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Thrifty Mommas Tips 2018 Gift Guide – Favourite Holiday Toys

Paula — Thu, 13 Dec 2018 11:12:55 +0000

Holiday toys are just fun for everyone. There’s nothing like unwrapping a toy Christmas Morning and playing all day. Remember that magical feeling from WAY back when. I sure do. It’s the never ending quest to capture a little of that feeling and pass it on that keeps me motivated this time of year. With Christmas right around the corner, you’re probably either fully into Christmas shopping or, if you’re like me, well maybe you have a bit more to do. In either case, you probably are still hunting down ideas. That’s why I’ve put together my annual GIFT GUIDE for some toys that will help you round out your shopping list. They all make great gifts and they’re perfect for both boys and girls. In fact many here are gifts to your entire family. Holiday Toys for All The thing I love about all of these toys is that they get back to good old-fashioned fun. Even the newer toys on this list still adhere to the old-school concept of play using toys as a conduit for the imagination, and creativity. I think we need more of that in the world. So let’s get to it. Games are one of the best ways to build skills for life with kids and frankly a good board game or family game is fun for all. So here are a few games I am giving this season. Mattel Games We all know Mattel. From board games to action figures, they’ve been bringing us great kids’ items for as long as I can remember. There’s no exception here with these gifts. UNO Why I Like It.. This classic card game of matching colors and numbers never gets old. This is one of my daughter’s favourites actually. She has multiple variations of UNO and SKIPBO and she has played them hundreds of times. For a very long time, when my youngest daughter was small she needed a lot of help transitioning into the school day and week. So, her support teacher would often ease her into the day with a game of SKIPBO or UNO. BRILLIANT. Plus to this day she LOVES these games. To me these games are gold. Kerplunk Why I Like it Gather the entire family together for a marble-filled strategy game. Pull sticks out of the tube, but don’t let the marbles fall! SHHHH. I am giving this one to my youngest because I know she will LOVE IT! Hoping she doesn’t sneak a peak at this post. This game is entertaining and suspenseful too..not unlike Jenga which we also love. Gas Out What on Earth? Kids and 10 to 12-year-olds at heart will love this game. Draw a card and press Guster the Gas Cloud that many times. Be the last player to keep Guster from farting during your turn to win. This game would be perfect for my two nephews. One is ten and the other is five and their FART joke game is strong. It’s obvious why I like Gas Out. These silly flatulence games are on trend this season. Squawk Chicken Game Poke the chicken until she lays an egg. Funny little game that is a little bit noisy but a whole lot of fun. Why Do I Like it? This chicken game is unlike any of the other games we have here so that makes it a keeper. MGA Entertainment MGA Entertainment brings us fun family games with a different twist. From Gross monsters like Crate Creatures to Social Star, a social media board game, MGA Entertainment brings family fun into the modern era. Crate Creatures Free the Crate Creatures from their box and make a new, gross best friend. Kids can pull their tongues for fun monster sounds and gross noises. They can ever record and yak back phrases. Super cute idea. I think my niece will love this. She is 7. Why do I like this one? Crate Creatures are quirky, and unique so if you are giving them to a child this year you can be pretty sure that nobody else has already thought of it. No double gifting or returns here. Air Chargers A new twist on the old stunt track, Air Chargers takes track racing to a new level. Sporty cars and a variety of track sets can be combined to create courses as simple or as complex as a child’s