several sections (and several nights of reading).  You get to read about swimming in the ocean, the animals that inhabit the beach, the tide, and sandcastle just to name a few things.  I really like the word list at the end of the book.  It has a pictures of key things in the story like bathing suits and crabs.  Then underneath the picture they have the word.  Since we are working with Madison with reading and sounding out, this is perfect for us.  It makes it a lot easier for her to sound out the word if she has a clue what the word is.

If you want a great story, Tim And Sallys Beach Adventure is a book you need to get at your house.  Mom and dad will enjoy it just as much at the kids.

Can you think of a word containing a double a (no proper names either!)? How about double h, i, or w? If these kinds of puzzles are right up your alley, you need to get Fabulous Fun With Puzzles. It just became available on October 7th, and it is right up the alley for any puzzle lovers you know. Each section of this book is broken down into what kind of puzzle it is. It makes it quite easy to find the word and letter puzzles, the anagram puzzles, and the mathematical puzzles (there are a ton more too chose from too!).

The part the amazed me most about this book was that it was originally published in 1947! They are republishing it again for all of us who don’t remember this book (which would include me). There are over 400 mindblowing puzzles that are just as good today as they were back then. I also love that they do give you the answer guide too. Sometimes I can’t help but to look up the answer.

Anyone who loves puzzles or even is mildly amused by them, will love this book. Did you figure out the answer to the above questions? Here you go if you didn’t:

Double A’s: bazaar, baaing, ma’am
Double H’s: highhanded, hitchhike, bathhouse, beachhead, fishhawk, fishhook, roughhewn, roughhouse, washhouse, withhold,
Double I’s: genii, radii, skiing, shiitake, taxiing
Double W’s: bowwow, glowworm, plowwright, powwow, arrowwood, arrowworm, screwworm, yellowwood

How many did you get?