Archive for January, 2010

What’s Gnu Children’s Game is a great educational tool to use in an elementary classroom to improve reading skills. This game is an excellent addition to any English block. It’s fun, it’s educational, and it can be played in minutes.

I work in an instructional classroom that is made up of 3rd through 5th grade students who receive Special Education services. What’s Gnu from ThinkFun gave my students the opportunity to use higher level thinking skills. They were required to use their word retrieval skills to create three letter words as quickly as possible. In addition, What’s Gnu also allows students to improve their resource skills. When “questionable” words are created, teachers can have students pull out a dictionary and find the word that was created during game play. I also have the students use the words in a sentence to ensure they know the meaning of the words they are making.

While an excellent addition to the classroom, it may take a few minutes for students to pick up on the game. However, through proper modeling, they will pick it up in moments. Once the skill is acquired, the tempo of the game increases dramatically.

Best of all, variations of game play are possible as well. I enjoy challenging my students to make as many words as possible. Using the letter tiles and cards, I have them see how many words they can create. Kids can take their time and manipulate the letters to develop new words, and whoever creates the most words, wins the round.

What’s Gnu is a great resource to add to an English block. It helps students improve their word retrieval and dictionary skills. Best of all, the kids enjoy the challenge of creating words the fastest – they have fun while working on important skills at the same time!

This teacher review was brought to you by Kendall Kutska, a Special Education Teacher in an Illinois Elementary School. Kendall works in a 3rd through 5th instructional classroom, teaching many subjects, one of which is English.

State College, PA is of course home to Growing Tree Toys since its opening in 1973. But “Happy Valley” is also infamous for Penn State University, along with its stellar sports teams and philanthropic activities. Both come together in the annual WBCA Pink Zone® festivities held by the Lady Lions basketball team.

The WBCA Pink Zone® initiative began in 2007 as “Think Pink,” with special collegiate women’s basketball games held in January or February to raise awareness and funds for breast cancer research. The cause has spread to other collegiate sports as well as high schools and other groups. In 2009, related events raised $1.3 million and reached nearly a million fans.

Penn State’s fourth annual event is this Sunday, January 24 at 1:00 p.m. against Illinois. The women’s basketball program has raised more than $83,000 in its first three Think Pink/Pink Zone® events.

It is encouraging to see the cause of breast cancer awareness encompass more than the month of October. Here at Growing Tree Toys, a special toy can be purchased anytime to help the cause. The Glitz and Glamour Game by Find It Games is a canister full of recycled plastic pellets and 44 cute items to discover. It’s fun for all and quite a conversation piece! Find It Games will donate $1.00 from each Find it Glitz and Glamour Game sold through July 31, 2010 to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

You can find out about the 2010 Pink Zone® festivities here at Penn State, see photos and information from past events, see auction items and donate online at www.gopsusports.com/pinkzone. If you are in the Valley and want to check out the events, come out to the Bryce Jordan Center this Sunday!

Top Photo: A sea of pink in the Bryce Jordan Center in the 2009 edition (by Steve Manuel).
Bottom Photo: The check for the 2009 fundraiser is presented at halftime of the PSU-E. Illinois football game (by Mark Selders).
Thumbnail Photo: The Lady Lions kick-off the 2010 Pink Zone® campaign with a tailgate before the PSU-E. Illinois football game (from GoPSUsports.com).

I used to love playing with dolls, action figures and stuffed animals – no toy was safe from the grand adventures my imagination drummed up! I’d even create my very own “doll house” from cardboard boxes or the living room furniture (my parents just loved that)! Tired of stepping around my high fashion hair salon (aka the coffee table cupboard), my dad finally bought me my own wooden dollhouse. When you’re young, everything seems big, but my first dollhouse was so big that I didn’t know how to play with it. If only I would’ve had the Calico Critters Cozy Cottage as my first dollhouse, I could’ve grown WITH my dollhouse instead of having to grow to FIT my dollhouse!

What’s to like?

The Calico Critters Cozy Cottage is the perfect starter home for any Calico Critters collection, whether you’ve just found the wonderfully unique Cloverleaf Corners community or are old friends with the cuddly critters who live there! This stylish two-story country home – fashioned like a classic log cabin with shingled roofing – is an all-in-one play set that will have young ones imaginations running wild with exciting family adventures on the outskirts of town!

This Calico Critters Cozy Cottage features 10 furniture pieces and accessories such as a bed with matching sheets, a round table with chairs, a kitchen counter with sink and oven, a movable ladder to reach the second floor, cookware and yummy food – everything kid’s need to feel right at home. What I love about the Calico Critters Cozy Cottage is that it’s ready to play as soon as you open the packaging because of the accessories and the included Bell Hopscotch Rabbit!

And while this Cozy Cottage requires no additional Calico Critters to let kid’s imaginations run wild, it might be nice to invite some of those cozy critters over for dinner in your new home!

Best of all, the Calico Critters Cozy Cottage is a home that grows with your child and their Calico Critters collection because no matter how many Calico Critters kid’s collect, there’s always room for more of them in this happy household!

At the end of the day
A cute and cuddly pretend play favorite, the Cozy Cottage is perfect for exciting the imaginations of children ages 3 years and up for $49.95!