imagination. WHAT THE WHAT? Of course everyone’s nephew should get this. It’s a no brainer. Every young boy I know would be all over this. Also frankly I get to play with this when I visit my nephews so HURRAY! YES please. Again why do I like it? Just because honestly it’s great value and sheer fun for any child who LOVES cars or trucks. No batteries required. Need I say more. Get Air Chargers now and it will still arrive in time for Christmas. Ready 2 Robot Build, swap and battle. There are thousands of ways to combine these robots and play. Why do I like Ready 2 Robot? I know my nephew will love these. They are collectible plus there’s a slime element that makes them the right amount of cool and gross combined. Order this Ready 2 Robot Ultimate Set with slime squad. DONE. Perfect gift under $100. Again no batteries so it’s a winner! Social Star Make social media fun with Social Star. In this game, players must get “likes” in order to gain fame. Who will become the ultimate social star? Great gift for a tween. HEXBUG If you’re a returning reader, it should be no surprise that HEXBUG makes my list of holiday toys. I’m a big fan of these because they promote learning in a fun exciting way. HEXBUG offers a variety of toys from Robotic Soccer to Battling Boxing Robots, Ring Racer, and more. All of these promote STEM with a play style that requires thought and STEM strategies yet still remain tons of fun. This year HEXBUG Battle Bots Arena Pro is my pick for the best new Hexbug toy to give. Why? HEXBUG makes top notch fun toys that entertain for hours on end. Every single year for the last 7 or 8 years I have gifted HEXBUG toys to someone on my list. Some years Santa delivered Hexbug toys and other years I bought them for Christmas and birthdays. These are crazy good quality and fun, plus they rely on robotics and science and learning. This year as always the kids chose names from the Angel Tree and used their money to buy gifts for someone in need. They chose some classic Fisher Price baby toys because they wanted to give to babies. My husband and I both chose tween boy names from the tree and we gave HEXBUG toys. Kid’s Activity and Trivia Books My teens will be getting fiction books under the tree and perhaps some DK Canada books as well. But the National Geographic Kids Weird But True lineup is made for my one nephew. He is ten and obsessed with trivia. True story. I visited last month and he told me all sorts of trivia (especially if it was gross trivia) We all learn something new when I give these books. And Lonely Planet has a lineup of brilliant activity books for travel and for road trips. So obviously these go with me on our trips still and some go straight to my brother’s children. They love these gifts and often travel too. Holiday Toys to Excite Any Child These holiday toys are all wonderful picks for girls or boys. From HEXBUG toys that promote STEM to classics like UNO, you’ll find something for every child on your holiday list here. Some of these make a great gift for the tree and some, like UNO would be perfect for a stocking. So if you’re still doing your Christmas shopping (and most of us probably are) make sure to add some of these to your list. This year I have all your friends and family covered too. Because Christmas is more than toys. The 2018 Guide Also Includes Coffee Lovers, BBQ Gifts, Tweens and Teens. So Get Shopping! Don’t miss The Coffee Lover’s Ultimate Gift Guide this year too. This 103 BEST BBQ GIFTS for Grill Masters guide has everything you could possibly need or want for Dad, or Mom or anyone who LOVES to Barbecue. Ugly Christmas Sweater Guide is just fun. GIFTS FOR TWEENS are super hot this year. People seem to be enjoying this post and pinning it a lot this week. and of course Unicorn Gifts for all ages. My gift guide is sponsored and I received product in exchange for consideration here. My opinion is all my own. Post may also contain affiliate links as a service to readers. I receive a small commission from qualifying purchases made.

