cutenessapprovedCute, Cool, Gadgets, Collectibles and Toys.

Not too long ago I posted about starting to learn how to play guitar on my own. Instead of learning from books I decided to learn from videos because it was a lot easier to understand and less boring. For me, video lessons are always the best supplementary method of learning just about anything. For now I am not talking about video lessons for guitars but lessons for high school education like maths, history, writing and so on. There is an educational website that specializes in online video lessons for high school education -  Brightstorm.com.

The courses are taught by chosen teachers from across the US and two or three from some other parts of the world. The courses available are Geometry, Algebra II, SAT writing, SAT Math, AP US History, AP US Government, US History, SAT critical reading, and writing.

At first I Sign up for a free brightstorm acocunt and was able to watch a few sample videos of the courses available. I watched a sample with Thadra Petkus on “Writing is a Journey”. Even though I am not a highschool student, but I found the video interesting. Since I did intend to improve my writing skills  I purchased her course which was for $49.

The way of teaching is pretty straightforward, and with a touch of style in it that doesn’t make it boring at all. She does talk like a Kindergarten teacher sometimes, but that is fine with me as long as the points are great and the way she explains them are very clear.

I believe these videos would be a great help for students who are finding for supplementary ways of learning. I am quite sure that the $49 per course would surely be worth it.

As a parent, I constantly look around for toys, games and even DVDs that are not only fun, but also would help my child learn new things. I am sure any concern parent would do the same.

There are many educational toys and dvds available, but a parent would definitely would want the best for the child. Here is one of the best educational children’s dvd that you might want to get for young one, “Bop-along with the Bop-a-Lots” . This DVD has gained the honour of being Parenting Magazine “DVD of the Year!”.

I have previewed some of the video clips which are available at their official website : bopalots.com. I find them quite good. We all know that children love songs and musics. The bop-a-lots is a dvd with computer animated characters that will dance to popular children songs. Now the interesting part is, they would play the children song in its original form and then play it in different styles. Minuet,celtic, mariachi, rockabilly, asian and much more. So this way, as they say, “it would help your child learn how to think, not what to think. That’s better thinking”. I suppose it would be good training for your child to “think outside the box”.

To find out more about the DVD, you can visit bopalots.com

These day, learning about the things around us has been made a lot more fun than what I remember. Why is that so? Because there are  many fun, educational toys in the market. My soon to be 3 year old loves to come along while I am preparing food in the kitchen to ask me about the ingredients. It is okay actually that she asks me. But my only problem when I had to refuse from allowing her to help me with the chopping and the stirring.

Of course you can find plenty of fake, plastic toy food, like plastic bananas, plastic sausage and such, but they are just too unrealistic. For example they cannot cut them up just like how mommy does. However, there is are toy food that your child can cut up and join them back up together.

Melissa and Doug cutting food box. The pieces are made of wood and attached together with velcro. So that why once the children have chopped them up, they can stick them back together and play all over again.

There are other sets to collect.

The sandwich making set. The pieces are all with velcro so the sandwich sticks together.

Pizza set. Pieces also with velcro.

So these are few of Melissa and Doug’s collection. You may collect them all and create a fun kitchen for your kids to play in.