This staff review was brought to you by me, Kendra, Copywriter at Growing Tree Toys. Here’s a little more info (in my own words) about my time with the company:
I have worked at Growing Tree Toys for 3 years as a copywriter for our store’s website, where I get to play with demo toys to learn the “in’s” and “out’s” of all our products. Since I can’t really justify buying endless amounts of toys for myself, my family and friends are pretty much guaranteed to get presents from Growing Tree Toys – and no one is happier about that than my little 9-year-old sister! When I’m not tinkering with toys, I read every book I can find – and currently I own approximately 200 books!

I remember when I was little and couldn’t remember anything! No, really. Whether you asked me what TV show I had watched an hour before or where I’d put my favorite toy, my brain refused to remember. One night my dad (as part of a joke, I’ve no doubt) brought home the infamous game I learned to love – the Memory Game! Ten minutes into my first game against my dad, I had a large pile of matching pairs stacked in front of me with a big smile on my face – it was a complete victory!

When you see memory games today, the original version of this mind molding game might seem to pale in comparison with all of the themed games that you can experience, ranging from the Disney princess edition to online cut-outs such as penguins and cute critters, but remember – classics never die. Though I never pass up the opportunity to play the new and improved versions of this classic game, I can’t bear to part with the original since it was the first game that proved my memory really did work!

Though the original version of the Memory Game was a little bland, the object of the game was sweetly simple: shuffle the cards, lay them face down on a table or the floor and take turns turning over two cards at a time to find matches. And, if you want to make the game a little more challenging, you can combine two or more versions of the game to create a completely unique version that makes remembering the images a little more difficult, but a lot more fun!

And for memory daredevils (like my dad), you can even create your very own playing cards by using some scrap paper and words instead of picture for a super-sonic game mode. I tried playing with words once and my patented “memory blankness” took over. Consequently, my dad won four games in a row and refuses to play the original version anymore!

NOTE: I’m still as scatterbrained as ever, but I’ve never lost a single game of the original Memory Game! Go figure.

I loved playing with my cousin’s china dolls (which she did not love me doing) because I didn’t have any unique dolls of my own. So, on my fifth birthday, she gave me a set of paper dolls with oodles of bright and colorful clothing that she made herself – it was the perfect present. I was very careful as i played with my new dolls, but the unthinkable happened and I ripped one of the dresses (it was truly traumatic until I found out I could just make more clothing)! Now, I spend hours in my favorite craft store searching for the perfect colors and patterns to make a personalized paper doll set for the little ones in my family.

Whether you’re a fan of the classic era paper dolls or love the look of the new and improved styles, here’s some background about this very historic toy from Wikipedia:

          While paper dolls have been around since the invention of paper, they weren’t always used as toys. Centuries ago, Asian cultures applied faces and objects to paper for use during religious rituals and ceremonies. Japanese also used origami to fold paper figurines in the shape of the classic Kimono as part of their customs.

          The first paper dolls (known as pantins) appeared in France in the mid 1700s as adult entertainment that spread throughout high society. These dolls featured joints that allowed their arms and legs to move freely and were handmade and hand painted.

          McLoughlin Brothers, the largest American producer of paper dolls, was sold to Milton Bradley in the 1920s when paper doll popularity began to grow in the US. Getting away from the handmade process of making paper dolls, book publishing companies began mass producing paper doll cut-outs of movie stars and celebrities to turn a profit on this up-and-coming toy.

Lucky for those of us who never really gave up on the classic paper doll toys, they’ve moved into the 21st century with great no cut dolls and clothes that feature adhesive dots, which make dressing dolls even easier. While I love that these dolls have been made better than ever, I will never abandon the positively perfect (and always entertaining) cut and tab style that I grew up loving!

I’ll never forget the scraggly pre-school pipe cleaners that plagued my beautiful art projects! Sure, pipe cleaners were perfect to use as the arms and legs of paper projects, or to make cute animals, but when they touched a glob of glue their soft fuzz would shrivel and all but disappear. These less-than-fuzzy pipe cleaners also failed the “bend and build” challenge – they’d fall apart midway through making anything! Well, not anymore!

The tiny, inadequate pipe cleaners we all knew (and loved to loathe – in my case at least) have been replaced by monstrous-sized, fluffy fiber sticks that are certain to hold up the endless creations kids can imagine and build – over and over and over! Best of all, these pipe cleaners feature bright, bold colors and cool striped patterns, which add even more fuel to the imaginative fire!

With new and improved pipe cleaners popping up everywhere you look, it’s no wonder kid’s are making some truly crafty creations!

This is one red hot dragon creation that’s very cool! Featuring a thick, furry pipe cleaner body, realistic wings, and additional embellishments that add to this fierce dragon style, there’s nothing meek and mild about this creature!

As pipe cleaners become more popular than ever, some companies are taking their love of these fuzzy fiber sticks to exciting extremes. This playful puppy was created using Brain Noodles– they’re the new non-traditional pipe cleaners that are available in themed kits to keep the imagination intrigued! These kits include such favorites as the Brain Noodles Stripes Kit, the Brain Noodles Fabulous Flowers Kit, and the Brain Noodles Big Kit!

No matter which brand of super-duty, fiber sticks you choose for you next arts and crafts project, you can be sure that they can withstand any bend, fold, twist, or spiral you give them! These durable sticks make it easy for kids (or adults) to take one project apart and start building a new one using the same fiber sticks.

Here are a few fuzzy pipe cleaner creations that I hope will make you smile: