Mom Central: Hot Parenting Products

Inchbug’s Bumpyname

Even with just one child, it can be difficult to keep track of things, and any mom with more than one knows that even something as simple as a short car ride or the trip to soccer practice can bring with it any number of problems. Well check one of those off your list - no more fighting over which cup or bottle belongs to which kid.  Thanks to Inchbug’s Bumpyname personalized orbit labels, you can solve the problem permanently. The flexible plastic bands stretch to fit around a variety of drink containers, from 4 oz baby bottles to 20 oz sport bottles, and if you’re feeling particularly clever you can even use the labels on items like shampoo, flashlights, or lotion. You can choose from pre-printed names or customize your own, even adding on information like allergies or a phone number to make sure important information is always close at hand.  The bands come in a variety of colors and can be customized with Braille, and are nontoxic, reusable, and dishwasher and microwave safe. Most importantly, though, while only a small detail, these bands solve a number of problems, from making sure your toddler comes home with the same sippy he took to daycare to ensuring that each child takes the right bottle for lunch. Anyone will find a use for these clever tags, and moms will discover that having one less thing to think about will simplify their daily routines. For more information, visit the website at InchBug.com.

Little Masterpieces

Though we love to admire the latest macaroni/construction paper creation our children create, it’s tough to find the wall space to display each masterpiece. Instead of piling paintings and drawings in boxes to collect dust, transform them into a beautiful hard- or soft-cover book with the new Little Masterpieces book by The Little Author. Just send the company the original artwork, and they’ll scan it and print on high-quality paper. You’ll get the originals back when your book arrives.

It’s the perfect coffee table book, customized to your preference: each piece can have a page to itself with captions, names, or dates, or an entire page can contain text.  The art you can submit isn’t limited to drawings or paintings, they even accept pictures with popsicle sticks, feathers, glitter, and yes, macaroni.

In addition to the books, Little Author can turn your kids’ artwork into note cards or teacher or coach appreciation books from a whole class or team.  Prices range from $15 to $108. More information is available at www.littleauthor.com.

School Zone

With School Zone educational products, your kids will have so much fun they’ll forget they’re learning…and maybe even be lured away from the TV! School Zone produces learning tools for infant age through grade 6, including workbooks, magnetic puzzles, bingo games, and flash cards…sounds like the same activities you grew up with, except these are completely updated. For example, the 3D Think & Blink Alphabet Flashcards are sturdy colorful cards featuring a letter of the alphabet, each with an image that “magically” changes from the letter to an object starting with that letter. After your child masters scribbling and coloring, introduce the Tracing Trails workbook, which encourages pre-writing skills with fun mazes and shapes that your child traces. Your child learns the precision of a pencil/pen and drawing lines with control. The final pages emphasize angled, circular, and curved lines, which ultimately lead to tracing the alphabet. Bright stickers are included to reward your child for his hard (and fun!) work.

An older child graduates to the Wonder Words workbook that teaches word recognition and reading skills through entertaining activities. Each page features a different exercise. He’ll learn to fit the same word in different sentences, and see how changing one letter in a word can produce many different words. Other activities show word comparisons, rhyming, sequencing, etc., all with fun cartoons that help illustrate the meaning. The accompanying CD features superhero friends that further inspire young readers. Visit the School Zone website at www.schoolzone.com or order a catalog to view their large selection of learning products.

EyeClops Bionic Eye

Remember 5th grade science class when you first used a microscope? The wonder of seeing pre-made slides of various squashed things such as bugs. EyeClops is a cool new educational toy that will bring back the wonder into your own home. It’s a microscope that zooms in 200x, requiring 5 AA batteries and an easy hook-up to the video plug of your television. You just grip the handle and place the big Cyclops-looking eye directly over an object—the smaller the better—which then flashes a super amplified, full color image of it onto your television screen. The handle makes it portable so you can focus the eye on just about anything, but it also makes it slightly harder to control and figure out direction. Kids today are naturally tech-savvy though and your child won’t have any problems getting the hang of it. Soon you’ll both be searching for things to probe and be quite surprised at what you see.

Using EyeClops I found that dimes, which look a shiny silver, actually contain flecks of no less than 4 different colors. Moving onto my wallet, I saw that the signature line of a check was not a plain black line but granular, repeated print of “authorized signature.” A dollar bill showed so many endless patterns and textures, I forgot what I was looking at. EyeClops also comes with a covered cone-like tube to hold small creatures, in which you place the small end onto the eye’s center. There’s an endless list of things to discover. Commonplace items become utterly fascinating because you won’t recognize them, like the carpet, any fabric, your skin, the moles on your skin, even your teeth! It’s completely addictive and 100% fun. Visit www.eyeclops.com for more info.

Rewarding Kids Responsibility Kit

My kids seemed sincere when they promised (well, more accurately, when I told them they had to) set the dinner table every weeknight and take out the trash every Sunday – but I still always feel like I am nagging them to fulfill those promises? The Rewarding Kids Responsibility Kit helps because it lets a piece of paper do the talking for me.

At the heart of the kit is a Family Job chart listing basic household chores including making lunches, helping with meals, watering plants, and feeding pets. Since the surface is erasable (it comes with its own markers and reusable stickers), assignments can be made by the day or the week and rotated frequently by anyone in the house (just be careful you you hand out the erasers to!). Better still, the chart shows kids all the niggling little tasks that it takes to run a household – something they usually fail to notice. The chart can be prominently posted on the wall or the refrigerator, and pointed to when the cries of “I forgot!” or “I can’t do that now, I have to do my homework!” become particularly obnoxious.

