Another affordable toy out there on the markets this year can be purchased at Macy’s. At $14.99, Skoodlez makes a great toy for your kids or a grab bag, and can be given to kids 4 – 12. The stuffed animal has weighed down hands and feet, so you can easy pose them and hang them.  The cool part is that there is a coin handing around the stuffed animals neck.  You take the code off the coin and use that to access the online world.  On the site, children are challenged to create their own stories.  There are three different settings, so you can taylor it to your child’s age.  Beginner is from 4 – 6, medium is from 7 – 9, and advanced is 10 – 12.  When they finish their story, they can share them Skoodlez community.  They can also print them out.

This makes the perfect gift for the kid who has everything.  The Everday Skoodlez line includes fifteen animals:  hippo, cat, dog, mouse, duck, lion, tiger, leopard, panda, bear, zebra, giraffe, monkeys, and elephant.  There is also twenty four holiday ones.  They is definitely something here for everyone.

Want your kids to enjoy bath time even more? You have to get WettGiggles soap then.  I can honestly say that this has to be the cutest soap I have ever seen.  WettGiggles is actually a 3 in one product.  First, you have the soap.  It is made with natural glycerin, essentials oils, and shea butter.  The soap doesn’t dry out your skin and is actually quite nice to use.  Then there is the toy on top.  Lastly, in the soap there is a manicure brush to help get at the kid’s fingernails.  There are nine unique characters, and each has its own scent.  For example, Cupid, the pup, is coconut banana scented, and Juliet, the duck, is orange scented.  The scents also aren’t knock you over overwhelming, so they can be used in a house where heavy scents are an issue.  These also make an excellent talking point when you put them by your sink!  Everyone will ask where you got them from!

This definitely falls under a unique Christmas gift that every child will enjoy (and some parents too!).

Madison and I recently tried the Briarpatch’s I Spy Memory Game.  This game will help your child develop their memory, matching, critical thinking, reading and oral language skills.  It also teaches them to take turns, follow rules, and sharing.  The object of this game is to match pairs of cards.The great thing about this game is that you can really tailor it to the age of the child you are playing with.  The directions had several different versions depending on the age of the child you were playing with.  Right now, Madison (who is 4) struggled a tad with this.  The cards that you are trying pair are not identical.  The object itself is identical.  However, the two cards may have a different background or with different lighting.  That being said, I do like the detail on the cards.  They are great pictures.  The basic memory game is played with the blue cards.  You are able to play a riddle game with the red cards and the blue cards (this would be for an older child).  The red cards all have riddles on it like “A dish on a duck, a bow on a bell, a bird in a cage, a pearl in the shell”  Then on the bottom of the card that you should find the 4 cards that match this riddle.  Some of these riddles Madison was able to do.  This is just one version of how to play with both sets of cards.  There are a couple of other versions that can be played also.  Madison and I ended up making up our own rules and games with this which was just as fun!  We counted clocks and toys and matched colors.

I would highly recommend the I Spy Memory Game!  We had a lot of fun with it, and I can see it being a game that your children will enjoy playing as they grow older.

Five Rubber Duckies is a book in my house that gets read often. It is just as popular with Will (my one year old) as with Madison (my 4 year old). Will enjoys the books for several reasons. First, he likes the duckies. The pages aren’t like normal book pages; they are half pages with ducks on top. The pages are thick cardboard, so even if he chews on them (and he has), they will not get wrecked. He also can’t rip them. Madison likes this book because we can work on her math skills. As you turn each page, there are two lines which rhyme. It is a story about duckies, and as you turn the page, we lose a ducky (have no fear — they don’t need foreclosure help, they are just busy doing other things).  It is a cute story and ends with 1 rubber ducky being left with a clean baby.  My kids completely adore this book and I highly recommend it!