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Giving Back This Holiday Season with Red Cross Canada

Paula — Mon, 04 Dec 2017 13:05:03 +0000

“I’d rather have empathy than sympathy,” my younger daughter, 13, out of the blue stated the other day when I was driving her to her therapy riding session. That got me wondering if she knew the difference between the two. So I asked her why she felt that way and what she considered empathy. “Sympathy is just feeling sorry for someone, like pity, for someone else. Empathy is being able to feel their feelings, put yourself in their shoes and do something about it.” There are many challenging moments parenting teens. But there are also times when they say or do something unexpected and you recognize that they might be on the way towards becoming incredible young adults. This was one of those days. It was also a good opening for us to start talking about giving back during the holidays. Some ways we have worked to teach empathy My husband and I have both been working on growing empathetic human beings for years. Empathy and helping and using your voice for good are themes that have always mattered to us. When the kids were young we tried to model empathy. We worked hard at giving back. As an adoptive parent, I was a resource person and speaker at the London-Middlesex Children’s Aid Society for over a decade. Sometimes the kids would come with me to speaking nights, so they were involved too. When the kids were toddlers we would often ask how do you think that child, or that person, feels when something like that happens? Empathy grows in moments when others take time to put themselves in someone else’s shoes. My daughter got that one right. The last two years I have donated time and money as a board member of Sari Therapy riding on Arva. This year we are participating in a Secret Santa exchange for seniors at the facility where my Mom used to live. We are again giving to the Angel Tree and we will continue to sponsor a child and drop donations of clothing and toys off to local charities. Giving back is a way of life here. This holiday season, I have been searching for something new to do together as a family. Something impactful. Something more. The empathy and sympathy conversation gave me a thread to pick up that conversation. Giving Back is Easy with Red Cross Canada This weekend while my oldest was doing homework in my office I showed her Red Cross Canada’s Perfect Gifts web site and asked her opinion. That was surprisingly easy. She was well aware of Red Cross Canada and the disaster relief work they do. We both looked at the site together to determine what she thought was most impactful. “Children are often hardest hit by natural disasters because they have weak and growing immune systems,” she said and picked the infant care package immediately. Her words, not mine. The infant care package was $35 which includes diapers, wipes and creams to care for a baby. In high school my daughter has been studying biology and genetics and immune systems. She’s also old enough to read about all of the natural disasters we’ve had this past year both in BC, with the wildfires that displaced many over the summer, and globally with the extreme weather events like Hurricane Irma and Maria. I personally like that she was able to tie the gift to something she’s been studying at school. We kept talking, because we often have some interesting conversations with each other and that led to a discussion about medicine, the importance of immunizations, how vaccines are made and work with your body, and child health in general. So we added the Mother and Baby health pack as well. That gift gives a month’s supply of life-saving medicines for 12 babies and mothers. [tweetthis]DYK 29,000 children under the age of five die every day? Giving back to @RedCrossCanada this season saves lives http://bit.ly/2Ar39km [/tweetthis] When you shop for gifts through Red Cross Canada, you’re shopping for others in need. When you shop through Red Cross Canada, you are actually purchasing things like warm blankets, grocery packs, infant care packages, and more that go directly to families in need. That’s the kind of charitable giving that my family feels good about. More reasons to give: Through December, Aviva Canada will match all gifts purchased through the Red Cross Website up to $30,000. That is a HUGE amount of good going on in the world. Recently I learned that 91.3 % of every dollar spent goes directly towards program expenses. That is one of the highest I have ever seen. Giving Back with Red Cross Canada Gives So Much More My family is happy to be able to support Red Cross Canada. It’s as easy as visiting the Perfect Gifts website. Sometimes I give the kids a budget to work within, but I didn’t this year. I wanted to see what mattered to them and why. They’ve each decided to give up one gift this year to do their part in giving back this season. That’s a simple way to get kids involved. The more you give, the more the Red Cross Survival Kit on the right side of the page fills up. A $200 total donation fills the survival kit up. But there are many ways to give. Your gift can be from a child to a child, as ours is and that makes an impact too. If, like us, you are also still missing a loved one during the holidays, consider gifting something in memory of them. I miss my Mom every day, and Jim’s parents passed away, several years ago. This year one of my favourite aunts lost her battle with cancer. Giving back to a charity in their honour helps us all to remember them. That’s part of my grieving process. Over this holiday season I plan to revisit the Red Cross Canada site to continue giving as we keep talking about it here. Eventually I am pretty sure we will get to the $200 that fills the survival kit and add that much more to the pool of giving back and good in the world. Sometimes I tell my kids I believe putting good and positivity into the world leaves it a bit brighter. This is an easy way to do that. RED CROSS CANADA Perfect Gifts Giving Back All Year A recent Ipsos survey for the Red Cross finds that in light of the many disasters this year, both at home and abroad, the majority of Canadians – 63 % – want to give back this year. Every donation gives Red Cross Canada the flexibility to rapidly respond in the most effective way to emergencies or emerging humanitarian needs at home and anywhere in the world. If you’re one of the Canadians this holiday season looking to give back somehow then, head over to the Red Cross Canada website and look over their gifting options. Remember, whatever you gift through the website will be matched by Aviva Canada up to $30,000. So your donation doubles. You can also give in someone else’s name. Consider that for relatives, teachers, and gifts in honour of, as I mentioned above too. Don’t forget to read Margarita Ibbott’s post on Giving Back as well. This post has been sponsored by Red Cross Canada as part of a Thrifty Mom Media influencer outreach program. My opinion is all my own and it is truthful.

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