Will is very texture oriented. He loves books that allow him to touch the page and feel the items on there.  We recently checked out two of the Touch The Art Books:  Tickle Tuts Toes and Catch Picassos Rooster.  These books definitely fit the bill for us.  These are both board books, so there is no destroying them.  Each page has something for your kids to interact with be it feeling the bumpy pyramids to feeling a pet cat.  Wills favorite though has to be the mummies.  I love that this is a great introduction to both art and history.  I love how they are able to incorporate famous works (like van Gogh’s Two Rats) into a children’s book.  At the end of each book, there is also a section that gives background information for both you (the parent) and your kids.  It helps you gain a better understanding of what you are looking at and gives you some additional things to talk to your kids about.  These books are geared for the 4-6 age group, but my two year old loved them just as much as his five year old sister!

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My kids are huge pirate fans, so I knew we had to check out the new Playmobil: The Secret of Pirate Island.  This movie is based of off the best selling Playmobil Pirates playsets.  The DVD is actually pretty cool, because you can watch it more than one way.  First, you can watch this like a normal DVD.  However, there is a second way to watch this that is pretty cool.  You can also watch this using the interactive feature (which my five year old loves).  At certain points in the story, Jack and Amelia (two characters in this) will stop and ask you what they should do.  At this point, your kids get to chose what path to take.  There is 28 different possible story combination, so this movie will never get old.  The plot of the story is that Jack and Amelia are trying to find the treasure before the skeletons get there.  Think they can do it?

If you are already an Amazon Video on Demand member or a Netflix member, the Roku Digital Video Player is a must have gadget you need this Christmas.  Available at Roku.com, the $99 Roku player gives you and your loved one instant access to the movies they love, hits they can’t wait to see and amazing TV and sports to keep them entertained.  It took us about 5 minutes to set this up once we got out of the box.  It’s that easy to use!  You use your existing subscriptions to enjoy a variety of great movies and free streaming content.  You log into your account and choose which movies that you want to watch.  You are able to instantly watch the streaming movies whenever you want.

I highly recommend this for the movie lover in your home!

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My Little Polar Bear is a great story for old and young alike. This story not only introduces your kids to polar bears, but also shows them a great parent/child relationship. The story is about a mother polar bear teaching her child (just like we teach our children about ourselves and the world). This is a great bedtime story, since the colors in this books are muted.  This is a great book for a new reader too.  The words are simple and the pictures explain everything.

This book is short and sweet and perfect for little kids!

This giveaway is now over. The winner is Carol Lawrence! Congrats!

I’ll be honest, I had never heard off Tom Paxton before I came across the book The Marvelous Toy.  Now, that I have some experience with him, I want to get my hands on everything he’s done, because I am so impressed with this book.  Not only do you get an awesome book, but it also comes with a 4 song CD recorded by Tom Paxton!

The wonderfully bright colors is what first draws you into the book (at least it did for me).  Madison kept saying “mommy it’s so pretty” when she checked it out.  I can’t describe how awesome the illustrations in the book are.  You pretty much don’t need words on the pages to tell the story.  However, the story is about a cool toy that moves and marches, bops and stops, zips and whirrs (I’m not going to give away what it is).  I guess this is a classic song (I don’t remember it).  The books is short and sweet and perfect for my kids attention span.

Since my kids and I love this book so much, I have arranged for one lucky winner to get a copy of this book too!  Here’s what you need to do:

To enter, tell me what your favorite toy was as a child. Did it zip?  Did it bop?  Or did it whirr?

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  The Marvelous Toy from @blm03 Enter here: http://lisareviews.com/2009/10/22/marvelous-toy/

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

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

<a href="http://lisareviews.com"><img src="http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk258/blm03_photos/125ad-1.png" border="0" alt="Lisa Reviews" /></a>

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. Join my Spark E Crew at Social Spark. Click here to find out how to sign up. If you are on my crew, please leave your social spark ID, so I can verify it.

2. Sign up for my free newsletter!

This contest will end November 5th at noon CST! Both US and Canadian residents are eligible! Good Luck!!

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