Recently the kid and I got into play­ing Blockus. We have the two player travel ver­sion, though there are also big­ger and multi-player ver­sions. I per­son­ally like the travel size and have taken it with us on fam­ily trips. This sum­mer we took it back­pack­ing, as it was light and every­one can play it from my son to his grand­par­ents. My five year old plays a very dif­fer­ent game from my father, and therein lies the fun. The object of the game is to place all your pieces on the board. Within the game you must use strate­gic plan­ning, as well as econ­omy of space. That said, you can also just put pieces down (for the younger set) and at the very least it enhances fine motor skills in plac­ing the piece.  It also encour­ages under­stand­ing of spa­cial rela­tion­ships as all the pieces are dif­fer­ent shapes.  There is one draw­back, in that the game can­not be played if a piece gets lost.  In fact, we lost a piece.  Here’s the good news; I called Mat­tel and sur­prise! an oper­a­tor answered the phone right away and gasp! I was trans­ferred to the right depart­ment imme­di­ately and faint! Mat­tel sent me the miss­ing piece imme­di­ately, no charge.  Pretty cool.

Yes­ter­day my son and his friend were work­ing on a 100 piece puz­zle.  Mon­sters! (It’s a great puz­zle.)  Any­way they were run­ning out of time on their play date and it was caus­ing them quite a bit of anx­i­ety because they didn’t want to leave the puz­zle half fin­ished.  “We can’t leave now!  Our puz­zle isn’t done!  Don’t move it for the week, o.k.?  Promise?”

The Roll Up Mat that Saves the Puzzle.

If only I had this and our prob­lems would have been solved.   It’s a mat on which you work your puz­zles, and if not quite fin­ished, roll it up for next time.  Genius!

The fin­ished Mon­sters puzzle-phew!

For months we have been try­ing as a fam­ily to play card games.  And, for months my five year old ends up annoyed and upset because he has a hard time hold­ing all the cards in his hand in a fan shape.  His solu­tion was to lay them on the table, and then accuse us of cheat­ing by look­ing at his cards.  Then, as though some­how cos­mi­cally linked to her grand­son, my mom sends this.  A card holder that allows him to stack as many as fif­teen or more cards on this disk he can hold with one hand.   I see there are oth­ers on the mar­ket and have not tried them.  This one is remark­ably easy to use as far as adding and remov­ing cards, and seems to be quite sturdy.   My son is now an offi­cial card shark.

Now that my son is five, I try hard to keep my liv­ing room a sanc­tu­ary of peace.  Sure we have the occa­sional tent city made from couch cush­ions and legos under the T.V. con­sole, but we try to retain a sense of order after the kid goes to sleep.  We clean up.  We straighten, orga­nize, and put away.  Con­nec­tagons are the one toy I might con­sider leav­ing out.  They are beau­ti­ful sculp­tures no mat­ter what shape they end up becom­ing.  There are many dif­fer­ent styles, seen here and here, and I am fea­tur­ing a home­made pic­ture of the but­ter­fly ver­sion.  They make for a lovely gift for any age.  I’ve seen two year olds mas­ter­ing fine motor skills just work­ing to put two pieces together.  For the older chil­dren, the fun comes from bal­anc­ing as you build.  No mat­ter if the struc­ture top­ples.  A new per­spec­tive is seen in the new sculp­ture and shape.

Cen­ter­piece

Okay, I’ll admit it. Bath-time is one of my least favorite parental, um, duties? oppor­tu­ni­ties?. Well, that and the never end­ing “fan­tasy play” with my daugh­ter that begins: “Okay, I’m a fox/pony/bunny/sugar-glider/etc and you’re a lit­tle girl who wishes she had a fox/pony/bunny/sugar-glider…” Any­way, bath-time. I have tried to find enjoy­able things for both of us to do to take my mind off the fact that the veins in my hands seem to grow 5 times larger than nor­mal while hang­ing over the edge of the tub so… enter Just Think Toys — WaterBlocks. My daugh­ter loves to build. It’s one of her favorite things to do. This lit­tle set come with a 11“x11“x1/2″ float­ing plat­form and a bunch of dif­fer­ent sized blocks that stick together when wet. The box says: “mildew and bac­te­ria resis­tant”; “ptha­late free” (thank god); “patent pend­ing” (not sure why that’s a sell­ing point); and “safe” (really?). This was a total shot in the dark but it turned out to be fan­tas­tic (thank you Ama­zon rec­om­men­da­tions). We have used them two days in a row and she has enter­tained her­self for 20–30 min­utes while the con­di­tioner sits in her hair and I take a nap (just kid­ding). We have the “Super Set” and the “Ball Fall”. Here’s the Ama­zon Link