December 31, 2011

A housewarming party and giveaway from A to Z Learning Tree

AtoZLearningTree and Money Saving Parent are moving in together!  We’ve always considered ourselves to be sister sites.  We both share common family values.  Many of our money saving ideas are for DIY, crafty people and many of our crafts and make your own teaching tools ideas are perfect for people who want to save money.  At both places we’re all about family first and we learned that we had more in common than just values.  We also had a lot of the same fans.  Now you can find money saving tips as well as family fun ideas all under one new roof.  We’re having a house warming party to celebrate moving in together and some lucky readers will get a nice housewarming gift, on the house.

So join us for our welcome home A to Z Learning Tree and 5K Giveaway for Money Saving Parent!  Enter for a chance to win one of two amazing prizes!

Our grand prize winner will receive a Cuisinart TOB-60 Convection Toaster Oven Broiler (Valued at $235.00) and our second place winner will receive a $25.00 Amazon.com Gift Card. Continue Reading …

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December 18, 2011

Best games & gifts for 4 & 5 year olds

Four and five year olds are getting ready for or just starting school. It’s a big time in their lives. Developmentally they have a growing vocabulary, increased fine motor skills and a little, or in some cases, a lot more of an attention span than when they were toddlers. Four and five year olds are extremely curious and absorbing new concepts like little sponges. This can make buying gifts for four and five year olds fun but also challenging. Many toys that say for ages three and up already seem too babyish and yet many of the cool toys seem to say that they are for ages six and up. Don’t worry. This list of the best gifts for four and five year olds is teacher recommended and kid approved. Continue Reading …

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December 17, 2011

Hot gifts for tweens: Mosaic Charming Chandelier

This chandelier that girls will make and decorate is right out of a fairy tale but right on target skill wise for eight and nine year old girls. I can attest that even girls up to 12 years old enjoy making and displaying this Charming Chandelier. This is my hands down favorite creative gift for girls for Christmas 2012. This unique gift is going to light up the life of many young girls at only $17.00 at Amazon.com for 1200 plus crafty pieces. Continue Reading …

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December 15, 2011

Top games, books & gifts for tweens

Are you looking for gifts for kids ages eight and up? It’s adios to Diego and Dora. These tweens have new skills, longer attention spans and they are ready for some new games, toys and books to challenge and entertain them and our list is totally “unplugged.”

Qwirkle wins for best family game.

Qwirkle comes with 108 wooden tiles wearing colorful shapes to match up. It’s like cards and dominoes rolled into one and on steroids. It’s a four-time toy award winner and the best selling game of all time for Mindware.

Why I like it:
Ages seven and up can be successful. It’s easy to make some kind of match but with some added strategy players can really challenge themselves and rake up the points.
In our house, parents and kids a like vote for Qwirkle for family game night.

Why kids like it:
It’s super easy to set up and the rules are easy to learn so everyone can start play right away.

Science Kits from Educational Explorer give kids a taste explosion.

These fun science kits from Educational Explorer Continue Reading …

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December 14, 2011

Teaching writing with SillyBandz

Thinking about buying SillyBandz as stocking stuffers this year? There not just trendy jewelry if you use these ideas for Using SillyBandz to teach writing.

SillyBandz, those little rubber band like bracelets that hold their shapes after you wear them, may seem really silly but kids are crazy about them. Some schools banned Silly Bandz, arguing that they are a distraction. The biggest thing I don’t like about Silly Bandz is the same thing I dislike about Barney the purple dinosaur; that I didn’t think of it myself.

My kids have fallen into the SillyBandz craze too. I decided if there were going to be hundreds of them in my house and on my children’s wrists, they might as well make themselves useful.

I started thinking about how SillyBandz could be used in an educational way and how I could use my children’s love of SillyBandz to inspire learning. Continue Reading …

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December 13, 2011

10 Favorite Children’s Books

Reading aloud to my children is one of my favorite things to do and buying them books for Christmas are gifts I can really feel good about.  While there are just hundreds of runners up, here are ten of my favorite books to read to kids.

Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? was the first book I read to each of my children.  This Dr. Seuss book (written as Theodor Geisel) went into the hospital bag.  We wanted to start reading to our children as soon as they were born.  Toddlers really enjoy Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?

