Chicken Count is a game for kids 4 and up.  It doesn’t require any reading, so for us, it made it a lot easier for Madison to play.  Your goal is to collect the most chickens by the chicken coop is built.  It is pretty easy.  You draw cards.  If you get a chicken card, you keep it.  If you get a chicken coop card, you pick a chicken coop piece and place it on the coop.  If you draw a fox, you lose all your chicken cards.  When the chicken coop has been built, the person with the most chicken cards wins.  it is a pretty fast pace game, so it is great for this age group who have a short attention span.  We had lots of giggles when we played this.

Where Do I Live? is a memory game.  Your goal is to have the most pairs at the end.  You try and turn over cards and match animals to their homes.  For example, bee matches to beehives, house to a boy, and a pond to a frog.  Not only is this game fun to play, it really opens a dialogue with your kids.  You get to talk about all of these animals and their homes.  This game is for kids 4 and up and doesn’t require any reading.

These two games are winners in our house.  They are very age appropriate and have been played here quite a bit.  We had lots of fun, and you will too.

I personally believe books always make great gifts. We have installed into our children how important reading is, and you can tell. Both my one year old and my four year old can often be seen flipping through books without Bill or me even around.  This is why I l love companies like GiftLit who make it easier to give books as gifts to both children and adults alike.

GiftLit has an advisory board of librarians, educators, authors, and industry experts that select the books that are sent out, so you know these are great books. They have books for every age too!  They have books for toddlers on up.  They way this works is you pick with selection of books you want.  If you are looking at the kids books, you can choose which age group you want.  For adults, you can pick anything from fiction to mysteries to history.  You can also choose how long you want your gift subscription to last.  You can buy them in 3, 6, or 12 month increment.  The best part of this is that this is the gift that keeps on giving.  Instead of the one present you get Christmas morning, you can potentially have a gift every month of the year.

We have this come to our house, and we love it.  The books are great quality books that I would have never thought to check out.  Also, what kid doesn’t like to get mail for them?  Actually, what adult doesn’t like getting a present in the mail each month?  This is truly the gift that keeps on giving, and I am deciding which book lover in my family is getting this.  If you’d like to get this for yourself or as a present, just make sure you use the code LISA1130, so you can get 10% off your order!

One of the gifts I plan on getting Bill this Christmas is called PrismaPixels. For those who don’t know, Bill is an electrical engineer who loves to do logic puzzles. Anything that involves math and logic, he is there. PrismaPixels is nothing like you have seen before. Each puzzle has numbers along the top and along the side of it. These numbers will give you clues about which and how many boxes to color in. If you color all the boxes correctly, you will see a picture.

The rules for this kind of puzzle are fairly easy. First, those numbers I talked about before, represent the number of consecutively colored boxes of the same color in that row or column. The colored boxes and group of boxes occur in the same order as the numbers. There must be at least one blank box between two sections of the same colored boxes. There may or may not be one or more blank boxes between two sections of different color boxes.

Once you get the puzzle book, all these rules are listed. There is also a couple of pages of tips (and images), so you can learn how to do these puzzles. Now, by following the directions, I even figured out how to do these! These puzzles do require you to think, but are pretty fun to do.

With the economy the way it is, one of the many things parents have had to cut from their children’s lives is music training.  With all the shows on TV now like American Idol, Nashville Star, and America’s Got Talent, you can understand why kids want to improve their voice.  Your kids may not even be reaching that high — they may just want to get a part in the choir or play.  Private lessons have always been pretty costly, and depending on where you live, may or may not even be available.

Ariella Vaccarino has changed all of that.  Ariella is an opera singer and an experienced teacher based out of Los Angeles.  She is also the creator of Voice Lessons To Go.  Voice Lessons To Go is a 4 volume CD box set.  You can buy them as either a set or singly.  Volume 1 is called Vocalize and Breath.  It shows you singing warmups and breathing excercises.  Volume 2 is Do Re Mi Ear and Pitch Training.  It filled with vocal excercises.  It will improve your sense of pitch by concentrating on scales and chords.  Volume 3 is Pure Vowels.  It is compiled of vocalizes seperated by ah, ey, ee, oh, oo, and i.  Volume 4 is Stamina.  This is a group of vocal exercises to challenge and strengthen your abilities.  She also offers on her site the ability to submit your voice and receive a vocal assessment.  For $9.99, you can submit one minute.  If you spend $39.99, you are able to send 3 songs!  She will give you her full assessment and recommend song choices and exercises.  She’ll also get back to you within one week with that!

With the range of products and pricing, there is definitely something for everyone.  This makes a great stocking stuffer or Christmas gift for the aspiring singer in your life.  Since I think this is such a great product, I had a set of these sent to me to give away to one of my lucky winners!  The winner of this giveaway will receive all four CDs!  Here’s what you need to do:

1. Leave a comment on this post. I want to know why you want this or why you like the site.
2. Twitter about this contest. Please leave me your username so I can verify.
3. Stumble this post. If you don’t know what Stumble Upon is, please read Lori’s post at Blogging Cents. She explains it extremely well.
4. Add this post to other social media sites like Digg, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, Reddit, Propeller, Etc. (1 entry for each social network).

For 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:

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

This giveaway will end on November 25st at 8:00 pm and is available to US residents only. Good luck!

Ever feel like nobody would understand how you feel?  Ever feel the need to connect to other moms?  If so, I definitely have the place you need to check out:  Moms Like Me.  I love the community on this site.  We are able to do everything from talk about cookie recipes to talking about how to get our kids to bed at night. It is one of those places that you get support from everyone even if they don’t have any helpful advice for you.  I remember a time when it was just Madison and me at home all day, I would have loved to have found this site them.  However, I am glad to be a part of it now.  I don’t mind telling people my story and my issues.  I have found Moms Like Me a great resource for me also.  I just recently learned how to sign up for the Toys R Us Newsletter!  There also have been some great giveaways over there for new members.  You can also sign up under one of the groups there are if you find one you like.  They have everything from a fundraising group to a blogging group to a knitting group.

If you are trying to find your place in this world, this is a great place to stop and check out.  If you have any mommy questions, this again is someplace to check out.  If you need a bit of support, you should definitely check out Moms Like Me!