Blocks, blocks and more blocks

As children, we used to build castles and cities, roadways and train tracks all with wooden blocks.  We had a huge blue jean bag that was filled with all sizes and shapes of blocks.  Our imaginations did all the designing and our hands did all of the construction. Most of the time we built these castles right in the middle of the kitchen floor.  What better place then to be than right under our mom's feet?  Sorry mom!

Now days everything is plastic and imported.  But one company has perfected the good old wooden blocks and has stayed true to production in the USA.  The company is Beka  It was started by three brothers in Minnesota.  To read their story, click here.  Here are a few of the sets that they sell.

And they make other great products as well such as...

puppet theaters

and art tables.

To shop Beka products, click here.
Get building!

Coloring with Crayola

Call me strange, but I love the smell of a new box of crayons!  I love when you open the top and view all the beautiful colors with their sharp, untouched tips.  It brings back such great memories of coloring as a child. The crayons these days come in so many different shapes and sizes...hours of fun in a box!

 I went searching for a Made in the USA set of crayons not long ago and was surprised to find that Crayola manufactures crayons in America!

And then I realized that a lot of their products were made in America...

Their watercolors

Their bath drops

I contacted Crayola to inquire about their Made in the USA products and they responded, "At our manufacturing facility near our global corporate headquarters in Pennsylvania, we manufacture the majority of our products, including Crayola crayons and markers ~ 3.5 billion crayons and hundreds of millions of markers."

Wow, that is a lot of crayons and markers!  So when you see a Crayola product check the back to find out where it is manufactured, but many are made right here in America 

Have a colorful weekend!

Lunchskins

Over the years, we have found ourselves using a ton of plastic baggies for snacks on-the-go and started to feel bad about contributing to the landfill problem in America.  Wouldn't it be great if there were a super cute, easy to clean, reusable baggie?  Well, there are: Lunchskins.  The patterns are adorable and they are dishwasher safe.  That's right, throw them right on the top rack of your dishwasher!  And best of all, they are manufactured in America!

It doesn't get easier than this to help Mother Earth, support American jobs and keep your family chic.  Here are a few adorable Lunchskins:

To find a store near you that carries Lunchskins, click here. Or to shop online, click here. 

Snack away and feel good about it!

Ready For School?

Even though it is 114 degrees in Phoenix today (insert exasperated sigh here), summer has ended.   After a fabulous summer of pool time, lake time, play time and all around fun time, it is now time for us to get back into "school mode."  Over the summer we tried to keep the kids up to date on school skills and to do so we used School Zone workbooks.  They have workbooks that focus on skills from pre-k to grade 6.

Here is the one my pre-k child is working on.

The kids loved doing them and as a mom and a former teacher, I was really impressed with the way the workbook (pre-k) is orgnized compared to a lot of the others on the market.  It covers numerous skills from generic fine motor skills (mazes, tracing, connecting the dots) to understanding language (similar, different, bigger, smaller, etc.)  to letter, number and color recognition.  From what I have seen, I would assume the other grade levels are organized well too!

I bought my workbooks at Target, but they retail at many locations (Walmart, Walgreens, etc.)
Or you can shop online: click here.

Note: Just as an FYI, there are a few School Zone products that are not made in the USA including all of the write & reuse workbooks, all of the think and blink flash cards and the animal alphabet pop-up flash cards.

Happy Back to School Everyone!