Along with the family chart comes an erasable chart for jobs that children can do on their own, such as brushing teeth and picking up toys, and blank charts that can be customized for your household. A booklet gives even more tools including cut-out cards that can be laminated and hung from hooks, lists to be posted inside of cabinets, and another section with list ideas for incentives and rewards. Though the plain typography is decidedly old-fashioned, the message that kids need to pitch in – and need to be reminded constantly – never goes out of date.

Robopanda

Remember just a few years ago when digital pets were just little hand-held devices that beeped when they needed to be digitally fed, and sometimes didn’t utter so much as an appreciative beep in return for your attention? Well, good things times have changed! I recently discovered WowWee’s Robopanda, a toy that doesn’t demandcare, but gives attention to your children actually engaging them in play. He’s a crowd-pleasing panda who gives hugs, holds conversations, shares stories (think Teddy Ruxbin), tells jokes, and even crawls!

Robopanda works without a remote control by responding to sound as well as eight touch sensors on his body. In Training mode, Robopanda interactively explains his features to your child.  Then, in Friend mode, he becomes talkative with jokes and engaging conversation.  In Menu mode, Robopanda tell stories, sings songs, plays games with your child, and even learns tricks to perform later

Once turned on in Friend mode, Robopanda “awakens,” yawns, stretches, and greets his new friend.  He might tell a story about a time he went camping, pausing to ask your child questions along the way, which can be answered by making contact with the touch sensors on specific limbs of Robopanda’s body (“Touch my right paw if you’d eat bugs in the wild; touch my left paw if you’d rather eat bamboo in the wild”).  Scooping Robopanda up off the floor will usually have him exclaiming, “Ooo, where are we going?  I love to fly!” --- but not so fast --- he doesn’t much like being held upside down!  Robopanda can also crawl on all fours and sit up by himself.  While he may be self-sufficient, he’s not too proud to ask for help; when Robopanda can’t seem to sit back up, he starts to cry and ask his friend for a hand!

With Robopanda’s changing facial expressions, active little limbs, and sharp mind, this is one toy that just might avoid being slung into the toy box unforgotten like the last toy you bought! Learn More!

Tessy & Tab Reading Club Magazines

What better way to encourage your child to read than by having a magazine arrive in the mailbox just for him? Tessy and Tab magazines are perfectly sized for preschoolers ages 2-6. They incorporate six skills for early literacy, which were created by expert advisers from organizations including the U.S. Department of Education and The National Institute for Literacy. A parent’s guide arrives with the first issue to show you how to use the magazines to build reading skills at different ages. For example, with a two-year-old you may simply point to and name familiar objects on a page or ask him what is happening in each scene. For an older child, you can choose an object on a page and have him find the matching word in the story.

Tessy and Tab are reoccurring characters who have fun adventures going to a carnival, grocery store, airport, doctor’s office, kindergarten…even a pumpkin patch! Each page has colorful illustrations with one sentence captions. After the story, there’s an activity section that includes counting, learning words beginning with a certain letter of the alphabet, a coloring page, and a search for objects and words featured somewhere within the story. Your child will equally enjoy thumbing through them with you or on his own. The magazines are small and printed on heavy stock paper so they’ll fit easily in your purse or bag for reading opportunities in the car or while waiting at the doctor’s office.

An annual subscription with two issues arriving monthly costs $48. It’s a great gift to last throughout the preschool years, and the boost in your child’s reading ability will give him extra confidence and an eagerness to learn when entering kindergarten. Visit www.tessyandtab.com for more info and to find several interactive games and downloadable coloring pages.

Babeebrite Nightlights

There are lots of mini flashlights out there but this one is tailored with helpful features geared toward new moms. If you have a baby, you’ll know that as your newborn passes the 3-month mark, you’ll do just about anything to get him to sleep longer through the night. Maybe even resort to changing his diaper or giving his feeding in the dark so he won’t wake up. The Babeebrite light is perfect for those times because it shines just enough concentrated light to perform these midnight tasks. It’s completely portable, clipping onto your shirt pocket or to any surface up to an inch thick. Fasten it before bedtime onto your nightshirt or pajama pants for quick and easy access later on. Babeebrite gives off a better quality white light than most mini lights that emit weak yellowish rays. It’s strong enough for when you need to quickly check on a sleeping baby, change a diaper, or give a feeding and then want to return to sleep. With exposure to a regular room light, even for just a few minutes, you and your baby are more likely to be completely awakened and have difficulty falling back to sleep. The Babeebrite light is adjustable up to 90 degrees so that after you find the perfect angle and clip it, you’ll have both hands free to complete your tasks. Be aware that it automatically shuts off after 7 minutes, which is useful for conserving battery power, but for longer tasks you’ll need to know exactly where it is to switch it on again.

Babeebrite also comes in a mini pear-shaped nightlight version for kids and adults, which attaches to any flat surface or keychain. It has the same strong focused beam of light that is adequate even for reading. It’ll get much use on your keychain when you’re arriving home in the dark and fumbling for the right key while trying to find the door lock. Both versions run on two button batteries, which are included. Visit www.mommybeehappy.com for more info.