TheGrandParentZone.com announces its launch of a new website featuring American Made toys.

“This unique website was the brainchild of baby boomers Fred and Betsy Arnow, who wanted to create a website with the best children’s books, wood toys, and equipment they used most when their now grown-up kids were infants, toddlers, and children.”

Many of the items on their website are considered classic toys. They feature wood toys, games and puzzles that are similar to what the baby boomers had when they were children. Fred and Betsy Arnow said that much of what you will see on their website are toys that they owned when they were new parents. These are toys that they drug all over America so that they could keep them to hand over to their grandchildren.

TheGrandParentZone definitely has one unique feature that sets it apart from a lot of the other websites out there.

“One of the unique features of the website is a free “concierge” service that assists potential customers in trying to find a specific item that may not be available on the website. In addition, the website offers a free Resource Center, where visitors will find a number of practical parent resource tools available from the experts who created the materials. When visitors click on a specific title, they are taken directly to a linked site where they can browse a description of the item they’ve chosen to view.”

If you are looking for high quality, safe and educational toys for your kids or grandkids, TheGrandParentZone.com is a reliable source for your needs.

The toy pictured above is one of the pedal toys that are featured on their site. They have a wide variety of these pedal toys and they are just fun to look at. Every kid should have a classic pedal toy. My littlest son has one and he rides it every single day.

I definitely know I’ll be visiting TheGrandParentZone for some awesome toys. My sister just had a baby so I have a brand new nephew to look forward to buying for!

via prweb 

Post from: Play Library

The book contains colorful illustrations of each of the seven continents of the world (but you could’ve figured that out now, couldn’t you? ). Each of the 7 puzzles is made up of 48 pieces, and the images include the animals, crops, and other information about the land and surrounding waters.

The opposing page of each puzzle shows the complete image to help guide you as you complete the puzzle, contains bits of trivia about each area, and also has prompts for “I Spy” types of searches for each image. Our copy came with a plastic sleeve wrapped around each of the puzzles. I’d recommend keeping the sleeves on to prevent all the pieces from getting loose and mixing up altogether, unless you’re looking for a good puzzle challenge!

Post from: Play Library

A lot of toys these days are marketed as “educational” and such, but I think some of the best toys for teaching and learning are the simple ones, many of which have been around longer than any of us have been alive. The following is my list of toys and such that have stood the test of time, and some of the things that can be learned through their use. As always, I’m about as forgetful as they come these days, and I’m bound to forget some very basic toys. Feel free to set me straight in the comments section!

• Blocks: Great for early hand-eye coordination and grasping, stacking, etc. Good for learning about balance and spacial relations.
• Puzzles: Useful for learning pattern recognition and spacial relations (I should have done more puzzles as a kid, my spacial abilities are horrid!). Also fantastic for practicing patience as each piece is attempted to be fit into a space.
• Books, books and more books!: From learning to name the objects around us, to identifying our first letters, numbers and colors, to learning our first small words, to reading our first chapters books, and way, way beyond—books are with us for the long haul.
• Musical instruments: From the time that we can first grasp, we can appreciate the gentle shake of a rattle. We learn to associate our actions with an aural reaction. It’s a good foundation for making music for years to come.

One thing I like about each of these items listed is that versions of them are along with us for the expanse of our lives. As soon as we can begin to grasp items, we’re surrounded by blocks of all shapes, colors and textures. We graduate from those to Duplos and Lego, and on up until we’re building towers in the sky. Some of our first toys are three piece puzzles big enough for our clumsy, unpracticed hands to grasp. We move onto 24 piece puzzles featuring our favorite Pooh characters and eventually are putting together puzzles well into the thousands of pieces (well, some of you are ). Books and musical instruments both can be introduced as the youngest age, and used and appreciated to the last breath. Amazing, yeah?

Another thing that I appreciate about all of these is that none require batteries! Can’t go wrong there. And all of them are much more fun when introduced by a parent or caregiver. Because, no matter the toy or book, there is true value that can be received from just being told that I love you enough to sit and play together.

I’m sure I’ve left out tons, but the clock is telling me that I need to wrap this up. What toys and items would you include on a favorites list? Let me know in the comments section!

Post from: Play Library