cutenessapprovedOnline window shopping.

I have a few pounds to loose to reach my target weight.  Need something fun to do at the comfort of my own home and rid of the unwanted weight at the same time. Sure, I can go for the best diet pills in the market, but playing games and exercise sounds to be a lot more fun way to get slimmer and healthier. That’s when I thought the Nintendo Wii game – EA SPORTS active – seems to be something that I should get.

It’s like having your very own personal trainer at home!

Christmas is months away but I’ve already started on a Christmas gift list. For one reason, we don’t like last minute shopping, secondly, when we know what we want to buy, when we see the item on sale we can buy it cheaper.

Of all the things that I like to plan on buying, besides my own presents , are things for my daughter. This year we may get a pretend kitchen for our lil’ girl. She is in the age when kids like to play pretend games.

My eyes are on Kidkraft’s Pastel play kitchen set.

Click thumbnail to enlarge pics.

The pretend kitchen is made of wood. Comes complete with an oven, stove, refrigerator, freezer, microwave, sink, shelves, play clock, etc. The things look quite similar to the real ones. From the pictures, even the kitchen faucet looks like one of Moen faucets collection. Really cute.

I prefer wooden toys to plastic ones. Because wooden ones tend to be much more durable. Price varies depending on where you get them from but price is usually below $200.

Even though saving money is good, spending them in various ways is equally as good too. There are many adults who are not good at managing their finances. That is why we need to teach our children at an early age the value of money through teaching them how to save for rainy days and also how to save for spending.

Piggy banks like the Money Savvy pigs and Moolah Money Savvy cow is exactly the thing for that. Called by USA Today as “One of the Best Products of the Year”, “Educational Toy of the Year” by the Parents’ Choice Foundation and also approved by Times magazine.

They are 8.5” x 6” in diameter, and has 4 separate compartments – save, spend, donate, invest. It teaches children the value of money and also learn to control their finances. This will them a much better start in life.

Perhaps it is a basic for these children to land jobs in business sector or perhaps become successful business owners someday.

Cost about $16.99 each. Check the product section of sixwise.com to order.

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