Curious Parents Education Resources

Holiday Season

Toys That Teach

You’ve seen all the commercials on Saturday morning and on Nickelodeon, but something’s in short supply in all those commercials: educational toys. Just because it’s educational doesn’t mean it isn’t fun and sometimes kids want something that teaches even if they don’t know it. In our fifth annual Toys That Teach Guide, we picked toys that focused on language, money, and music—plus we threw in a couple miscellaneous toys for good measure.

Language

For babies & Toddlers

Chicco Bilingual Talking Video Phone

Friendly and stimulating, your baby develops language through listening, memorizing, and repetition of her first words. Each video phone conversation tells a different story in English and in Spanish, and images from the story appear on the bright screens. The toy features eight different situations that baby can create by changing the figures on the screen. Baby first hears the name of the images that it sees and then, if she presses the red button, she can listen to stories told by the video phone about the image. By using the buttons on the keyboard, children can discover the numbers 0 to 9 and can also listen to a fun song that they can sing along to on the musical track that follows.

Story Reader: I Can Count or Yo puedo contar

Made for children 3 years old and older, this talking book is a bright and colorful way to teach children how to count from one to 30 in both English and Spanish. Children can pull the toggle switch between English or Spanish and then hit the button to hear the number spoken in the language along with a cute tune. Bold colored numbers make it easy to learn not only the numbers but their order. Story Reader has all types of talking books to teach your baby and toddler how to read with fun characters like Elmo.

School Age & Teens

12-Lanuage Translator

Shaped like the traditional English-to-other-language dictionary, Franklin has come up with something ingenious: a dictionary that’s even smaller in size but has with a larger collection of translated words—12 whole languages to be exact! The next time your child decides to change course mid-stream because French is so much cooler than German, you won’t even have to buy a new dictionary; you’ll already have it. The best part is if you decide to take a trip to Europe, you can hop on the European railway with a little pocket translator and be able to communicate with anybody across the continent. Franklin has a host of other electronic products from a children’s dictionary with spell corrector to talking Spanish-English dictionaries.

Music

For babies & Toddlers

iPlayMusic

If your little one is tapping on pans and strumming on broomsticks, then take their musical ambitions a bit further with iPlayMusic. All you need is a Macintosh computer and you’ll be on your way. Capo, a lovable purple puppet, guides kids through a chorus of interactive songs, dances, and lessons while encouraging toddlers and preschoolers to get up and dance with the music. Learning to read music can be a drag, but you don’t even have to with this program: each guitar lesson is presented using iPlayMusic’s critically-acclaimed multi-angle video-based instruction method. Over 35 guitar and song lessons are included.

School Age & Teens

Fretlight

Your child or teenager can jam out like Bon Jovi did in Sayreville, N.J. with this guitar—and be just as good. Just hook up this bad boy to the computer and place your fingers where the light-up Polymer Fretboard LEDs tell you to. Classic, punk, blues: no problem. The Fretlight will test if your child is destined to be a one-hit wonder with you as the head groupie or the next Kurt Cobain headed for rock stardom. Hey, you can even buy it for yourself or the hubbie if those dreams of singing on stage still linger in the back of your mind—but don’t head for the rock n’ roll hall of fame just yet. After the Fretlight, you’ll still have to graduate to a guitar that doesn’t have light up sensors to tell you how to rock out.

Money

For babies & Toddlers

The Money Mammals: Saving Money is Fun

It’s best to learn about how to save money before you end up filing for Chapter 7—and even better, it’s best to learn when you’re real young, say 2 years old. It may sound too early but with The Money Mammals it will still be fun. These cute adorable puppets teach children aged 2-6 why saving money can be more beneficial then spending it. Plus, children light up when they get even a dollar from grandma, so learning to save now instead of asking you to immediately take them to buy something will save you some aggravation as well.

School Age & Teens

Oneshare.com

With the stock market hitting record highs, go out and purchase the gift that keeps reaping dividends: a share of stock. At OneShare.com, you can purchase a share, and order a frame to teach your teenager about the value of money and the incentives for being an investor in the market. Plus, the stocks are just plain fun (and sometimes really cute!). They can show them off to their friends and even say “I can’t hang this weekend, my annual eBay shareholders meeting is on Saturday.” Okay, they probably won’t go to it, but they could—it’s a real stock. Visit www.oneshare.com  to learn more or to buy a share, it might be the smartest investment you’ve ever made for your child.

Miscellaneous

Brain Quest: Math Basics (Grade 1, 2 & 3)

Learn math skills such as multiplication, division, comparing and ordering numbers, using less than and greater than symbols, addition, subtraction and reasoning that students need to learn in the first, second and third grade in an exciting way. Brain Quest: Math Basics takes the skills and applies them in 1000s of questions that allow parents to quiz their children as well as letting kids quiz themselves and each other. Children will become more confident in their math skills and be excited to show off their knowledge.

Blue Orange: Gobblet! Junior

Easy to learn, Gobblet Junior plays just like tic-tac-toe except now you can goblet up your opponent’s pieces and move yours around the board. Each piece, red or yellow, features a friendly, smiling face. Gobblet Junior teaches children basic strategic concepts, stimulates the memory, and develops dimension skills. This two player game for ages 5 and up is, like all Blue Orange games, made of wood.

Clifford The Big Red Dog Phonics

Before kindergarten even starts, your child could be a head above the class with this interactive DVD game that give kids a taste of school. Letters, rhyming, consonants are just some of the elements of language children take away from the game with Clifford. They’ll be barking out all kinds of sounds and words after this game.

Electronic Snap Circuits

Electrify your child’s Christmas or Hanukah with a toy that will occupy your children for hours. For kids 8 years old and up, children will build circuits that turn on lights, make buzzing sounds and even launch a propeller several feet in the air with an electric motor. While they’re having fun building circuits, they’ll be learning about series and parallel circuits, resistors, capacitors and other electronic components. The set consists of a board and components that can be set up using pre-designed circuits that the children will then modify and customize to make their own crazy inventions.