Fancy Nancy books are a lot of fun to read and a great way to build vocabulary.  Nancy has a fancy name for everything.  This series by Jane O’Connor and Robin Preiss Glasser is fun for kids three and up.  There’s always a family friendly message along as lots of “stupendous” vocabulary.

There’s a reason Eloise books by Kay Thompson and Hilary Knight are so popular. Eloise is such a fun character and it is exciting to follow Eloise from Paris to New York City. Kids love her mischief from pouring milk down the hotel mail drop to overflowing the bathtub.  Our favorite Eloise book is Eloise Takes a Bath.  Eloise is six and kids four and up will enjoy her stories.

Are You My Mother? has been a favorite selection of both of my children during the preschool years.  This classic by P.D. Eastman follows a little bird in search of his mother. It’s fun for kids to shake their heads no when the little bird asks everyone from a cow to a kitten “Are you my Mother?”

Continue Reading …

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December 12, 2011

Best Educational Christmas Gifts for Kids

With one week to go before Christmas, the two questions this educator gets asked the most this time of year are what are the best chemistry sets for kids and what are the most educational board games for kids.  We’ve got the answers here in Best Chemistry Sets for Kids and Most Educational Board Games- there are some really cool new educational board games available for Christmas 2010.

As an added bonus, we’re throwing in Best Toys for Your Money.  Hear from parents who share the toys that get played with the most.

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December 11, 2011

Best Gifts for 5 Year Olds

Are you looking for some educational gifts for five years olds? Five is a big, big year for kids. It’s often the year kids start kindergarten and now for the first time, it takes a whole handful of fingers to show just how old they are.

When looking for educational gifts for kids there are two things to keep in mind.

The first is what is this age group attracted to?
The second is what skills and concepts will kids this age be tackling soon?

Now to find the perfect, look for educational gifts that address a combination of the two.

Here’s an example:

Five year olds are often fans of community helpers and their transportation like firemen and firewomen and their fire trucks. Five year olds are also soon learning to write and need to develop spatial relationship (how things fit together) skills. This is why the Melissa & Doug Giant Fire Truck Floor Puzzle will be a hit gift for five year olds. Continue Reading …

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December 7, 2011

Unique gifts for kids under $15.00: Kid’s room doorbell

“Please use my pretty doorbell!”

This is really the coolest gift for girls. It’s a doorbell for their bedroom door. On one side there is a flower with a push button attached to a 77 inch wire that runs inside of the bedroom. Inside the girl’s room, there is a beautiful butterfly that lights up and dings! Find it at Amazon.com for $12.95 for Christmas 2011. There’s also a pink princess crown doorbell for under $10.00.

Recommended for girls eight and up that like pink and have everything they need.

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December 7, 2011

Teaching strategies, research and resources

Whether you are a teacher looking for a little help in the classroom, a homeschooling parent looking for resources or a mom or dad that just wants to help their child learn more at home, finding both teaching strategies that work as well as the research and tools to implement those strategies can be challenging.
Mentoring Minds is a site and service developed by a husband and wife team with a background in education but they don’t just use their own experience.  They rely on other teachers, administrators and curriculum coordinators to help them create strategies for teaching that can be useful and effective.   They are dedicated to student success and to offering teacher education resources.
These are just a few of the products available:
Flip Charts: Classroom teachers have a lot to cover.  Mentoring Minds offers quality flip charts for a variety of topics from Critical Thinking Strategies to Bullying. They sought out the top literature and top experts to create this Bullying flip chart to help promote a healthy school community because Mentoring Minds knows that bullying is harmful to the health and academic progress of students.
Motivation Math:  Motivation Math was designed to help children understand math and succeed on standardized tests at the same time.  Numerous studies indicate that increasing the amount of time spent in mathematics instruction is positively correlated with student achievement in mathematics.  Math Motivation uses active teaching with small, manageable steps for students and teachers.
Motivation Reading:  Motivation Reading was designed to improve reading skills and student test scores.  The research shows that 38 %  of fourth graders can’t read well enough to comprehend basic children’s stories.  Reading Motivation includes engaging, high interest reading with step by step strategies.
Mentoring Minds also offers teaching strategies for Classroom Management, Writing, Science, Spanish and more.
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